My experience with LinkedIn has been pretty good. I've had 3 companies contact me about open positions over the last couple of years. Though I didn't pursue them at the time, I thought it was pretty sweet to get contacted without having to do a thing.

Somalia is a living hell, and it would be great if the attention moved other nations, including the U.S., to help. However, attacking cargo vessels that are not involved in dumping waste or illegal fishing does not help the argument that they are responding to abuses of Somali coastal waters.

Word.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I still think it is LOLARIOUS that, when my brother's at work, I get to consider "captured by pirates" as a possible risk. And when I say possible risk, I mean, I had to confirm with my mother that the ship in question wasn't his, because that was the most recent shipping path I knew him to have been on. But that doesn't mean I'm not a little twitchy about it, and the cargo vessels aren't exactly the ones that caused the mess that caused the activity.

God, do I feel like an idiot right now. I’ve been going through training since the beginning of the year to take over some of the allocation of regulations we get from the states. I’ve got two co-workers who are being moved onto other projects, and I’ve been getting groomed to take over their reg duties. Well, the one co-worker gave me the list of groups to allocate the regs to, and this list specified who gets proposed regs and who gets final regs. The first co-worker told me to stick with that list since many of the groups don’t want to get proposed regs.

First co-worker is currently on vacation, and second co-worker has handed me some more states to work on, which I’ve been asking for the past month, so I was happy to do them. Second co-worker just told me that I screwed up on a lot of the allocations because I was following the list the first co-worker gave me. Second co-worker obviously thinks I’m covering my ass by “blaming” first co-worker, but I’m not! I’m just telling her what first co-worker has told me in the past!

The damn list is out-of-date and wrong in several cases but because they don’t even need to look at the list anymore they don’t know it’s wrong, but I’m new at this and I rely on the damn thing, and I don’t need to get blamed because I followed the damn documentation!!

It doesn’t help that I get along much better with co-worker #1 than I do c-w #2.

There are lots of countries where corrupt/failed governments results in foreign exploitation of natural resources + poor enforcement of criminal law + no jobs = rampant kidnapping. I don't see the Somali pirates as any different from Nigerian warlords in Port Harcourt or Mexican drug lords.

I'm sorta hitting critical stress levels right now. As much as I can't afford to, I think I'm gonna have to take the night off to center a bit. I mean, I've already yelled at the cats for , well, being cats, I've crashed into just about every box in the place, and going to the wrong level of the parking garage when I left about made me cry. So.

Yeah, discovering that I didn't need to buy that extra tp this weekend just got angry tears. I think I'm done for the day. I'll do my nails once I calm down.

As much as I despise the pirates' methods, Europe and the US are at least indirectly responsible for the failed state that is Somalia since at least 1884, when the world's political powers carved up Africa. The Ogaden region was "given" to Ethiopia but peopled by native Somalis. The two countries have been battling over ownership of the region for decades and have sunken valuable energy and resources into buying weapons and waging war, not to mention destroying their infrastructure in an ecologically fragile environment.

Politically, the US has supported both sides at various times--depending on the situation (namely, whichever side was being courted by the Marxists).

So we helped make the country the shit hole that it is--so much so that its people are desperate, armed and very dangerous--and also very, very close to the Persian Gulf where we have to go to get our ships to Iraq and other sources of oil.

I don’t need to get blamed because I followed the damn documentation!!

I hate this for you! I am always angry when I follow instructions and it doesn't work. It Not My Fault!

As much as I can't afford to, I think I'm gonna have to take the night off to center a bit.

This is a good idea. It's all very well and fine for us to tell you it's okay to be all stressed. But you're stressed! You need to take sarameg time! Doo eet.

This week's Elle has no-makeup unretouched photos of a number of Euro actresses including Charlotte Rampling and Monica Belluci.

You can see the three different covers they are using here: [link]

(Video in French)

I also saw them on Jezebel, I think -- interesting.