I have led a fairly charmed life. Sure my job isn’t what I dreamt of doing, and I have less free time than I’d like, and I could come up with any number of other minor “problems” in my life, but realistically I have it pretty great. Most people, if they gave it some consideration, would put themself in the same position: they have it great too.

You don’t always realize this and sometimes it takes a fairly jarring event to bring to the forefront of your thoughts. On Saturday, November 17th, I had just one of those events. A friend of mine was murdered by a jealous soon-to-be ex-husband. Its not the kind of thing that you think of happening to you or those you know. Everyone deals with death. When parents and grandparents get to a certain age or when friends are diagnosed with diseases and infirmities, the possibility of their passing creeps into the recesses of your brain. You understand it is coming, you may not like it or admit it but, your subconscious knows it.

Murder is a completely different animal. There are no warning signs for the friends and acquaintences involved. Sometimes there are indicators of conflict or something not quite right in a person’s life, but there is an imaginary line that everyone has in their head that says “Yeah, that really sucks, but what are you going to do, kill him?” People assume that this line won’t be crossed and this is why there is no warning. But there are people out there that don’t follow these rules, they don’t have that imaginary line, or if they do, it is shifted ‘n’ degrees to the right.

An event like this leaves you with mixed emotions. At first I was confused. That quickly turned to anger, which changed to sadness. However, I’m back to anger. I don’t know if this is the common ending point in the grief cycle, but I don’t think I’m going to get past anger when I think about this individual….ever. Too many things about this story make me angry, primarily though it is the absolute lack of regard for human life from a piece of shit human being. What is it in our society that fosters the belief that sneaking through a window and murdering someone in their sleep is ok? How do we fix this? My brain can’t reconcile my statement above about the lack of regard for human life and for my desire for this man to be given the death sentence (which I don’t believe exists in Connecticut). Generally a screaming liberal, I find myself begging that this guy be put to death. I can only hope that my rage can turn to something else. I hope this blog helps me to do that.

My relationship with this individual was friendly. At times over the past number of years we were very good friends, hanging out most weekends. At other times our contact was much more sporadic. Even during a semi-recent falling out that was, really, my fault, I still considered him a friend. I guess what I really wanted to do with this post was say ‘goodbye’ to my friend here as I did not get to during his life. He did not deserve his end, but it has helped remind me to view my own life a little more clearly.

After long consideration, I’ve decided to make my first legitimate post about Nanotechnology. I should preface it to say that I am not an expert on this subject, but simply an interested party in the development of this relatively new field. Nanotechnology is basically the study of very very very very small technology. This field has actually existed for decades, though its actual application in society to produce things that are really exciting have only become prevalent in the last 15 or so years.

Typically the extension of Nanotechnology into a discussion among laypersons means work being done by tiny automated machines that will perform functions that humans (or our current outdated processes) won’t have to. They will be able to work at such a rate and precision that our current processes will be made more effective by thousands (some say tens of thousands) of percent. Science fiction application of Nanotechnology frequently involves the creation of super soldiers, or tiny machines that can create all the food that is needed for human kind to survive. While this type of application is fun to Think about, some at the forefront of the field think that it is not too realistic.

In any event, strides are being made daily to use Nanotechnology to benefit our society and it is one of biggest growth markets around today. If I had a lot of money to invest, this is where I would start. I’ve provided a few links if people are interested. Go ahead and give them a click. I currently subscribe to the nanodev newsletter and am fascinated weekly by the things that are going on in the industry.

See how nanotechnology is being used to fight cancer

How Nanotechnology works

Meridian Institute Nanotechnology and Development News

Thanks to INXS for helping me to name my first blog.  Amazingly, this name just kind of came to me when I was reading my sister’s blog (1979 SemiFinalist – you can find it on the left).  I don’t even own an INXS album…I don’t feel one way or another about them at all to be honest, but the name came to me.  “Devil” replaced with “Yeti” as “The Raging Yetis” is the name of the Men’s soccer team that I have been playing on for the past 9 years.

 Anyway, I think it fits as a name for my blog, as I am forced to be a different person between the hours of 8:00 am and 6ish pm, plus some nights.  The Yeti Inside always wants out.  Hopefully this blog will serve as a cathartic release to let out some of those thoughts whenever I have them.