My son and I did our first inspection of our two new hives.  Hive 1 looks pretty good with lots of capped brood and we found a healthy queen running around.  Hive 2, on the other hand, seems a lot less populated and we couldn't find the queen.  Only 3 of the frames in Hive 2 are drawn with comb (about 5 are drawn in hive 1).

Hive 2 was so tame that I was able to work with it without smoking the bees or a head net on.

Hive 2 has some drone cells, couldn't find the queen.

Hive 2 (the one I couldn't find a queen) does have some capped brood.

Hive 1 has a healthy queen and a lot of capped brood in a nice pattern.

Hive 1

Nearby spectators

The point of the first inspection is to see how well the hives are doing.  Do they have a queen? Any diseases? Is there capped brood?  I didn't get stung and in fact it was a lot easier than I thought.  It was the first time I'd ever used a smoker.  I waited 9 days from the time I got the starter hives to do the inspection in order to give them time to settle in.  I plan to do another inspection next weekend depending on the weather to see how hive 2 is progressing (I probably won't mess with hive 1 since it's clearly doing fine).

This week I should also be receiving a Nuc from the SEMBA President (who's also a Canton police officer which is pretty cool).  I don't know how many hives I'll have eventually. If I could, I'd go with 4 or 5 hives total for this year. 

I was surprised how much I sweated doing this. The bee hat stuff really makes the sweat go.  But for now, I was just thankful I didn't get stung.

 Mega Events are a new feature in Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar that look at the state of the game and then try to intentionally shake up the whole galaxy (they're optional).  Now that some of you have been playing Dark Avatar for a bit, we'd love to hear what additional mega events you would like to see in the game.  Comment here with your ideas and we'll look through them and add into the game some of the ideas!

Have fun!

It's a beautiful day today, perfect weather for "working with the bees".  Today is the day I do my first inspection of the hive to make sure it's coming along nicely.

Odds are, I'm going to get stung (not a prospect I'm looking forward to).  But with any luck, the two hives I have will be in good shape.

Here in Michigan it's a beautiful day and I hope you all have time to go and enjoy the day too.  On this day, we celebrate the brave sacrifice of our soldiers who have given so much in order for the rest of us to enjoy the freedoms we cherish.

Happy Memorial Day!

I'm a little short on time so I will have to revisit this topic later but I wanted to write it down before I headed out.

I have occasionally contended that Islam is an ideology that is also a religion. The religion part I have no problem with. But the ideology I do.  I believe there is something inherent in the Islamic ideology that promote violence and intolerance.

But let's put that aside for a moment and look at Communism.

Communism, as an ideology IS peaceful.  The theory behind communism is that we all work together to contribute to the whole of society equally.  We do what we're best at to help society as a whole.  It is a Utopian philosophy.

Yet, Communism resulted in the deaths of more human beings in history than any other ideology (Fascism is a distant second).

Why is this? Because for whatever reason, Communism seems to lead its most vigilant believers into enacting policies to enforce the ideology which results in deaths.  Because most people aren't natural communists (not all people contribute equally) the "true believers" realize they have to force them to adhere to communism.  When this is done, the results are catastrophic (famine being the biggest problem but elimination of non-believers as well).

Christianity had its issues as well.  In Christianity, only those who accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior have the ability to go to heaven. Therefore, the true believers went to great lengths to convert as many people over in order to "save them".  Zealots ultimately killed thousands of people in the process of doing this.  But the "save them" part of Christianity is, in my view, not potent enough to be really considered an ideology.

The point is, ideologies have different effects on the truly hard core.  To know whether an ideology is a problem or not we have to look at it over a long period of time and on a global scale.  We need to make sure that it isn't local culture, or race, or local politics getting intermixed in with the actions of people who adhere to a particular religion or ideology.

That is why I see Islam as a dangerous ideology. That no matter where you go, no matter how materially content they are, they are much more prone (as a percent) than believers in other religions to violence and intolerance. 

And just as with Communism, which in itself is a Utopian philosophy that contains no violence at its core, Islam seems to cause its true believers to be much more likely to do things that are very very bad.

In the on-going Google vs. Microsoft war of cool map technology, I would say Microsoft at this point has the definitive advantage.  While not a new feature, the "Birds Eye View" feature of Maps.Live.Com is pretty incredible (you can see the Stardock building from above in stunning close up detail).  The Google equivalent is basically black and white, far less detailed and so old that it's from before the building was constructed (Google doesn't have a "Birds Eye View").  To switch Live Maps into Birds Eye View, click on the second icon on the right side of the toolbar over on the right side of the screen (the one with pictures of buildings and such on it).  While Birds Eye View isn't available in rural area, it is available for large swaths of the populated area. 

You can even look at it from different points of view:

(it's not just rotated, it's a different shot entirely).   I can see my car!

To try it out, go to http://maps.live.com and pay around with the toolbar.

There's been a lot of debate this past week over the survey of American Muslims and their views.

The left has used the survey to paint American Muslims as being "mainstream" while the right has been using it to present American Muslims as being ready for Jihad?

What's the truth? I have linked to the actual 108 page survey below so you can read it for yourself.  But here are the facts of the survey:

47% of American Muslims see themselves as Muslims first and Americans second.

35% of Muslims support the war in Afghanistan

8% support suicide bombing sometimes or often

40% believe Arabs were responsible for 9/11 attacks (60% either don't know or don't think so)

63% say they are Democrats

Just a day after getting into an on-air debate on the day-time TV show, "The View" with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Rosie has announced she's leaving the view immediately.

On the show, Rosie accused American troops in Iraq of being terrorists. "655,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Who are the terrorists?" Rosie, a stranger to reality, fabricated a number that has no backing anywhere to tar our troops.  Hasselbeck, who is the lone conservative on the show, asked her to clarify.

In a lengthy heated exchange Rosie called Hasselbeck a coward not responding to the questions of critics of the war (how does one respond to an idiotic, out of her mind nut job who makes up facts and believes fringe conspiracy theories?). Hasselbeck retorted "What's cowardly is not answering ones own rhetorical questions."

Rosie examplifies the bully - stand up to them and they fall apart.  But more accurately, Rosie is typical of the American far-left -- as soon as they're faced with opposition that forces them to back up their looney positions they flee. 

I never watched The View. My wife used to until Rosie came on and turned it into a crazy left-wing talk show.  But I certainly am glad that the show will no longer be such a ready vehicle of crazy left-wing rantings. 

Good for Elisabeth Hasselbeck for standing up to Rosie. I wish she'd done it sooner. And thanks for her demonstrating once again that far-left loonies tend to crumble when faced with resistance.  The intolerance of the left strikes again.

Worst Modern Presidents in my opinion and why:

#1 Johnson. He created the "Great Society" which resulted in a massive entitlement culture that has created multiple generations of dependents and an ever increasing drain on society with little to show for it.  He also got us into Vietnam with a strategy that makes Iraq look like a masterpiece.

#2 Carter. Incompetent on so many levels. His handling of the domestic economy showed a complete lack of understanding of economics. His foreign policy was a disaster -- every time we hear about a nuclear Iran, think Jimmy Carter. It was his decision to not support the Shah that we have the Iran we have. His handling of the hostage crisis was demoralizing. And like many American liberals, he believes in showing his own principle by having othres sacrifice such as his boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics.

#3 George W. Bush. Incompetent to the extreme. The man with no ideology. It's as if that lazy sales guy you know somehow managed to become President. Inept and inarticulate. He has wrecked the Republican party for the forseable future. More prone to croneyism than any modern President. Encouraged reckless spending in congress while still managing to get no credit for being "compassionate" even as he expanded entitlements, supports amnesty on immigration, and bloated up the EPA and Education budgets. Too stupid to manage foreign policy, he ignored advice from people who actually know what they're talking about to stick by his buddies who took a successful liberation of Iraq and turned it into a mess. 

#4 Woodrow Wilson.  The racist, elitist, knows-better-than-you President got the US into World War I, a war in which the US had zero interest in and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.  Anyone who thinks Iraq was something we shouldn't have been involved in and mourns the 3,000 American dead, then you should really despise Wilson.

#5 Warren G. Harding. Having him on this list is like shooting a fish in a barrel. Of course he was awful but he didn't really do any serious damage either. He was just a petty, corrupt, blah blah blah.  But he corruptness didn't result in 117,000 American deaths like Wilson's did or set up his country for long-term economic disaster like Johnson or destroy his political party like Bush.  So while Harding was a bad President, he was mostly harmless.

I've been doing a lot of interviewing lately for hiring new people and one thing that has become abundantly clear is how unprepared most people are for job interviews.

Here are a few handy tips that may seem like common sense to some but amazingly are not done by 75% of the people I interview (especially recent college graduates):

#1 KNOW THE COMPANY.  Get on the website and research the company. Make sure you know as much as you can about the company.  When I interview people, I tend to do a quick search for them. Do they have a MySpace page or Facebook page or something else that lets me find out a bit about them.  You'd be surprised how many people are tripped up when they are caught knowing nothing about our company but I know the name of their dog.

#2 BE CONFIDENT & ENERGETIC.  Believe in yourself. Nobody wants to hire someone that they think will need to be nursed for months.  We hire people in order to have LESS work to do.  People who aren't confident or energetic are more likely to be the people who sit around waiting to be managed.

#3 KNOW WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE THE JOB. The question "Why do you think we should hire you for this position versus other people who have applied" is a pretty common question.  Don't answer "Because I'm a nice person." Sell yourself, make the case. If you've researched the job, you should be able to come up with a good rationale for your unique capabilities.

#4 DON'T BULLSHIT. Male interviewees are much worse about this. Especially young (right out of college) males.  It takes a serious amount of arrogance for some kid to think they can actually bullshit us on our field of expertise. If I ask "How strong is your math background? Do you know Calc?" and you say "Oh yea, I'm awesome at calculus!" then you're pretty doomed if you don't know the derivative of 4X^2.

#5 FOLLOWUP.  I had some awesome candidates that just didn't followup or didn't follow-up quickly enough.  You should followup with any correspendence you had with the company within 24 hours. This is especially true after the final interview.  You absolutely must followup with an email after the interview.

#6 HUMILITY IS GOOD. We always ask people to rate themselves on a scale from 1 to 10 on a variety of issues depending on the job.  The number of recent graduates who rate themselves a 9 out of 10  or 10 out of 10 (and we tell them that a 10 would be "total expert") is remarkable.  There's nothing more deflating for a candidate who has just answered a 10 out of 10 in C++ knowledge or math or general computer knowledge than being quickly crushed by a series if expert questions that they have no idea about.  A good answer is 6 or 7 -- even if you feel pretty confident.  Unless you have software on the shelves or a book or whatever, answering above 7 reeks of arrogance. 

As a side note, also be nice to the office staff. Amazingly, a decent % of candidates will be rude or short with my office assistants thinking their opinions are of know consequence. First thing I ask my office assistants was how polite the candidate was to them.

#7 HAVE A PLAN.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years is a typical question. Have some idea of where you're going.

#8 "LIKE" and "YOU KNOW" are not your friends. Drives me crazy when candidates pepper their responses with immense amounts of "Like" and "You know".  Females seem much worse about this.  Practice speaking and eliminate those two phrases from your vocabular as much as you can.

#9 DON'T BE ASHAMED OF OLD JOBS. Sometimes I'll discover that someone has removed from their resume menial jobs they've had.  Don't.  Those are very important jobs that show character building.  I won't even consider hiring someone who has never worked a "crap job".  The kid with the 3.7 GPA is not very impressive if they've never had a job. They'll lose everytime to the kid with the 2.9 who worked through school.  People without crap jobs are historically much less reliable.

#10 INTEGRITY IS KING.  More so than your job knowledge, employers will look at your integrity and ability to deal with conflict. We're at work 8+ hours a day, who wants to deal with someone who's difficult? Be honest.  The worst answer to the question "How have you dealt with interpersonal conflict at previous jobs" is to say "I've never had any." As it means either you have no job experience or you aren't telling the whole truth either of which is doom. We all have disagreements with coworkers from time to time, even if they're mild, it's a question of finding out how you deal with those disagreements.

Hope this helps!