This holiday, relatively unknown to most of the world is actually observed by more people than any other. Most people who do know the holiday mistakenly refer to it as 1/2 Christmas.

The holiday is, of course, My Birthday. And yes, I did pick the 25th of June so that I could get presents every 6 months. If I wasn’t born in the US, I might have chosen another date according to the local cultural gift-giving norms. June isn’t a bad month to be born and have a holiday from a US stand point. So long as you avoid father’s day, there isn’t really anything else in the way, or near by. The weather is usually great, or will be on the weekend before or after the big day, and all of your friends don’t have any classes or excuses not to come if you have a party.

To celebrate my birthday there is only one thing you need to do: Not talk to me. It is what I want, I enjoy having a day all to myself, and usually it isn’t too hard to pull off a day of solitude. leaving me notes and SMSs, facebook graffiti, e-mails or other things is acceptable, though not required.

Happy Birthday to me!

Extending my quiet and humble return to blogging. I’ve changed my LifeWikified template. I know, big whoop, 2 seconds of my life wasted, why bother. Well, at least I’ve done something today.

Whenever I Stumble Upon something I fancy, I’ll link to it from my wiki. If you need an occasion to buy me something. I’ll be 24 in late June, Christmas is next but if you want to save up and get something really cool check this out:

I’ll be 10,000 days old on Friday, 11/11/11.

If you’re reading this on LJ, I’m glad I’ve still got friends I’ll be cross-posting everything on my website to LJ (assuming the plugin I just)

Between this:

and this:

I may not be able to offer my readers reward for reading my blog regularly beyond the obvious rewards of the excellent content and writing that you can only get from bobg.net. What I can do is tell you about RSS feeds. Almost everyone has them, I do. John Chow does and even this guy.

RSS allows you to get all of your wonderful content from all over the internet in one place (such as google reader). RSS feeds are a relatively accurate way to judge the size of your reader base. While most people won’t sign up for this easy to read format, a certain percentage always do. The more you have, the more popular you are.

Which brings me to a great RSS popularity contest between John Chow dot Com and shoemoney.com. John wants to get more readers, and you want to read what he has to say! If you ever wanted to make money passively on your website, he knows every trick and tactic.

Now, you may not think that content is enough to sign up for daily news from any website. That is why John Chow is giving away tonnes of prizes to people who sign up for his full RSS feed now! So, if you haven’t ever tried RSS, or if my RSS feed (the green button on the right) isn’t enough for you, then now is the time, and the rewards are at their best. If you still don’t like RSS, but want to read about making money online with John Chow, you can go to his site and sign up for e-mail updates instead.

On October 4th 1957, the Soviets scored a crushing blow in the Cold War and opened up the space race. Not the complete and total victorious first step that the Communists touted it as, Sputnik was more luck than revolutionary engineering.

Sputnik (Спутник) means ‘fellow traveller’ or ’satellite’ in Russian (officially Простейший Спутник-1 or Elementary Satellite-1), and was how many future Russian satellites were named in the US. The first Sputnik weighed only 184 pounds and was a sphere with 3 arms extending backwards. It was launched on what might have been the most powerful rocket at the time, the R-7 rocket. The R-7 was actually an ICBM for an intended nuclear payload. With only the tiny Sputnik on board, the rocket had more than enough power to get into orbit.

Sputnik launched on Oct. 4th, scrubbing a launch on the 6th because of rumors that the US might send something up one day earlier on the 5th. If there had been more time, Sputnik might have been loaded with scientific instruments, but every new feature could have been one more chance at total failure.

There was no US launch on the 5th of October. In reality, the US didn’t get a satellite into orbit until the last day of January the next year (1958) called Explorer I. Explorer I, laden with instruments discovered the Van Allen radiation belts. Prior to Sputnik, the US program “Vanguard” had 2 failed attempts, but was very successful at scaring the Russians into working faster.

Sputnik was in orbit for about 2 weeks, sending out a beep that was monitored by amateur radio operators throughout the world. Anyone alive at the time probably remembers hearing the beeps being rebroadcast over the radio. Many people may claim to have seen the satellite in orbit, but recently it has been revealed that it was part of the booster rocket and not Sputnik itself.

Sputnik was only 50 years ago, and now we have the beginnings of private space flight and space recreation. Not to shabby for taking to the skies for the first time about 100 years ago.

[SFgate, Wikipedia, and AOL News]

Most of my friends want to know what happened to make me leave my financially healthy, long term, professional job. Well, in short, it wasn’t the job I wanted to do.

I learned several valuable lessons from this experience, first and foremost: ask more questions in the interview. I thought I asked enough, I even prepared a fairly long list, but I wasn’t forcing the answers and I must have missed something along the way. There were several misunderstandings between myself and my employer, and we both share the blame.

Here is how I saw it. I was offered an elementary ESL teaching position at the school. I requested to start early and was invited to tutor at a local center until the school year starts.� While I was tutoring, everything was going very smoothly, but the boss was on vacation, then never around. We didn’t speak until after I was already here at least a month. I also didn’t get to meet the principal of the school until he arrived about the same time. These meetings were important, because a lot was explained to me that somehow wasn’t important before.

I talked to the boss and found out I was to teach Math. Wait. Math? How did I get into this mess? This isn’t what I signed up for. Well, I did offer to tutor math at the center over the summer, but that in no way qualifies me, or means I was interested in school year math classes. The actual contract said only ‘elementary teacher’, so I guess they could have me teach PE with that kind of wording. Oh well, I’ll think about it…

A week later, I met with the principal and found out I was working at a true American school.� Everything done in the American style and I was only an ESL teacher by US standards. (I’m actually an EFL teacher – Foreign vs. Second language is a big difference!) This isn’t what I wanted either, and here I found out my biggest problem, how to define ESL.� I talked with my boss at the next opportunity and explained my inability to fulfill a contract for a position I am not qualified for or interested in. She offered me a part Math part Language Arts position at the middle school (not in the contract? apparently not important.). After asking about any possible EFL positions at the school, it seemed the only next step was to part ways. Now, I’m not sure where I’m going next.

Maybe Portland.

Maybe Abu Dhabi.

I have my current plans listed in my Wiki. If you want to see it or add something, you’ve got to make an account. I’ve never used a wiki for informing people before, tell me if you like it.� � Also, add gift ideas while you are there!

I’m going home!  I’m not sure of anything else right now, but in 10 or so days, I’ll be in Oregon for a while.

How do I know?  My Syrian taxi driver told me the score in Arabic and I understood!  On top of that, we passed the Iraqi Embassy which was causing a huge traffic jam on the way home.  At first, I thought it was some sort of war demonstration.  As we got closer, you could see sparklers and hear music.  Iraq won the final game 1-0 against Saudi Arabia.

I only heard of the score because I started Arabic lessons today.  Twice a week I’ll be taking classes that are a bit above my level, but I think after all the languages I’ve tried to learn, Arabic will be easy!

The recent lag between updates has not been due to a lack of interest on my part, but a lack of interesting news here in Kuwait. Since my last post I have met my boss, gone shopping with my neighbor, cooked chili, watched several episodes of BattleStar Galactica, reformatted my hard drive, reinstalled Linux and Windows, and came up with a few topics that I would like to write about. None of that seemed blog worthy at the time.

Later this week, I will write about how I found my ESL job and review a few ESL job web sites. Eventually, I would like to write about my experience getting ESL certified. Personally, I am beginning to feel slight culture shock. Kuwait feels a lot like a home (USA), but at the same time is very foreign. I can’t quite articulate my thoughts right now, but when I can you’ll be sure to hear about them here.

Unfortunately, the reformatting of my hard drive has screwed up my bluetooth. This is the only way my phone-camera and computer can speak to each other so there will be no pictures until the problem can be resolved. This Saturday will be my first payday and I am starting Arabic classes on Sunday evening.

This post has been brought to you by Dragon Naturally Speaking. What would have taken me five minutes to type has taken me the better part of an hour to say. If anyone knows how to fix a microphone so that the first syllable every time I speak is heard, please comment below.

Travelling by air outside the US is incredibly smooth and easy. This is the one place is russia where everyone is ok with speaking english. I insisted on russian and i think i got better service even!

I’m sitting at the gate with about 2 hours to blow and i’d thought blogging from my phone would be a good idea. I completely forgot to pack my swiss army knife and felt my heart sink as the guard checked the blade, but when she gave it back and said, ‘hide this in your carry on and don’t use it’ I was completely suprised and delighted for the first time at russian service! I’ll write more from kuwait, t9 on a phone is ok, but blogging on it is pretty slow.