I just applied for a job at the same place I last worked, essentially for the same guy, but one level up. So none of the job interview bullshit tactics will work. And I know some of the other people applying. Tough room.

Seriously! Winter is coming! What if I freeze to death?

Okay, now I'ma show off my babies. When they were really babies.

Nate, age 2 and Abby, age 1 [link]

Abby, age 3, with a blackmail worthy hairstyle. (It's the only thing her hair would do.) [link]

Indian man gets paid to monkey around

In India, where monkeys are a menace, one man is getting paid $7 per day to rid a train station of its loitering monkeys. The man dresses as a monkey and scares away the simians, who are known to snatch bananas from passengers.

Watch the video here:

Business question: A corporation paying or withholding California taxes has a California Tax ID.

An individual has a SSN

The University of california has what? A FEIN?

What Europeans think of the US these days. OK, what Germans think. Ok, what Spiegel Online thinks: America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role

This is no longer the muscular and arrogant United States the world knows, the superpower that sets the rules for everyone else and that considers its way of thinking and doing business to be the only road to success.

A new America is on display, a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.

Also on display is the end of arrogance. The Americans are now paying the price for their pride.

Gone are the days when the US could go into debt with abandon, without considering who would end up footing the bill. And gone are the days when it could impose its economic rules of engagement on the rest of the world, rules that emphasized profit above all else -- without ever considering that such returns cannot be achieved by doing business in a respectable way.

With its rule of three of cheap money, free markets and double-digit profit margins, American turbo-capitalism has set economic standards worldwide for the past quarter century. Now it is proving to be nothing but a giant snowball system, upsetting the US's global political status as it comes crashing down. Every bank that US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is currently forced to bail out with American government funds damages America's reputation around the world.

Of course, it is not solely the result of undesirable economic developments that the United States is in the process of forfeiting its unique position in the world and that the world is moving toward what Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, calls a "post-American age." Washington has also lost much of its political ability to impose its will on other countries.

Me, age 6: [link]

Me, age 22 (most amusing to me): [link]

Scola is the cutest toddler I've ever seen!

In other "thank you Jesus, Buddha, and Zeus" news, our old house is sold. Completely done. Only took a week past the official closing date, and we kind of want to firebomb the buyer's realtor, but whatever. SOLD.

Woo hoo Dana on being done with the old house.