5 October 05
New Store Ownership
There is a notice on the control-room window:
As part of the Statewide Privatization of the Inmate Stores… the store operations will be transitioning to a private company, Keefe Commissary Network (KCN).
The entire shopping process will change. You will be submitting a Scantron form or ‘bubble sheet’ itemizing which products you wish to purchase.
Instructions for completeing the bubble sheet will be published soon.
As in all new procedures, we expect glitches, especially in the first runs.
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Saturday, October 29, 2005
3 October 05
T-Netix
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
T-Netix
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
1 October 05
The First Book
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
The First Book
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Thanks Readers
It is with immense appreciation I am scribbling these words. A deluge of birthday cards, snail mailed from blog readers around the world, has poured into my cell. Your unfailing kindness countinues to affect my life. Your gifts of books are shaping my destiny. I want to express my gratitude, not only for the cards, but also for the emails, and letters of support. You are an endless source of inspiration.
Appreciatively yours,
Jon
It is with immense appreciation I am scribbling these words. A deluge of birthday cards, snail mailed from blog readers around the world, has poured into my cell. Your unfailing kindness countinues to affect my life. Your gifts of books are shaping my destiny. I want to express my gratitude, not only for the cards, but also for the emails, and letters of support. You are an endless source of inspiration.
Appreciatively yours,
Jon
Sunday, October 23, 2005
27 September 05
Psychotherapy with Dr. Allen (Part 1)
Psychotherapy is available again, and I’ve had three sessions with Dr. Allen. The first two sessions were assessment orientated, but during the third session Dr. A began to explore my mind. Here’s some dialogue from session three:
“What’s your definition of success?” Dr. A asked.
“It was material success, but now I know that being mentally successful is what matters.”
“You mentioned big cycles of success and failure in your life, can you describe them for me?”
“I had two big runs: one when I was a stockbroker, and one when I traded stocks online. Both times I thought I had it made. I thought that I had found the right woman. I had plenty of money, cars and gadgets. Then I self-destructed – both times. I partied more, and I lost nearly everything – my wife, my house. The peaks were so high that I felt on top of the world, and the troughs were so low that I contemplated suicide.”
“Here’s what I think, and it may or may not be true: you seem to thrive during the building up part – when you have a challenge. But when you achieve your goals, you look around, and ask yourself: what do I do now? It’s almost as if you have no purpose when your goals are achieved; so, you knock down everything that you’ve built up, and start all over again.”
“That may be true. I sow the seeds of my own destruction with the choices I make. I succeed, my behaviour changes, and before I know it everything is knocked down.”
“It seems as if you allow no happy medium between work and play. You work tirelessly to build everything up, which seems to be your main drive. Then when you’re successful, you switch to the partying and raving which brings you down.”
“That’s correct.”
“You said that for the most part you lived reclusively, but on the weekends you’d go raving and be the life and soul of the party.”
“That’s right.”
“When did you start living reclusively? At what age did you withdraw from your friends?”
“As I became an older teen, I studied more and hung out less with my friends.”
“What did you study?”
“Schoolwork, homework, revision for exams, and I became obsessed with the stock market. I ordered dozens of finance books from Widnes library.”
“Why did you stop hanging out with your friends?”
“They wanted to have fun, later on some got married. I was into studying, whereas, most of my friends frowned on higher education. They celebrated when they finished high school.”
“I have another thought that may or may not be true.”
“Okay.”
“Is it possible that your American raver friends were substitutes for those you separated from in England? It’s as if when you went raving you were going back to your original friends.”
“I hadn’t looked at it that way, but it’s possible.”
“Here’s a suggestion: instead of following periods of all-absorbing stock trading and success, with self-destuction and wild partying, perhaps you should organise your time better. What if you researched stocks until three pm, and then allocated time for your social relationships? Wouldn’t you achieve a balance, instead of letting stress build up in your system, switching to partying to deal with the stress, and losing control of your life? You seem to be a well-organised person. Why don’t you organise your life better, starting with managing your time?”
As I wrote this blog, I thought about the comment posted by Stranger in August. Stranger asked how I perceive rave culture, and urged me to reveal more about myself. There are various reasons why I don’t write more about myself, which I would like to put to my readers.
Firstly, the blog was started to expose jail conditions, and to describe jail life. To suddenly start prattling on about myself – I feel – would risk boring readers. I consider myself on the outer limits of the nerd scale, and disinteresting in comparison to colourful characters such as Frankie, Slingblade, Two Tonys and Xena.
I enjoy describing events objectively, as opposed to pushing subjective opinions – especially about myself. I have written attitudinal blogs from time to time because I do discover things that I get emotional about (such as atrocities committed by the Arpaio regime), and I let my opinions flow at the risk of compromising the original format.
I don’t think I could do a good job writing impartially about myself. I don’t fully understand myself, and I am a biased observer.
Finally,by addressing readers questions from time to time, I get to write about reader- requested areas of my life, as opposed to self-selecting areas that may bore readers.
Perhaps psychotherapy dialogues have enabled me to write some unbiased blogs about myself because a professional is asking the questions and doing the probing. Blogging extracts from these therapy sessions seems like a novel way to disclose more about me.
I want to know more about me to become a better person, but I’m unsure how many readers are interested in this area.
Your comments on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Jon’s book wishlist – he is allowed used or new books as long as they are sent direct from publishers such as Amazon.
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
Psychotherapy with Dr. Allen (Part 1)
Psychotherapy is available again, and I’ve had three sessions with Dr. Allen. The first two sessions were assessment orientated, but during the third session Dr. A began to explore my mind. Here’s some dialogue from session three:
“What’s your definition of success?” Dr. A asked.
“It was material success, but now I know that being mentally successful is what matters.”
“You mentioned big cycles of success and failure in your life, can you describe them for me?”
“I had two big runs: one when I was a stockbroker, and one when I traded stocks online. Both times I thought I had it made. I thought that I had found the right woman. I had plenty of money, cars and gadgets. Then I self-destructed – both times. I partied more, and I lost nearly everything – my wife, my house. The peaks were so high that I felt on top of the world, and the troughs were so low that I contemplated suicide.”
“Here’s what I think, and it may or may not be true: you seem to thrive during the building up part – when you have a challenge. But when you achieve your goals, you look around, and ask yourself: what do I do now? It’s almost as if you have no purpose when your goals are achieved; so, you knock down everything that you’ve built up, and start all over again.”
“That may be true. I sow the seeds of my own destruction with the choices I make. I succeed, my behaviour changes, and before I know it everything is knocked down.”
“It seems as if you allow no happy medium between work and play. You work tirelessly to build everything up, which seems to be your main drive. Then when you’re successful, you switch to the partying and raving which brings you down.”
“That’s correct.”
“You said that for the most part you lived reclusively, but on the weekends you’d go raving and be the life and soul of the party.”
“That’s right.”
“When did you start living reclusively? At what age did you withdraw from your friends?”
“As I became an older teen, I studied more and hung out less with my friends.”
“What did you study?”
“Schoolwork, homework, revision for exams, and I became obsessed with the stock market. I ordered dozens of finance books from Widnes library.”
“Why did you stop hanging out with your friends?”
“They wanted to have fun, later on some got married. I was into studying, whereas, most of my friends frowned on higher education. They celebrated when they finished high school.”
“I have another thought that may or may not be true.”
“Okay.”
“Is it possible that your American raver friends were substitutes for those you separated from in England? It’s as if when you went raving you were going back to your original friends.”
“I hadn’t looked at it that way, but it’s possible.”
“Here’s a suggestion: instead of following periods of all-absorbing stock trading and success, with self-destuction and wild partying, perhaps you should organise your time better. What if you researched stocks until three pm, and then allocated time for your social relationships? Wouldn’t you achieve a balance, instead of letting stress build up in your system, switching to partying to deal with the stress, and losing control of your life? You seem to be a well-organised person. Why don’t you organise your life better, starting with managing your time?”
As I wrote this blog, I thought about the comment posted by Stranger in August. Stranger asked how I perceive rave culture, and urged me to reveal more about myself. There are various reasons why I don’t write more about myself, which I would like to put to my readers.
Firstly, the blog was started to expose jail conditions, and to describe jail life. To suddenly start prattling on about myself – I feel – would risk boring readers. I consider myself on the outer limits of the nerd scale, and disinteresting in comparison to colourful characters such as Frankie, Slingblade, Two Tonys and Xena.
I enjoy describing events objectively, as opposed to pushing subjective opinions – especially about myself. I have written attitudinal blogs from time to time because I do discover things that I get emotional about (such as atrocities committed by the Arpaio regime), and I let my opinions flow at the risk of compromising the original format.
I don’t think I could do a good job writing impartially about myself. I don’t fully understand myself, and I am a biased observer.
Finally,by addressing readers questions from time to time, I get to write about reader- requested areas of my life, as opposed to self-selecting areas that may bore readers.
Perhaps psychotherapy dialogues have enabled me to write some unbiased blogs about myself because a professional is asking the questions and doing the probing. Blogging extracts from these therapy sessions seems like a novel way to disclose more about me.
I want to know more about me to become a better person, but I’m unsure how many readers are interested in this area.
Your comments on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Jon’s book wishlist – he is allowed used or new books as long as they are sent direct from publishers such as Amazon.
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
Thursday, October 20, 2005
25 September 05
Commodities Trading Results
From one month ago, Long Islands commodity trading account – started with $2000 – moved up to $5833 and mine advanced to $5018. Long Islands gains came mostly from going long coffee, corn, hogs and gold. He lost money selling short copper, which in trading parlance could be described as jumping in front of a speeding train. My gains came mostly from going long the Mexican peso and selling short US Treasury Bonds.
The price of oil racing to new highs makes my earlier prediction of $100 per barrel this decade seem more realistic. I’ve previously recommended that traders should go long any sell-offs in oil or gold. I think the same strategy should be adopted with copper, which is showing excellent relative strength vis-à-vis the metals.
The two big ifs are whether the dollar and/or the US stock market will snap this year. They are both vunerable. The recent 350% premium on the Baidu.com IPO reminded me of the psychological extremes reached in 1999. If the current animal spirits are symptomatic of a double top then it may still be a while before the rapidly inflating second bubble bursts. But in the meantime: caveat emptor.
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Jon’s book wishlist – he is allowed used or new books as long as they are sent direct from publishers such as Amazon.com
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
Commodities Trading Results
From one month ago, Long Islands commodity trading account – started with $2000 – moved up to $5833 and mine advanced to $5018. Long Islands gains came mostly from going long coffee, corn, hogs and gold. He lost money selling short copper, which in trading parlance could be described as jumping in front of a speeding train. My gains came mostly from going long the Mexican peso and selling short US Treasury Bonds.
The price of oil racing to new highs makes my earlier prediction of $100 per barrel this decade seem more realistic. I’ve previously recommended that traders should go long any sell-offs in oil or gold. I think the same strategy should be adopted with copper, which is showing excellent relative strength vis-à-vis the metals.
The two big ifs are whether the dollar and/or the US stock market will snap this year. They are both vunerable. The recent 350% premium on the Baidu.com IPO reminded me of the psychological extremes reached in 1999. If the current animal spirits are symptomatic of a double top then it may still be a while before the rapidly inflating second bubble bursts. But in the meantime: caveat emptor.
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Jon’s book wishlist – he is allowed used or new books as long as they are sent direct from publishers such as Amazon.com
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
23 September 05
www.prisonbookprogram.org
The Prison Book Program – a non-profit organisation that sends free books to prisoners – has lost one of its main funding sources, and has had to reduce book shipments.
It was this hardworking organisation that provided Scooby – one of the young Chicanos at SMU2 – with Plato’s Republic and Machiavelli’s Prince. I believe that literacy and access to reading materials are crucial for rehabilitation.
Anyone wishing to help The Prison Book Program can click on the above link. They have been providing free books to prisoners for many years, and they are a worthy cause.
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Jon’s book wishlist – he is allowed used or new books as long as they are sent direct from publishers such as Amazon.
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
www.prisonbookprogram.org
The Prison Book Program – a non-profit organisation that sends free books to prisoners – has lost one of its main funding sources, and has had to reduce book shipments.
It was this hardworking organisation that provided Scooby – one of the young Chicanos at SMU2 – with Plato’s Republic and Machiavelli’s Prince. I believe that literacy and access to reading materials are crucial for rehabilitation.
Anyone wishing to help The Prison Book Program can click on the above link. They have been providing free books to prisoners for many years, and they are a worthy cause.
Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below
Jon’s book wishlist – he is allowed used or new books as long as they are sent direct from publishers such as Amazon.
Copyright © 2004-2005 Shaun P. Attwood
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