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| This morning, just as I was about to take the dog out for a potty break before I left for church, I noticed that my wallet wasn't in the usual places: the shelf where I normally keep it at night, in the pockets of the clothes I wore the previous night, or my desk. I searched all the clothes I had worn yesterday. Nothing. Not even a quick run-through my house yielded my wallet (a gift from friends in high school, after I stopped using my trusty velcro one).
I had to decide quickly since the dog still needed to be let out and I didn't want to be late for service. But I knew if I didn't find it, I'd be thinking about it while at church. I thought about what the prudent thing would be to do (locate my wallet first or start canceling credit cards) and then I thought about all the times I had told my youth kids to not worry about material things, but to place their relationship with Jesus first. It's not being late for church that would have made it bad, but how much worth I placed in each, that would determined where I wanted to be right then.
Sigh. I hate my overactive conscience.
During the short trip to church (after my dog thankfully peed quickly outside) I remembered having my wallet during Nathaniel's musical last night since I bought snacks during intermission. So it was either at the high school auditorium or lobby. Or it was in KP's car. Or it was at Sherri's place. Or it was in my car. Or it was still at my house, but hidden. (It could've also been in my puppy's belly, but even though the wallet is eelskin, she usually doesn't eat anything plastic or metal so I should've seen slivers of chewed up plastic around the house if that was the case.)
At least I had narrowed it down to where I could have lost it. And I could talk to most of the people who were there last night at all these places after church. I was determined to fight the worry and spend the hour worshipping. It wasn't easy since I hate losing things and in this day and age, you always worry about credit card and identity theft.
As I walked into the sanctuary and started singing, I was reminded of all the people around the world who don't live in a place like the US where I'm free to worship as I like. They probably have more things to worry about than a lost wallet (which might be trouble to deal with, but really not too much.) And at the end of the day, besides buying a new wallet and paying a fee to replace my license, it probably wouldn't cost me much. There are plenty of others who worship on an empty stomach or with much bigger physical needs.
I felt kind of silly having to struggle to hard to concentrate, but after a few minutes (and a great worship set) it got easier to trust, which is really what this is all about, right? Sometimes, it's not the hanging-on-a-cliff moments only that yield teaching moments in our lives. It's the small things like a lost wallet that help us to really consider how we apply what we say to what we do.
And yes, I know I never said whether I found my wallet or not.
And because that's not the point of the parable.
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Find the article here.
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| A Slate.com article about Amazon's new iPhone app that allowed users to take a snapshot of anything they wanted to buy, and receive a link to the appropriate item on Amazon.com, intrigued me for the sole reason that there was a human in the loop who was paid 10 cents per item. That launched me into the world of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which not only has the aforementioned tasks available for people to earn money on, but tens of thousands of other tasks ranging from transcription to filtering pictures to answering questions to spamming. The payout is anywhere from 1 penny to $9 (the most I've seen or earned). If you're really good, you can earn a bonus, which is where the real money is. Companies or people post these HITS and pay you upon completion and satisfaction. (Amazon gets a cut, of course.) The money you earn can either be used on Amazon.com or transferred into a US bank account. (It can be changed into rupees also, and I'm assuming, transferred to Indian banks.)
When I first signed up and took on tasks (they're called HITS), it was kind of fun. Looking for items on Amazon.com from pictures people take with their iPhone cameras is like a treasure hunt. Trying to answer questions that people pose is fun too. I summarized 9 episodes of Prison Break. I tagged a gazillion pictures. I took surveys and compared products. I looked for information on charter schools. I checked transcriptions. There are a ton of things to do, especially for someone with a short attention span like me.
Pretty soon though I realized that this wasn't worth my time, at least monetarily. Even at the fastest pace, I wasn't coming close to minimum wage. And there are a lot of other Turkers out there competing for the same hits. The Amazon/iPhone HITS come pretty often, but you have to click and accept really quickly or else you'll miss out. Still, it provided a distraction and money is money, right?
So I decided to do a test. How long would it take me to earn enough money to buy a book (since I had earlier given that up mostly)? For years, I have wanted to buy the book The Ants, which is supposedly the book on ants. Don't ask why; it's just something I've always wanted, but it was a little too extravagant for me. So, I started turking. And saving. I started on December 9th, 2008, and by last week, I had saved enough to send for the book. As of right now, I've earned $100.38, but I haven't yet been paid on several more dollars worth of HITS.
A hundred bucks isn't chump change, but considering that it took me over a month to earn and average about an hour a night, it does seem like my time could be better spent resting or reading or almost anything else not involving a TV. Still, it's addicting. I haven't been as gung-ho since I sent off for my book (which will arrive by January 23rd I was promised) but every so often when I have a spare couple of minutes or can multi-task, I jump on the site and click away.
(For why the site is called what it's called, here's Wikipedia to help us out: The name Mechanical Turk comes from "The Turk", a chess-playing automaton of the 18th century, which was made by Wolfgang von Kempelen. It toured Europe beating the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. It was later revealed that this 'machine' was not an automaton at all but was in fact a chess master hidden in a special compartment controlling its operations. Likewise, the Mechanical Turk web service allows humans to help the machines of today to perform tasks they aren't yet suited for.)
Click here for the Mechanical Turk site.
Click here for a Salon article about Turkers.
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| By definition, if you're counterculture, you're mostly on your own.
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| How does one compare the amount of money spent to adopt and care for a pet (puppy in my case) versus using that money to care for the needy?
For example, for $30 or so each month, I could sponsor another impoverished child. That's less than the amount for puppy food, rawhide chews, treats, and biodegradable poop bags which may or may not biodegrade since landfills are so compact.
Every time I feed my dog, I wonder if she has more to eat than a human being does somewhere in the world.
I guess this comparison could be used for most things in my life like eating out, buying books (gasp!), going on vacation, etc., but somehow it seems more egregious since it's an animal.
EDIT: So the decision was made to log every dollar spent on said puppy monthly and spend at least a matching amount on a person who is needy, either overseas or closer to home. It was either that, or fatten the dog up and ship it overseas for food.
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