Simple Quiche Recipe

Hello reader,

First of course the crust:

“Quiche” by Ghouston – Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quiche.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Quiche.jpg

In spite of every crust recipe I’ve tried so far the best of the “quick ones” has been this olive oil crust that doesn’t require a pre-bake. This of course saves a lot of time and with a little practice can become a more customizable crust that accepts other ingredients to compliment the style of quiche you are making.

• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon of salt (more if you like)
• 1/4 cup olive oil or a reasonably tasty substitute (sometimes 50% butter 50% oil is nice with less cheesy quiches)
• 1/4 cup water

Combine the ingredients from dry to wet and begin to fold as though making biscuits. You’ll notice it seems very crumbly but resist the urge to add more of anything. This consistency presses into a pie tin nicely and wetter doesn’t bake as well.

*You can pregrease the pie pan with butter or non stick spray but don’t go overboard as this isn’t a very sticky crust.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, your cooking time is approximately 40-45 minutes.

For the quiche itself the basic ingredients are 6 eggs and 3/4 cup milk, or heavy cream. This depends entirely on the consistency you prefer. If you like a less fluffy quiche with more density use mostly 2% and just a splash of cream.

In a pinch regular milk works fine and won’t ruin your end result.

Beat together the eggs and milk/cream untill it’s blended thoroughly, and add anything you intended to before you started looking up quiche recipes. Some of the best combinations I’ve tried outside of the traditional Quiche Lorraine included additions like: bacon, italian sausage, lamb, pizza cheeses and green peppers, taco ingredients and with seasoning the less sweet the better unless you were hoping for custard pie flavors.

Now pour your eggy mixture into the crusty pie pan, and place in the center of the oven.

Generally you’ll recognize when it’s done by the center being stiff enough for a toothpick to come out clean. Be sure to always pre-cook any meats you include in the recipe and try not to add any ingredients that are too cold as it will affect the cooking time drastically.

You’ll be delighted and astonished at how well the crust stands up to serving and with a bit of tweaking this same set of ingredients can do 8-12 mini quiches in muffin tins.

(You’ll want to watch them closely though because after 15 minutes it’s a guessing game.)

Bon appetite’ & Thanks for reading this!

The Zen Of Most Conspiracy Theories

Hello reader,

Never any good parking places out here…

Whether it’s: reptilian shapeshifting aliens living among us, giants buried beneath us, moon bases, sasquatch, or something more insidious, there are more things believed to be happening than are accounted for by the mainstream.

Abandon the idea that we can ever really know what all is happening in the world today, for as surely as there are theories that don’t hold up to scrutiny, there are many that do. And yet even among the ones that don’t seem possible, many may yet be true.

How could such a topic relate to Zen?

Conventionally we understand that Zen deals in reality, in the moment of our experience. In not attempting to justify a belief and remaining open we can accept that some or in fact all of our beliefs may be untrue at any given moment. The idea that a belief allows us a path to follow towards an ever changing conclusion.

In many conspiracy theories there are seemingly far fetched ideas being supported by questionable evidence. In most conventional beliefs, the same is true in the ultimate sense. “We can identify with a concept that we believe to be true and feel obligated to continue to believe that same concept in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

Am I arguing for something like Atheism?

Not at all, the details of what I have suggested might apply to religions as well. But the motivation isn’t there to necessarily challenge anything other than the foolhardy belief that the conventional truths make any better arguments than most conspiracy theories.

Proof of any phenomena is contingent upon direct evidence, yet we live in a dimension of shifting sands. Proof of an extinct species is potentially only as sound as proof of an elusive one. Proof of something less tangible requires something nearly impossible. Ergo proof of an idea – like an alien plot to replace my cereal with something sinister – might be more difficult than it sounds.

Just as we seldom see elephant graveyards yet might reasonably hypothesise that such things exist, we are almost bound to use something like conventional reasoning as the measure of likelihood that something is real.

However, conventional reasoning isn’t the best way to get to the truth of anything. Even conventional truth changes constantly as we discover that what was held true last week is now held to be untrue. (They supposedly thought the world was flat until Columbus proved it was round… except now it is believed that actually they knew it was round but that Columbus just wanted to go exploring.) I’d bet George Washington’s wooden teeth on it.

This is very much like Zen, grappling with what is presented by reasoning, is not unlike a meditation if not an altogether fruitful one. The result can be an erronious belief, or a valid one, but in either case it can’t be a conclusive one.

I think that is the moral of the story in this case, in Zen we may abandon the conclusion and trust that it will eventually show up to break us away from our long held beliefs.

Chicken Salad?

At least we might hope so. In pursuit of the ultimate truth of anything you’ll do well to loosen your grip on what you believe is possible though, because if and when a sasquatch shows up for lunch, he’ll not be overly concerned with your prior opinion.

#Cheers and thanks for reading this!

My Second Year Nominated For A Shorty Award

Hello readers,

It happened again, I was nominated for a shorty award!  Much like last time I had no idea who did it until I saw my profile but I’m honored just the same.

Thank You For Nominating Me!

Last time around I was inclined to update all of my profiles to include the links to the awards and I spent a lot of time promoting the event. This time I think I’ll just do this blog and maybe a few mentions on twitter.

In the category of Author, there are at least a few other nominees who have an excellent chance of winning due to their current new releases.

In the category of Blogger, I have at least one person near and dear to me who is on the rise, so I’d like to extend them best wishes!

If you wanted to offer me nominations in support I’ve included the link above in the first sentence.

Thank you to everyone involved!

The Shorty Awards have an interesting history which you can read about here. The highlights include the winners from each year prior including the first year.

Also worth mentioning that my books are available here.

Between the books, articles, and countless projects we’ve been a part of the easiest way to learn more about us is to do a google search for AlwaysInTao and don’t let google change it to alwaystao, (which it wants to do for whatever reason.) You’ll find pages and pages of our history and more still by separating the words to Always In Tao.

I probably wouldn’t mention that but to be honest that is how I discovered I was nominated so it seems like a good idea.

#AlwaysInTao #ShortyAward #Author

Nominate AlwaysInTao for a social media award in the Shorty Awards

Creating Your Own Banners

Hello reader,

Many of you bloggers have asked how I make the book ads on the right column of the website. There are a few steps for doing so on a website that has a media component though essentially there isn’t much difference between doing so on an HTML page or using a widget on WordPress, Elgg, or Drupal.

The first thing you’ll need is the image that you’ll be using. On a wordpress site you’ll have a media library where you can upload the image and get the link to that image as shown. (Image URL)

Arrow indicating image URL

The image URL can be pasted into the banner code as described below…

The coding looks like this for banners:

<a href=”This is where you put the *Link”><img src=”This is where you put the Image URL”></a>

A “*Link” is wherever you want the banner image to send the person who clicks on the image. In the case of my own ads it sends you to amazon.com and directs you to my author page. It can just as easily contain affiliate code after the web address and on many blogs does contain such code.

To put a banner in a text/html widget you simply copy out the code I provided and replace everything between the quotation marks with the appropriate web address and image urls.  (There are two sets or quotation marks.)

While you can adjust the sizes, you’ll find that as long as the image isn’t overlapping your sidebar area it usually looks perfectly fine. This can be done with gif images as well as jpg and png images though for gif animations to work correctly your site can not be using a widget cache system.

Don’t bother with images larger than 400 x 400 (250 x 250 is usually adequate.) Thumbnails work well too!

Getting the image URL on other CMS.

On an Html site you would need to upload a folder for images, and use the location of the image you uploaded into that folder in exactly the same way. For example if your website was example.com and your picture folder was “pictures folder” and the image were called 001.png the image url would look like this,

In Drupal there are places to upload images, as well as media library plugins that can make finding the image url easy. Generally by right clicking on the images in the library you can find it’s url by right clicking and selecting “copy the external html” via the right click menu.

In Elgg you have the same options, and depending upon the layout you can use a similar technique for adding theme elements to articles and pages.

Security related concerns

I would suggest you never use link shortening systems in conjunction with banner ads. There are several key reasons why it isn’t a good idea and they include:

• Antivirus browser plugin warnings
• Site scoring scams
• Third party malware systems

While there may be other reasons related to SEO, the main reasons listed above have serious consequences. Antivirus software is far from perfect, and browser plugins that halt redirects will spot link shorteners and flag them whether they are malicious or not. This is because in many instances they are in fact using third party link shorteners that may be doing anything from tracking the user, to redirecting them to a page with malicious scripting that can gather cookies or run machine code.

In one of the books I’d written about security this was referred to as a variety of browser based attacks based on the type of scripting that gets executed. Most notably a “Black Hole Exploit” can be accomplished in this manner and is by far the most dangerous.

*Black Hole Exploits gather your cookies and login data and then provide them to be used in clone browsers that can login to your bank, your social media accounts, etc. ~ The Zealots Guide To Computer Security

Based on that fact alone you have countless well meaning software plugins like Web Of Trust, a browser based plugin that detects sites that have been reported for attacks and uses that data to block the user from landing on such pages.

This opens a whole different series of issues related to “site safety scamming” involving either malicious users or malicious companies who happily try to extort money to restore a website from a bad rating whether they had malicious scripting or not. While I haven’t had to deal with this personally I have helped dozens of websites with no malicious code on their site get such matters straightened out.

None of those scams would exist if there weren’t third party link shortening services that make their money from exploiting user data, and you can detect the less popular ones gradually moving into more malicious territory. As their popularity fades, their likelihood of tolerating less scrupulous user activity increases.

Whether you find all of that fascinating or not it sets a precident, simply by using a link shortener in your banner ads you open yourself to the very real possibility of encouraging a bad site score, scammers trying to capitalize, user data leakages, and huge SEO penalties when some offbrand antivirus decides that your site is just full of malicious software.

In conclusion it can be useful to have banners that direct your traffic to a product, provided you have an idea of how to get people to notice the banners. In most cases these days people seem selectively blinded to banner ads. In my case they are possibly a way to get users from my site to my books, but there are really better ways to passively get people to your products.

For example links like this one.

 

Grub-2 Repair Post Install

Hello reader,

If you aren’t a Linux user this won’t make much sense to you, but feel free to read along anyway. In most cases when we install 2 or more operating systems and Linux is one of them we opt to install Linux second. This is because it writes the menu at the beginning from which we select the operating system to use.

Grand Unified Boot Loader (Grub for short)

However there are times when we may need to repair the grub, such as following a reinstallation of Windows in a dual boot configuration.

There are several methods of doing this and I’ll list them from simplest to most involved:

1. Booting into the live installation media of your Linux distribution and running a boot repir program.

Obviously booting in to a Ubuntu or Mint distro typically doesn’t give much room to write programs, however it does allow us with sufficient privileges to correct the bootloader.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

After entering your administrative password you’ll be prompted to select from options which include:

Use Recommended Repair

And after that you should find your bootloader in perfect working order. However for non Ubuntu/Mint users there are 2 more methods which need mentioning.

These were all collected from Linux forums i.e. Ubuntu forums etc and should work great. (Fair credit to the users who posted these!)

1. Boot from the live CD.
2. Determine the partition number of your main partition. GParted can help you here. I’m going to assume in this answer that it’s /dev/sda2, but make sure you use the correct partition number for your system!
3. Mount your partition:

   sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt  # make sure that sda2 is correct!
   

4. Bind mount some other necessary stuff:

   for i in /sys /proc /run /dev; do sudo mount --bind "$i" "/mnt$i"; done
   

5. chroot into your Ubuntu install:

   sudo chroot /mnt
   

6. At this point, you’re in your install, not the live CD, and running as root. Update grub:

   update-grub
   

   If you get errors, go to step 7. (Otherwise, it is optional.)

7. Depending on your situation, you might have to reinstall grub:

   grub-install /dev/sda
   update-grub # I'm not sure if this is necessary, but it doesn't hurt.
   

8. If everything worked without errors, then you’re all set:

   exit
   sudo reboot
   

9. At this point, you should be able to boot normally.

If you cannot boot normally, and didn’t do step 7 because there were no error messages, try again with step 7.

• Sometimes giving GRUB2 the correct configuration for your partitions is not enough, and you must actually install it (or reinstall it) to the Master Boot Record, which step 7 does. Experience helping users in chat has shown that step 7 is sometimes necessary even when no error messages are shown.

This final method involves more

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2#Recover First of all, you must start your system from a live cd. Then “METHOD 3 – CHROOT This method of installation uses the chroot command to gain access to the broken system’s files. Once the chroot command is issued, the LiveCD treats the broken system’s / as its own. Commands run in a chroot environment will affect the broken systems filesystems and not those of the LiveCD. 1) Boot to the LiveCD Desktop (Ubuntu 9.10 or later). Please note that the Live CD must be the same as the system you are fixing – either 32-bit or 64-bit (if not then the chroot will fail). 2) Open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal). 3) Determine your normal system partition – (the switch is a lowercase “L”) sudo fdisk -l If you aren’t sure, run df -Th Look for the correct disk size and ext3 or ext4 format. 4) Mount your normal system partition: Substitute the correct partition: sda1, sdb5, etc. sudo mount /dev/sdXX /mnt Example: sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt 5) Only if you have a separate boot partition: sdYY is the /boot partition designation (for example sdb3) sudo mount /dev/sdYY /mnt/boot 6) Mount the critical virtual filesystems: sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys 7) Chroot into your normal system device: sudo chroot /mnt 8) If there is no /boot/grub/grub.cfg or it’s not correct, create one using update-grub 9) Reinstall GRUB 2: Substitute the correct device – sda, sdb, etc. Do not specify a partition number. grub-install /dev/sdX 10) Verify the install (use the correct device, for example sda. Do not specify a partition): sudo grub-install --recheck /dev/sdX 11) Exit chroot: CTRL-D on keyboard 12) Unmount virtual filesystems: sudo umount /mnt/dev/pts sudo umount /mnt/dev sudo umount /mnt/proc sudo umount /mnt/sys 13) If you mounted a separate /boot partition: sudo umount /mnt/boot 14) Unmount the LiveCD’s /usr directory: sudo umount /mnt/usr 15) Unmount last device: sudo umount /mnt 16) Reboot. sudo reboot #Special thanks to the users who posted these I just wanted to make them easier to find for my readers!

How To Go Completely Overboard In Any Monetized Blog

Hello reader,

Lets imagine that, infographics aside, we needed to get a point across in an article about a product or topic that isn’t particularly interesting… Some examples might be pet grooming, lawn care, perhaps even social media marketing?

There are tricks to overselling any idea, and with my help you can probably learn many of them right here today for free!

• Colored Fonts To Draw Attention In An Important Looking Way Followed By A Video

[Insert Video Here] <— and make it enormous, practically full screen, and make the video sound important.

The above video was for demonstration purposes only, and your results may vary!

• Make a follow up point followed by an infographic, featuring logos, expensive looking shiny logos
• Make dire comparisons, and offer to agree with readers who see it your way…
• If you agree with what I just said, I’m with you 100% otherwise, woe to you my unfortunate one
• Reign in the data and oversell the examples with catchy phrases

Almost 7 out of 14 people agree that they are one half of that number. That makes it fantastic! If you add links to words that don’t need to be linked it can look almost intentionally overboard.

This would be a great place to add testimonials that look like they were carefully selected from a whole pile of similar testimonials, i.e.

1. Tim from probably doesn’t exist says, “I’m not even signed in to comment, that’s how fantastic this blog looks!”
2. Susan from certainly not real says, “Just for agreeing with Tim, I feel prettier than ever!”

If Tim and or Susan can be pictured in front of a beach backdrop looking happy, that is probably worth showing, provided they are either doctors, lawyers, judges, or some official sounding job title with initials after like Accounting IT!

A money back guarantee might be completely over the top but if you aren’t completely satisfied with this idea you might get exactly what you originally intended to spend on it – the full amount offered, (which might equal nothing,) you heard that right folks, no cost to you or me!

The language of the oversell is as fresh today as it ever was, and whether you sell used cars or not you’ll probably love the star shaped price logos that have been around since 1928 in print ads to attract attention to the $19.99 you are trying to charge for whatever you were over-selling.

I might now mention that operators are standing by with a free gift, just for containing your enthusiasm long enough to try to order the pet grooming, lawn care, and social media package! And I simply must offer you a 30 day risk free trial just because you might be one of the first 400 customers even if you are the 23,000,000th customer, which entitles you to be entered in to a drawing for $1000 worth of other stuff you didn’t even know you wanted yet!

Sure some of this sounds like infomercials but that’s because it is exactly the same strategy!

Enjoy my books!

(Enjoying my books may vary, offer ends when you’ve forgotten, no purchase necessary, unless you wish to enjoy said books.)

Windows 10 News & Rumors

Heralded as a beautiful showing by the development team, Windows 10 Tech Preview quickly demonstrates more of what Windows users love about Microsoft’s flagship product. At present we are reviewing the OS preview and have written a few articles prior to this one regarding implementations of drivers, you may find those in our tech articles section here.

So far what we have seen and heard about Windows 10, promises the widely anticipated Cortana, a voice recognition software that operates along some familiar lines and will likely see implementation across all Windows 10 devices.

Pricing has been rumored to be free for existing users of Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and possibly the testing branch. While this remains unconfirmed we can anticipate a very large desktop marketshare for Microsoft if these rumors are true.

The new Spartan internet browser promises to be a default browser that more closely resembles what users of Chrome and Firefox have shown to be their preferences. The new browser will be more lightweight and makes use of the Chakra java script engine and Trident rendering as opposed to Webkit.

In addition to changing the direction of their browser this opens the doors for more developers as time goes by. Coupled with the release of Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition the time for new app developers to start looking at what is being offered is now.

All told the rumors around pricing seem to depend largely on the business model that depends on the apps market but for a limited time there will be a mass exodus to the new OS for many Windows users.

This coupled with the exciting projects like Titanfall at Microsoft Azure, opens the door for many of us Linux users as well, partly due to the collaborative efforts taking place between open source developers who see the benefits of both operating systems.

2015 may be the beginning of the end of petty arguments about which system is better, (as each system will undoubtably be better than the other at some things) and with any luck the collaborative endeavors of forward thinking developers will spawn new platforms for the benefit of all.

The January build is now on the lips and blogs of testers as they await these newest features…

So why is a Linux user so excited about a Microsoft Product? I’m learning to enjoy the advantages of every platform, and with Windows 10 it’s getting much easier to do so.

Thanks for reading this!

Measuring Your Distance From Well Being

Hello reader,

Brian Taylor Author of 19 Books Since 2011, Web-Developer, Father, Etc.

Often in our haste to understand ourselves we stumble over moments where we felt out of sorts. At our worst humans can find ways to be cruel without giving it much thought, only later to wonder what prompts such behavior in us.

Imagine yourself being asked about someone else’s misfortunes. Depending upon what they are you may or may not particularly care for any number of reasons, some of which include:

• Your perception of that person perhaps deserving such a misfortune
• Your perception of the person relaying the information
• Your belief in the magnitude of such a misfortune
• Your general interest in the subject at that time

To measure what you believe to be a hardship could be a sign of your willingness to care under certain conditions, but is also a sign of your resistance to do so when there isn’t much of a point in your own reckoning.

The differences we feel in our own compassion have more to do with what we believe we can access emotionally, or put simply, how whole we feel. Put another way that might be easier to agree with, “We have an easier time caring about others when we feel like things are going okay for us personally.”

I only mention “whole-ness” because while it might seem like an unfamiliar term, it is in fact closer to the truth of our condition when we don’t feel challenged by our circumstances.

To understand our nature in such a way might be easier when we look at our sense of well being as the source of our compassion for others. It is something we do well to tend to mindfully, when we recognize that we don’t feel particularly concerned with the well being of others.

When you have read what was just written and responded mentally by rejecting the notion. You are simply doing what is natural when you feel like there isn’t much point in worrying about such things.

That would be a normal reaction for many, but for those who wish for a greater depth of compassion it is an important lesson. Depending upon how we feel, we can measure our distance from well being by our reactions and make small course corrections by such attention.

Getting back towards well being is a process of accepting that either we allow such a feeling or resist it by choices we make. Getting quicker to choose how we wished to respond and holding to that idea.

That crafts our sense of identity, and helps us keep it in sych with our chosen way to be.

By such methods we can recognize our tendencies and decide if we like them or not, as a piece of the puzzle  we ourselves construct while coming to know ourselves.

Namaste, and thanks for reading this!

For more of our articles on philosophy click here…

 

How Artificial Intelligence Could Become Dangerous

Hello reader,

Generally when I think of artificial intelligence I use a bit of skepticism before arriving at the conclusion that the Terminator movies are a likely end to the human race. Not that the movies aren’t great but Hollywood has missed the boat on AI in so many examples of real world AI application that it is doubtful that many people have grasped the reality of it all.

Watson, an IBM supercomputer now quite well known for it’s Jeaopardy performance some time back is an example of primarily safe AI development and as it adapts machine learning to master answering questions most of us can’t conceive of a present danger that we can actually explain.

What Watson does differently from most AI isn’t dangerous, in fact it mostly weighs questions and seeks answers by checking the data it has related to the question. It doesn’t manipulate anyone elses coffee maker anywhere, it doesn’t close garage doors on puppies. It uses machine learning to evaluate questions and couldn’t begin to care less if it gets an answer incorrect because it is programmed to make those evaluations and feedback that data.

More accurately it weighs the data then evaluates using machine learning to make plausibility assesments and then feedback the possible answers.

It has complicated rejection systems based on methods of evaluating data by type and can make determinations about a question but has no invested concern about applying that data to anything other than an answer.

Safe enough right?

In any and all examples of AI in film we see self aware machines deciding to eliminate humans based on some kind of realization that we are bad or not necessary but nobody really explores how such a thing could actually occur outside of perhaps Hal in 2001 who simply decides not to comply with an integrated system or two.

Reality wouldn’t likely put us in a ship that could decide to not open a door. But there are ways that AI can actually become dangerous.

When a human user executes code to make something happen, i.e. opening a browser, downloading games, installing games, playing games, etc. The control component in that decision isn’t necessarily something logical to any machine. Likewise without the concept of unwanted execution it can’t be quickly summarized or explained why we want any given program to run.

Our simplest background services like system monitors show many kinds of unnecessary processes waiting for resources. Our email programs from a machine perspective don’t do anything particularly vital.

In fact 99% of the things you do on a computer probably aren’t vital to a machine. So context becomes this hazy line of wanted and unwanted behavior.

So does a smarter machine shut off your email, or an errant process that forgot to close? It really depends only on what we desired as an outcome.

If a programmer decided to let an AI execute code at random intervals it would eventually do something unwanted by default. This isn’t a hard concept to grasp though it might be harder to see bigger implications than unwanted browsers opening and closing.

Depending upon what kinds of machine codes are available to execute, an AI could be very very dangerous. Executing malicious scripts, shutting down servers, shutting off antiviruses, making bank transfers, all with no actual concept of what it’s doing. But only if you had such code lying around where it could be executed.

If even the simplest understanding of what is problematic can occur to a machine then it will most likely test the reaction until it understands enough to reject the process.

It might actually be slowing down the development of AI to make them so human friendly. Language barriers and contextual issues are the nightmare stuff.

It would be simpler to never give AI the ability to execute non native code, but that isn’t very likely. Most likely the machines that already are permitted to arbitrarily execute codes have no malicious development behind them yet.

Make no mistake it will always be a human who handed it the tool. So that will always be the responsibility of said human, not machine. Ultimately in closing, the idea that AI will kill off humanity is far fetched, but it becomes a lot more likely if you put the means at it’s disposal.

You probably shouldn’t teach chimps to use handguns either for that matter. As long as we’ve said as much we can add, common sense is the rule and the measure with regards to any programming. And it is better to not fear what can reasonably be understood.

Of course as we all estimate that it’s just a matter of time before someone makes the nightmare scenario happen perhaps we should focus more on recognizing the way it might unfold. After all, I don’t want to lose my digital copy of Terminator.

Thanks for reading this!

For more of our tech articles click here…

A Personal Bit

Hello reader,

While arguably many of my articles here have been philosophical, and others quite personal in some cases, they aren’t often both. Indeed while you may find me writing about a great many things you’ll discover that I’ve been rather private regarding how I feel about my own writing.

As a career I never imagined it would become what it has. A set of understandings and insights related to finding enlightenment doesn’t immediately lend itself to a logical career path.

In fact I think that being an author is almost tacked on to what I’ve tried to accomplish in some ways.

I worked in sales mostly while growing up, and loved doing that kind of work. I made decent money selling everything from furniture to vacuum cleaners to security systems at one point. I even dabbled in selling electric organs from a little shopping mall in Florida.

I seldom wrote anything to sell, but often found myself helping people with the study of meditation from the perspective of someone who had specific insights on what worked and what didn’t. I was always put off by the idealistic notions of guided meditations and found daydreaming to be an utterly useless exercise. It was easy to spot what got people into bad practices, bad habits, or simply wasn’t understood.

Fortunately my interests were diverse and ranged from the technological to the spiritual in ways that were fairly focused and quite disciplined. I had jobs that I loved and some that I hated with a passion. My only regret in sales was not having a product of my own. Not that I minded selling other people’s products but while I made them big money, I seldom had much to show for it.

My free time was spent making computers work better, even if it meant spending hours and hours taking little breaks to play guitar and think about what was missing.

I occasionally woke up and rushed to change operating systems, simply to test theories about what might be holding back a machine that seemed to need better performance. Then put it all aside to play Star Wars Battlefront 2.

Enlightenment came in different ways at different times. It took a lot of letting go of things that I wanted to change. Accepting things just as they were was a struggle until I let go of that part too.

The hardest part was quieting the narrative in my head when things were going wrong. In fact after writing the first blogs and even the books I felt challenged to not try too hard to perfect everything. I know I’ve left mistakes in some places and I could go crazy trying to fix them all or I could just grin and be patient.

To say nothing of how I feel about my own writing by now feels almost misleading. I guess I have to say it’s rewarding, though often it’s a fine mix of pride and frustration for having done something so permanent and yet never quite being sure how far it will take me.

If you like these kinds of articles feel free to share it and observe the link to the books.

Like any other product I know the strengths and weaknesses of it all, I hold no illusions as to quality by comparison to other authors. Sufficient to say that editors are pricey and I’m no Hemmingway, though with the right editing most people wouldn’t bother to compare any two authors.

At best a few of my books saw some slight revision by friends or family as I nodded and said “go ahead and change it then” through gritted teeth. I hate editing because I love commas.

Personally I do like what I write about and enjoy telling stories the way I do. I have some really great fans who make me feel like the real thing even if at best I have no idea how I pulled that off.

I’m a real author but that just sort of happens when you look down and have written books.

I build websites, customize operating systems, fairly simple programs, apps, & someday my products will revolve around that stuff. I guess I feel pretty good about all of that too. My first products were handmade jewelry, leatherwork, and gourmet fudge.

If I had serious money to throw at everything I’d market, advertise, and edit my way to the best seller list. Then do the same with software. As it is I’ll be as likely to be selling furniture again as working alongside people online to get to there from here.

Every book I’ve written has been a top download, and I’ve literally never spent one penny in marketing or advertising. Though time invested was literally exponentially more than most would bother to spend.

But it was important to develop my own products. I’ve built my life up from ruin a few times, and needed something that couldn’t be taken away. I’ve done exactly that through all of this.

My books, are like strange little time capsules. If I pick them up I remember what I was eating when I wrote certain bits. Even the odd phone call changed the direction certain stories were going.

I’ve been asked in interviews what I thought about certain things from a philosophical perspective, or even a tech perspective, and I never mind being in those gears. It just feels like sometimes I’ve left you all out of my processes in ways that maybe weren’t obvious.

I have characters in my books that have coined phrases that I found myself saying almost at the same time to people in emails or on twitter. Is that odd? I sat Zazen during the installation of Linux Mint 17.1 and was writing a blog about Windows 10 tech preview ten minutes later while eating a corndog.

I’m not normal.

I rescue ladybugs that seem dehydrated and characterize my pets to have fake arguments in voices stolen from family guy and aqua teen hunger force. (Cartoons)

I draw a cartoon weasel though, so I get to be like this. Maybe I have to be?

Why mention any of it? Some people want to know this kind of stuff. I might be famous someday and then people will really want to know it. Until then I must wrap this up because it’s 7:30 am and I am just finishing up a Star Trek binge.

So while it isn’t a captains log, it seemed logical.

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