THE NEGATIVE REACTION

2 songs - 2 memories

2011-01-11T21:51:00.000-08:00

These two songs brought back two memories

I have Sirius satellite radio in my new car and since Sirius merged with XM (I was a customer before the XM merger btw) and I'm starting to actually find a few channels I really like. The most recent example of this the Sirius channel called "The Boneyard" on channel 19. Today I heard two songs and they brought back two very distinct, very different memories of my youth. Thw two songs were Eddie Money - Gimme Me Some Water, and Jimi Hendrix - "All Along the Watchtower".

Eddie Money - Gimme Me Some Water

Just in case you wanted to re-live the memory with me:

Back in the late 1980's, I was in high school and luckily I had some friends with incredible taste in music. At the time, First Avenue (still one of the great music venue in the country) had what they they called "Teen Dance Party" on Sunday nights during the summer. They had two music halls. One was the "Main Stage" room and during the night they would play techno music. In the smaller "7th Street Entry" room, they would have local and national punk bands play. The funny part was in between the punk sets, the punks would invade the techno dance floor, and for about 10 minutes ,would start a huge slam dance pit and drive all the dancers off the floor till the punk band started playing their second set. It was a pretty funny thing to watch.

One night, my friend and I drove down to First Avenue, It was always a fun thing since we were suburban kids, it was a mild culture shock for me and I always had a hard time trying to find something to wear in order to fit in. Most of the time, it was pretty obvious we weren't "real" punks. Back then skateboarding and punk rockers were pretty synonymous with each other. I was getting back into skateboarding, so I just threw on some skate clothes and I was good to go. My friend Jeremy picked me up in his silver Honda Accord and we started our journey into the big city. The sun was going down as we parked in adjacent lot and you could see the last rays of a cool August night fading in between the buildings . Now there are some things you need to understand about the 7th Street Entry. First of all, it's a SMALL venue. I would say the capacity is no more than 50 people. Think about 50 punks, skinheads and metalheads, all cramming into the pit, tossing each other around. The body oder, sweat and music filled the room quickly. It made for a very unique atmosphere.

SNFU, 1989, and Chi-Pig

That night there were three bands who were playing. I don't remember the first band, but the second was "Test Monkey" which is a funny name for a punk band. They had a white sheet behind their drummer which had a monkey body and skull for the head, with blood dripping out of the head. I'm pretty sure they were going for the shock value. It certainly didn't make their music sound very good. Jeremy and I spent the majority of the time in the main stage area, waiting for the "headliner" SNFU. As 10:00pm approached, we saw the punks moving back into the 7th Street Entry, and we knew the show was about to kick off. My friend Jeremey had just bought some brand new Vison Street Wear shoes and was dying to try them out in the pit. He bragged about doing some crowd surfing and mixing it up with the punks in the pit.

The show was a blast. I never ventured into the pit, opting instead to bang my head with the other people on the outside of the pit. Jeremy was in the pit most of the time, mixing it up, just like he said, getting several body surfing rides during the band's first set. The skinheads were doing their part, staying on the outside like some band roadie, keeping order and making sure if someone fell down in the pit, they would pull them up by their shirts and deflect any flying fists or feet being hurled in their direction, until they could get to safety. As their second set was winding down, and after several aerial maneuvers on the ceiling truss (I told you it was small!) by Chi-Pig, the lead singer of SNFU announced they only had a few more songs, and then launched into a very familiar song.

Gimme Some Water

When the band launched right into the famous Eddie Money song, "Gimme Some Water". It was incredible. Chi-Pig was grabbing huge buckets of water and dousing the pit in water as he sang. The crowd sang along and it was great way to put a stamp on the show. They played a few more songs, but I couldn't get over hearing that song, by a punk band, in a tiny venue and all the punks ate it up. It left me with such a great feeling. On the way out, I grabbed a t-shirt and I was still singing the song as we walked back to the car.

Fast forward some 20+ years later, the song comes on the radio as I'm leaving work and I can't help but singing the song as loud as I could in my car, remembering that night and nearly every detail. It was a great feeling, and I barely noticed the horrible traffic.

And oh yeah, you'd never think that shirt lasted too long. I mean, a punk show, a cheap $8 silk screened t-shirt - right?

Um yeah, it's still with me. Through all those years of wear and tear. I wore it under my jersey every soccer game I had in college. Nowadays I wear it under my hockey equipment every so ofter, or just to bed. And yes, it's a little tighter, but if I suck my stomach in just a little, it still feels like it did that cool August night back in 1989.

Jimi Hendrix - All Along the Watchtower

Some songs stick with you for various reasons. Maybe it was some cool event, maybe it was the people you were with. For whatever reason a song sparks a memory, it's unique to you and a period in your life. Most people I know associate most Hendrix songs with drugs (go figure) or some drug experience. I can't blame them, but in 7th grade, drugs were the last thing on my mind. My life was basically soccer, hockey and girls (when they'd actually talk to me). I was just entering into my classic rock phase. I couldn't get enough Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Doors, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, CCR, The Stones, Cream and of course Jimi Hendrix.
I was just getting into Hendrix and everybody, EVERYBODY had the standard Jimi Hendrix album:

This was the one Hendrix album I had and fell in love with it the first time I listened to it. It was smokey, it was blusey and it was like nothing I had heard before. When you heard people say Hendrix was a pretty great guitarist, you had a pretty good idea on this album what they were talking about. But Bob Clements was about to change all that.

When you're in junior high listening to this songs and this amazing artists from the 60's, it makes you want to start a band, play the guitar, play the drums and try and achieve those incredible talents. My friend Bob Clements was that guy. He bought his first guitar a few months back and was learning to play. I was always the drum guy so learning how to play guitar never really did much for me. Neil Peart, Keith Moon and John Bonham were my idols.
Like all good music that's out there, you never know about it until someone exposes you to it. After digesting "Are You Experienced" I like Hendrix, but it wasn't like his music had changed my life. Not like The Who - "My Generation" did. But that was about to change.

It was a Friday night. Friday night usually meant hanging out a football game, walking to the nearby Perkins afterwards to get some grub, and then heading home. It was October and pretty cold. There was a group of us guys huddling up in the stands, talking about the usual stuff you talk about at 17. Girls, sports and of course music. Bob had brought along his walkman and in between football plays and conversation, he would slap his headphones and tune out. After asking him what he was listening to, he simply replied, "Hendrix" and then mentioned he had a new favorite song. I thought he was going to say it was "Hey Joe" or "Foxy Lady", the usual response from people who were Hendrix fans, but only owned "Are You Experienced?", but then he said, "Have you heard "All Along the Watch Tower?", it really kicks ass, the guitar parts are impossible." I had no idea what he was talking about and I had never heard of the song, so I told him to let me listen. Before handing the headphones over to me, he warned me, "The first riffs are going to blow your mind."

I slide phones over my ears and to say I was blown away was an understatement. Even in the cold October night, the wind whipping through my ears, me straining to hear those first chords, and I knew it was a special song. The first chords, the drums, that Hendrix sound. So distinctive, so special. I told him I had to hear the whole song myself and he vowed to make me a copy that weekend. Monday rolled around and I couldn't stop thinking about that song. Then when I got my hands on it and could listen to the song, hear that guitar wailing away, the pulse of the drums and those lyrics. Oh man, the lyrics just completed the song:

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."
"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

The images this song generated in my head was crazy. I was reading the Lord of the Rings Trilogy so you can imagine some of the dreams I had after a few chapters of those books, then listening to this before heading off to bed. This instantly became one of my favorite Hendrix tunes, It was just an amazing, amazing song.

Once again I was driving into work and this song comes on as I'm strolling through the channels and it took me right back to that same October night, huddling together, straining to hear this incredible song. Then to hear it in all its glory again was a great experience. I was singing this as loud as I could and then had it in my head all day long. I just keep reciting, "Two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl." to myself and hearing Jimi launching into one of the greatest guitar solos EVER:

I will always maintain some my richest memories are directly related to music. I always seem to remember the scene. The sights, the sounds, the smells. All like they just happened yesterday.

Today was a great day. I got to relive two great memories I had, with two great songs. For me, music will never be too far away.

2010 The Year in Review

2010-12-31T21:53:00.000-08:00

The Tradition Continues

As has been my tradition, I post a link to all the happenings in the year and point out a few of my favorite stories.I almost forgot the World Cup was this year. Probably because I really wanted Netherlands to win, and when they didn't I was pretty bummed. Oh yeah and there was that little oil spill thing in the gulf. Then some crazy woman named Lady Gaga just exploded on the music scene. Her music is ok, but Jesus lady, do we seriously need this??

I didn't think so either. Let the merit of your music stand on its own, not on your bizarre outfits. Apparently she won't have sex either. Giving rise to more conspiracy theories that Lady Gaga may have started out as Larry RahRah if you know what I mean.

Anyways, here's the link to the Yahoo year in review:

What the hell happened in 2010?

FindLaw, the good, the bad, and the UGLY

2010-12-20T14:24:00.000-08:00

Enough time has passed, here's the facts

I've been told several people are waiting for me to post about my old job at FindLaw. I have a lot to say, and will make come comparisons to my current job at Best Buy.

It all started well

When I first started at FindLaw, life was pretty good. Our monthly goals were pretty low, the process was very straight forward and in general, all the developers I knew were pretty happy. Then starting in June of 2009, every month suddenly became a "production push". This continued for 7 straight months. I started looking for another job in January. A lot was going on, and I knew several things. First, I would probably never be considered for a "specialized" role (these were all the rage at the time and will be explained in more detail later). My best bet would be to move up the management ladder into a lead role, then manager, then director. Unfortunately, once you set out on the management path, your days as a developer were over. Since I had just started in web development, I had already decided management was not for me. It was then I knew there wasn't much else for me to do, but to sit around and do my job (for a LOT less than the industry standard) and continue to be unhappy. It was at this point I started looking around, getting in contact with recruiters and seeing if I really could find a job outside of FindLaw.

The bad and ugly

At the time, the country's economy was not doing well. The housing bubble had burst, companies were cutting jobs and losing their homes. The vibe I continued to get from management was, "You should be happy you have a job." and thinking at some point just having a job isn't good enough. Shouldn't you enjoy the work you do and like to come to work everyday? As the months turned over, I continued to have conversations with people who were extremely unhappy with their jobs, unhappy with management and flat out frustrated. It wasn't just a few people on our team, it across the whole company. Designers, content writers, SEO people, the sickeness was everywhere. People were burned out and if management knew it, they were doing little to help subside people's resentment. 1 on 1 meetings become an exercise in counseling. And yet, goals continued to go up.

Jailbreak and reflection

In one week I had several interviews with companies. I knew if I was going to get a job at a different company, I needed to be honest. I told myself not to BS anybody. Tell the interviewers you know CSS, HTML and some basic Javascript. Nothing more. Focus on your strengths.

It worked. I had two offers and accepted a job at a company in Minneapolis called Reside. They were a salesforce.com partner and built applications and websites on their platform. It was a short stint (why will be covered at a different time and day) only about 6 months, but I realized a few things when I get there.

This is what I learned while I as at FindLaw - the BAD

They have a flat hierarchy. There's no where for developers to go who want to advance and do anything beyond being in management.
All the developers are very underpaid for what they do and what they have to put up with on a daily basis. All of my job offers were 10-13K MORE than what I was making at FindLaw, and I didn't get a raise two of the three years I was there!!
It's very process oriented. Once you've learned how to develop and integrate 20 sites a month, you pretty much know everything you're going to know. In the end, I really felt like a Ford plant employee putting hubcaps on cars as they came down the line.
Lack of originality. Even at Reside I was able to try new things and think outside the box to get stuff done. Not the case at FindLaw. The majority of their sites all look the same. then again, you can't be original when your goal is put out 4,000 sites a year.
Lack of collaboration within departments. Developers were kept isolated from the designers. For me, there's a HUGE opportunity to create some really unique stuff with designers and it's just not happening when you keep those people separate. It was a delight working at Reside where the designers would ask me if I wanted to try something new, and vice versa.
Hiring outside candidates unfamiliar with the culture at FindLaw. This was a biggie when I was leaving. There were several high profile hires of people into high positions. They were external candidates and all came in and wanted to make seismic waves in the company on the backs of the people who work there. They ruffled a LOT of people's feathers and lost a lot of respect and buy in from the employees. As a result, a lot of people left.

You might be thinking why would anybody work at FindLaw after reading those points, but fret not people, there are some good things I realized after I left.

This is what I learned after I left FindLaw - the GOOD

The code their sites use is straight forward and rock solid. They taught me to be a code snob. No sissy hacks, no crazy stuff. Standards compliant, clean, fast code.
You learn to code fast and code well. The one site I used in my interview as a recent example of my work impressed everybody who saw it. You should have seen the eyes when I told them I whipped it out in about 2 hours. Hard to imagine someone could code so well, so fast.
No bugs. Since the code is so good, there's rarely bugs you have spend time trying to figure out. Having to code for IE6, you'd think this would be a nightmare, but it wasn't. The developers knew all the tricks and after a few hundred sites, you knew them all. This was not the case with the salesforce.com platform. The salesforce.com code sucked so back, most of my time was spent trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they laid out their CSS.
The work is straight forward. You sit down, hammer out a few sites and go home. It's not rocket science. You basically work by yourself and you don't need to have a lot of contact with other departments like the project managers or designers. One thing I found out when I was at Reside was there were a LOT of meetings I didn't need to go to, but since I was the "front end" guy, I needed to be there. At FindLaw, you could "blend in" and do your work, whereas in a project setting, you were constantly being asked to do things other than code.

Not what you expected?

Yeah, the last few months I was at FindLaw sucked pretty bad. Am I glad I got out? Completely happy. I've learned a lot (both good and bad) now that I'm no longer working at FindLaw. With my new position at Best Buy, I'm drawing on all of my experiences and processes which were used at FindLaw. Best Buy is currently in the process of moving a lot of their development back in house and as such, do not have a lot of processes in place. There's a lot of opportunity to have input, and many of the ideas I've spoken to my manager about are already being considered. I had a six month hiccup at Reside and now am back in my comfort zone. I do miss FindLaw for what it;s worth, but I'm also glad I was able to move on. I'm making a LOT more money now (almost 30K more than what I was making at FindaLaw) and my stress levels have dropped considerably.

Hitler's Hidden City

2010-12-13T19:40:00.000-08:00

Amazing German architecture, left dormant for years

Recently caught a Nat Geo show about the underground bunkers and buildings in Berlin. It was a pretty crazy prgram which highlighted several places in Berlin and documented the well preserved fall out shelters and command centers hidden deep underneath Berlin. It was fascinating to see how well preserved these places were. Some with images and slogans about enjoying life and showed images of people laughing and drinking. The guides explained it was a way for the people to think about better times while the allied bombers pounded the city day and night.

Here's a short video from the Nat Geo site which gives you a quick overview of the program. You should try and watch it when it's on again.

Check the Nat Geo site - it's playing again on Thursday December 16th.

My new job!

2010-12-01T20:19:00.000-08:00

Back in the big corporate world. .

After leaving FindLaw I then joined a small cloud services company in Minneapolis called Reside. Everything was going fine, then like a clipboard holding backup QB, I got a call from a recruiter I had spoken to shortly before taking my position at Reside. They needed an FED (front end developer) and the project which was put on hold, was now, back on. They sent me an offer and I quickly rejected it. I had a full time job, this was a contract position, and although the rate would have been a nice increase, I couldn't see myself leaving the security and stability of a full time for something that could last three months or a year. After I got off the phone, I thought that was the end of it

The second offer

the second time around, the rate went up another $6 per hour. Still a ton of money for doing some coding work, but still contract work. I politely told the recruiter, "no" and thought this would finally be it. They gave me their best offer, and I turned them down. I had a nice project I was working on, was happy, and didn't think too much more about it. Then things started to get really interesting.

The offer I couldn't refuse

Then came the "final" offer. A full time position, benefits and another $15K on top of what I was already making. This is when I needed to break out the matrix, start writing down pros and cons and completely over analyze this offer. I looked at everything, benefits, what I was doing now (cloud services) as opposed to what I loved doing (front end development). I felt like my HTML/CSS skills were starting to get rusty working on the salesforce.com platform and trying to deal with their marginal code. I also didn't like working with Eclipse and I really missed Dreamweaver with all my plugins. My speed came from utilizing Dreamweaver's auto-complete feature and several other plugins. I could cut and code a site in about 3 hours. Here I was toiling away on someone else's code, feeling like a hack getting it to work. Although this wasn't the deciding factor, it certainly weighed heavy on my mind. But there were other considerations.

Reside was in the process of completely taking off. The last three projects were HUGE ($400K plus). They were adding people at an astounding rate (15 people in the last month) and everybody was at full capacity for the rest of the year. In terms of potential, in terms of growing, and having a great spot in the company, Reside had it all. If you ever wanted to be in a company right when it was taking off like a rocket, well, Reside was it.

And now?

I exited Reside as gracefully as possible. It was tough to leave the company. I know they're going to be incredibly successful, it was hard to leave such a great situation. I started at Best Buy (usually referred to as "The Empire" in certain development circles) on Monday and after a couple days, I'm pretty happy already. Even though I don't have a laptop, monitor or a cubicle, I've found out some pretty cool things. First of all, the projects I'll be working on will play to my strengths (coding HTML and CSS quickly). I was told, we're going to be completely revamping all the best practices for coding, of which I will have a lot of input. One of the cool things is the developers have been fooling around with Zing Chart and have put together a pretty cool application to track the work we're doing. Lastly, the campus is stunning. The cafeteria is amazing, and there are several areas where you can relax and hang out, including an area with a pool table, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. For our first week, the team was divided up and we were given a task as a competition. We'll see how our presentation goes on Friday, but I think we're going to win pretty easily. In any case, I'm pretty happy and look forward to how the project is going to go the rest of the year.

Turn the page. .

Another page has turned and I'm pretty stoked about the future.

Train roll on, on down the line,
Won't you please take me far away?
Now I feel the wind blow outside my door,
Means I'm leaving my job behind.
Tuesday's gone with the wind.
My job's gone with the wind.

ok, so I changed the lyrics a little, but I think you get the message.

My new business idea - and why I can't do it. .

2010-09-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

It was a good idea to start with

After playing so much hockey recently, I was looking for way to improve my game, even at 40. I started looking on the internet and came across this little diddy:

Then I started to find out where in Minneapolis it would be possible to get some time on one of these machines. I quickly realized there wasn't anywhere in Minneapolis who actually had one of these machines. Then I started working out from there. Then I actually found two places who had the machines:

Acceleration North they have several locations, but the Rapid Shot is only in certain locations. The other is on Rochester at a Play-it-Again Sports shop in Rochester. To be honest, I don't get down to Rochester too much.

I was pretty shocked. The "State of Hockey" could only muster two locations where I could use this cutting edge hockey technology? I couldn't believe it. Then I started thinking what the possibilities would be of having a place where players could come and use the machines and not have to buy some $500 hockey training program to use the machines? Then I started getting stars in my eyes and thought about opening my own place with several Rapid Sot machines. Maybe a small front end retail space? I needed more information, so I called Rapid Shot to inquire about cost of the machines and the full lot of questions I had in order to get a better idea of how possible this might be. I also had a call in to a friend who does commercial real estate to see how viable a two or three lease would be and how much space I would need to house the business I was thinking of.

Discovery

Now it was time to get some numbers and run some numbers. Then I needed to put together a business plan, think of marketing plan, etc, etc. I took a while, but I got the numbers from Rapid Shot. It was a bit overwhelming, but I had to see the bigger picture. Here are those numbers:

Cost of machines with delivery and set-up: approx. 50K. Essentially it's a package deal. They sell the machines, install and set up the PC's which record the information. They send out a crew to set up the machines. They also include the cards that the players use to keep track of their information. As soon as they buy their card and get registered, they can go online and see how they measure up to the rest of the country. It's pretty cool.

When I first came up with the idea, I was thinking 3 machines and then a few "analog" slots with pucks and a tarp so if there's people waiting, they can get warmed up first. The cost for those would be minimal and I'd keep the cost less than the Rapid Shot machines.

Verdict

At 100K+ for the machines, with a 3 year commercial lease, and the cost of the rest of the details (employees, hockey sticks, point of sale equipment) I was looking at a 5+ year run before I would start to see a profit. It would be manageable, but I'd really be all in, every single day I got up. I'd have to promote the hell out of it (easy), market the hell out of it (slightly easier, I'm a web developer!) and then there's the money and employees and all the other hassles of running the business.

The Deal Breaker

Time. Time it would take to get it up and running. Time to market and promote. Worst of all? time away from my family. Doing this business would most likely cost me a lot of the next five years watching my daughter grow up. As much as I think this would be insanely successful, the last thing I want to miss is watching my daughter grow up. One of the stories which always haunts me is when I heard Joe Gibbs (the famous football coach) talking about how he was so obsessed with making his team better, he would sleep at the stadium and send audio tapes home to his wife so they could keep in contact. He said he knew it was time to give up coaching when he went into his son's bedroom one night and his 10 year old son was now an 18 year old 6'5" 230lb lineman. He had missed his son growing up and was very, very regretful. I've already got plenty of regret in my life, I don't need anymore with my daughter.

When are all the FindLaw posts coming?

2010-08-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

The fans are waiting, when will I deliver?

I've already had a few people emailing me wondering when I'm going to take out the daggers and start digging in on my former employer.

All I can say is. . .just wait, they're coming. . .

Why my favorite color is blue (instead of red)

2010-08-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

Leo's are supposed to like Red, right?

I'm a Leo, born in August and was told multiple times from women since I'm a Leo, my primary "power" color is red. I should look good in Red, and for a while I even bought into the hype and started buying and wearing a lot of red stuff.

My girlfriend and the time (you know, the one who won't accept my friend request on Facebook?) had a thing for the color blue. Of course she had some great blue eyes, which I'm sure had something to do with it. When I used to keep stuff at her place, she would always get something other than color blue for my stuff so we could tell whose toothbrush was whose. After some time, I gave up on the color red and started getting stuff that had blue in it. Even after we broke up, I continued to use blue as my primary color for all my toiletries. It was an easy way for me to keep track of my stuff. Don't know why it stuck, but it did. I kind of came around to seeing blue as a cooling, calming color so I've just stuck with it.

I know it was short, but it's still something interesting about me, one of my stranger quirks if you will.

My one horrific roommate experience in college

2010-08-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

It took a while, but my luck finally ran out

It must have been 1993 or 1994. Karis had moved back to Minneapolis with my son. She moved out and basically ended our relationship. I was living alone in a two bedroom apartment by myself and struggling to make ends meet to pay the rent. At the time, I was in a Pracs study and was complaining about my current situation. Of the guys in the study who was a regular I knew said he would be willing to live with me and split the bills and pay half the rent and all that jazz. At the time I was more concerned about paying the bills than really doing a background check on my new roommate. Boy, I should've known better.

the first month was ok, then it got bad

The first month was cool, bills got paid on time, rent was paid and everything was good. Then I noticed my new roomie "Darren" was using my soap, conditioner and shampoo. After a few weeks of going through my toiletries, I decided to keep my stuff in my room, out of plain site. At the time, we were keeping completely different hours. I was working during the day, then spending my nights at the computer lab toiling away on my senior dissertation as I was desperate to graduate and get back home so I could reconcile with Karis. Darren was sleeping in and not working (which was a bad sign) and staying up late. The only time we really passed each other was in the morning. He would be up at looking for a job, and I was heading off to work or class. This is just about the time the landlord started coming around looking for him.

Fall turned to Winter and he wasn't paying the bills. I found out he ordered some porn on MY cable bill. Then he wouldn't give me money for the bills for heat, water and the cable. I figured the easiest way to get him to pay was to just let it get cut off. I decided to continue paying for the heat for obvious reasons, but then he stopped paying rent.

Spiraling towards the end

After several months of bizarre behavior which included not taking showers, ordering porn and then trying to tag along with me when I went out, as well as leaving his "How To Pick Up Women" book laying around as well as constantly asking me to borrow him money, I knew the end was near. Even when his "best friend" showed up and I really had to make an effort to ditch them, I ran into them when I got home at 2am. They were still up and Darren's friend had pulled out his porno mags and then kept telling him he was a douchebag and an asshole. He started asking me if Darren had stopped paying his bills. I thought to myself, "oh shit, this is a pattern, time to get out while I can." and then proceeded to verbally tear him apart. He was pretty entertaining, but at the same time, it was very troubling for me. I knew this was not good.

At the time, I was only hoping I could get through the Winter and get home without any other issues. The landlord wasn't happy, and every day brought a new adventure. I started figuring out when he was coming and going and told the landlord. One frosty morning, the landlord was waiting for him and I swear I thought he was going to knock him right into the snowbank. A short stint delivering phone books kept Darren afloat long enough to pay the landlord and then flee town. You can't imagine the relief when you come home and your cowardly roommate has left. He moved out during the day without telling me. Just kind of fled the scene. by this time, I was close enough to finishing school, I really didn't care. I knew I could manage for another month or so until I could move out. About three days later, I put in my notice to move out.

There are very few things I remember about Darren, other than he was the worst roommate I ever had. I can only thank god it was short lived and nothing major happened.

I moved out and got back home. It was a rude awakening. When I get back to Minneapolis, Karis wasn't interested in dating or getting back together. This was the beginning several moves I made between Fargo and Minneapolis over the next few years. I finally moved back for good in January of 1997.

Today was goodbye. . for a while

2010-08-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

It's never been easy to say goodbye. .

When my son was younger, and his Mom was dragging me all over the country from Minnesota to Georgia to Missouri, I always had a tough time saying goodbye. I was usually cool and calm when I'd tell him I love him and see him in a few months again. By the time I got back to my car, I was in tears, convinced his Mother thought much about her son. To me, she always interested in her own agenda, and his was just being brought along for the ride.

Her exclusion of me from his life should be obvious to anybody. He was in and out of several schools until his Mother finally gave up and put him in a Military school for three years. Until they found out they were moving to Australia. Which brings me to today.

The last goodbye

I thought today was going to be tough, but I guess I've accepted the fact he's going away for two years. I'll most likely see him later this year in Hawaii. My Mom is already hard at work working on putting a trip together in November or January. I did I could today which was to hug him and tell him I love him and hope his collerbone heals up nicely. I also said we'd talk online with Skype when he finally gets over there. I just hope the next two years go a lot smoother than the last two at Hargrave. Lord knows he could use it.

On the way home. .

I told my Dad it was interesting to not feel the sadness and depressing feelings I had when we'd drop him at the airport when he was younger. I told him I thought Australia would be good, and he could finally get a good break and enjoy school, have a social life like a real fifteen year old kid and be able to enjoy the last of his teenage years. My Dad agreed and alsp mentioned he's older and more mature now and can take care of himself. When he was younger, it was easy to get emotional because he was still somewhat of a child. Either way, I wish him only the best.

I have no idea why I thought about this song, but I did. I thought it was strange, but it just reminds of me the situation - just so many vast differences between myself and his mother. .

At least the four days were better. .

2010-08-22T13:33:00.000-07:00

I was expecting so much. . less

When my son showed up on Wednesday, I figured his visit was going to be a lot of the same old b.s. Sleeping in until noon, playing video games all day and only wanting to eat at McDonald's and go to R rated movies. I decided to plan out all four days to avoid such nonsense and make sure he was completely burned out by the time he left on Sunday. Things went better, but not at all as I had planned.

DAY 1

Pretty much what I had expected. Told him several times what we were doing all four days, in grave detail. I tell him we're going to ValleyFair at 10am, be ready to go Wednesday morning. I get a call about 10am telling me, "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad, I'm really tiiiiiiiiirrrrrrreeeeeeddddddd, can I sleep in a little later?" I knew immediately what this meant. No ValleyFair, maybe a movie later and dinner out. Fuck me, here we go again. I fault a lot of people for this happening. Number 1 his Mom for not getting on his ass and telling him he needs to get up early tomorrow morning. Number 2, my son for acting so disrespectful in the first place. that shit would NEVER EVER go with my parents. I started having those old feelings this was going to be another useless visit. I'm a man with a great intuition, the rest of the day would bear out my gut feeling.

Almost over before it started

Instead of going to ValleyFair (it was too late) I decided we'll just grab a movie and then go home for dinner. After the movie (SALT) which is one of the worst movies I've ever seen btw, I started telling him we would go to VallerFair tomorrow if it didn't rain. This is when the whinny, cry-baby tones started from him. "Daaaaaaaad, I don't want to go to ValleyFair, I don't want to go to the racetrack tomorrow with Grandma and Grandpa. I just stopped dead, since I was already pissed about how this visit had already started, I just looked at him and said, "Well then, why the fuck did you even bother coming? You KNEW what was going on, you're here to spend time with your family, if you don't want to do this, then I'll drop you off with your Mom tonight." To which I got the fifteen year old response, "Fine with me." It was a quiet ride home, and then I told him he was going to have to break the news to his grandmother why he wasn't staying.

The long meeting.

We spent almost an hour at my Mom's place talking about what was going on and why he was acting like he was. We agreed on some plans going forward and then we went home to catch dinner with his sister and step-mom. It was a close call, and I simmered down a bit after it was all over. Tomorrow would be a new day.

DAY 2

Once again, he slept in late and we decided we would run some errands and get some stuff he needed before going back home. It was a better afternoon. We talked about a lot of stuff and I finally felt like we were bonding like a father and son should. I opted out of the horse racing trip, but he said he had a blast. He didn't get home until 10:30pm and we chatted about how good of a time he had. I really felt like things had turned around.

DAY 3 - EXTREME WATER SLIDE

I told him didn't have a choice on Friday. We were going to the waterpark and he needed to shake his ass out of bed by 9:30am so we could get there on time. We got there and had a great time the first half of the day.I never thought I could walk so many stairs and still keep up. After we lunch we took a break and decided to ride some of the slides again.

We were riding a two-person raft right away and were having a great time. We were really pushing the envelope, he was leaning forward, getting the raft to go faster and having a great time. Then, he decided he wanted me up front and he would ride in the back. Fair enough. I was leaning forward right as we were coming out of a dip and into a turn. I must've been leaning too far forward. The raft lurched up the side and dumped us both out. I heard a loud "thud" behind me as I was spinning and sucking in water and tumbling toward the end of the ride. The ride spit all three of us out and I could tell he was hurting. He said he couldn't move his arm and his shoulder hurt. All I could see was a small red dot on his shoulder where he must've landed. A lifeguard came over and asked if we needed help and finally told us to go the first-aid station. I asked him if he thought we needed to go the hospital and he said, "yeah". By the time we got out to the car, I could tell he was in a lot of pain. When I went to put him in the car, his collerbone was really swollen up, and black and blue already. I knew then it was bad.

Hospital, X-Rays and the final verdict

After a few calls to Bren and his Mom, we got to the ER, got him x-rays and the doctor came in after a few minutes to give us the verdict. Broken collerbone, right in the middle. He gave us some Vicodin and an immobilization sling to keep his arm in the proper position. Karis (his mom) took it all in stride. As a former athletes, we both had our knocks and broken bones. He was pretty pissed. No LAX for 6 weeks. Tomorrow was the going away party, my birthday party and my parents 42nd Anniversary all rolled into one party. We were supposed to play golf, but it wasn't going to happen now.

The big party

Nothing much to say about the party other than everybody had a great time. We took lots of pictures, had Famous Dave's catered in and told some great stories. It was nice to have my son spend some time with his extended family.

Sunday. . the last day for two years. .

All in all, the visit I thought went better than I expected. He spent time with his little sister (she adores him) and he had a great time with his nieces when they went to the race track on Thursday night. In my next post, I'll talk about my feelings when he left and what to look forward to in the future.

Three, three, three posts in one!

2010-08-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

Never thought it would be this hard

I thought blogging everyday for a year would be fairly simple. Since I'm a night owl, I'd whip out some short, easy posts and them pick a deeper topic when I had time. The subtle mix should be easy to pull off - right? W R O N G.

Once my son showed up, I figured I'd write while he was busy playing video games. Then I realized I have to get up with our 3 year old daughter, which essentially rendered my easy writing schedule at night - dead. There was no way I was going to stay up until midnight writing some deeply intellectual post, then get up at 6:30am when my daughter got up.

In short, I'm starting to understand how really hard it's going to be to keep up a rate of one post per day - including the weekends. So once again, here's three posts to make up for this weekends post on Friday, Saturday and today.

Admittedly this post is a cop out. . .

2010-08-19T20:40:00.000-07:00

By the time I realized it. .

It was already 10pm and I needed to get up early tomorrow. In lieu of these circumstances, this is a "quickie" post. It fulfills my 365 challenge so I'm good.

For the past few years, I've lost track of one of my favorite bands - Fear Factory. After some researching, it seems the band has undergone some pretty tough times.

Per the Wikipedia article:

Although Digimortal had a successful start, the sales did not reach anywhere near the levels of Obsolete and the band received little tour support. The direction of the album coupled with strong personal differences between some of the band members created a rift that escalated with time, to the point where Bell announced his exit in March 2002. The band disbanded immediately thereafter. The band’s contractual obligations remained unfulfilled however, and Roadrunner did not release them without controversially issuing the Concrete album (originally from 1991) in 2002 and the b-sides and rarities compilation, Hatefiles in 2003.

During his time away from Fear Factory, Bell started his side project along with John Bechdel, called Ascension of the Watchers, who released their first EP, Iconoclast, independently via their online store in 2005.

First return (2002–2003)

Over time, it emerged that the rift between the members was largely between the guitarist Dino Cazares and the other members, particularly Bell.

Cazares was the first to speak out after the break-up, proceeding to make claims and allegations against Bell and the other members in May 2002 in a Blabbermouth.net interview.[10] Almost all of these allegations were subsequently addressed and refuted by Herrera in a counter interview,[11] speaking on behalf of all the other members.

Olde Wolbers and Herrera got back together later in 2002 and laid the foundations for what was to become the return of Fear Factory. With Cazares now permanently out of the line up, Bell was approached with their demo recordings and was impressed enough to rejoin the band and Fear Factory was formed once again. Christian switched to guitar and Byron Stroud of Strapping Young Lad was approached to join the band as their new bassist, and has been their bass player since 2003.

Dino Cazares has continued recording and performing with his side project called Asesino, a Mexican deathgrind band featuring Tony Campos of Static-X on vocals. In 2007, he also started a new group called Divine Heresy, featuring Tim Yeung, formerly of Hate Eternal and Vital Remains, on drums.

Fast forward to 2010

this issues have basically persisted to the present day and right now it's just a stalemate between several of the members. Bell just decided to push on with new members and recently released their latest album "Mechanize". I'll have to hear the whole album to give an honest review, but here's a little taste:

So far, I like it, but we'll see after I've heard the whole album.

Why My College Girlfriend Won't Accept My Facebook Friend Request

2010-08-18T21:42:00.000-07:00

In the beginning . . .

I dated a girl named Kathie M. when I was a sophomore at NDSU. I fell in love pretty quickly and it was a very turbulent relationship. We broke up several times, but always got back together. A lot of times, we fought about stupid things. She was pretty jealous and it got to a point in our relationship where we couldn't be at the same party together. She would get so jealous if she saw me talking with another girl. It was a pretty crazy first year we were together. The summer came and I went to go visit her a few times. One the of the last times, I drove three hours to see her, only to have her parents make her break up with me. Needless to say, it was a LONG ride home. I thought it was over, but it was only just the beginning. .

Over the summer we stayed in contact and I found out her parents were letting her move up to school early to move into an apartment. We made arrangements for me come and visit. The two days I was there were completely awesome (i.e. LOTS of sex) she thought since we couldn't stay away from each other, we should get back together. It was great for a few months, then the fighting started back up again. I also brought her home to meet my parents and my parents and my sister had mixed reviews of her. Then, during the winter, I caught her cheating. Not like I "thought" she was cheating, but completely red handed with some half naked dude in her bed. I just told him, "Have fun man, she's a total whore!" then walked out of her apartment. This is where it started to get interesting.

This is when she started playing games with me. Telling me she wanted to get back together and she still loved me and all that b.s. I figured, "Ok, let's play some games then." Within a week I was dating two women and trying to keep up the facade of getting back together with Kathie. I creatively let Kathie find out I was dating another woman, which played right into her jealous nature. She freaked out and really laid the honey on thick. Calling me, coming over un-announced, all kinds of stuff to try and get back in my good graces. I relented (since one of the girls was a total fucking psycho, which is another story altogether) and we got back together. I figured this was the 8th or 9th time we had broken up and gotten back together. I was such a sucker.

This next time we lasted a little longer, but the summer was good, but too long. I separated my shoulder, she moved into a different apartment and we both were working way too much and not seeing each other. As Fall wore on, I pushed my luck when she broke up with me shortly after she moved into a house with three of her close friends. Two of which were not fans of mine. I decided this was my last chance to stay together, so I borrowed a friends credit card and purchased a diamond ring. Then I went over to her place and proposed to her. After a day of thinking about it and having a full on committee with a bunch of people, she returned the ring and I figured that truly was the end. Once again, I was wrong

Post breakup, & Summer Companionship

We had broken up and I had already moved on (after getting my heart ripped out for two years, it didn't take much to get over her) and had started dating another woman (another great story btw) when I started seeing her out randomly here and there. She would leave me messages on my car since we parked in the same lot at school. Then the summer came and her serious boyfriend left to go home. She stayed in Fargo. We had been together a few times (I mean, we had SEX) when she got lonely. On the same day her boyfriend left, she was in my bed that night. I'm pretty sure that was the last time we were together, but later on, she did tell me one interesting thing.

All of that. . for this?

What I suspect is the reason why she won't accept my friend request? The same reason her boyfriend errrrrrrrrrrr husband still hates me (even after some 20+ years). He feels threatened. She must have told him at some point, because I'd seen him out at the bar a few times with her during that summer and all he did was glare at me, then they'd get into some fight and leave the bar. All to my great amusement. The other funny thing was my new girlfriend loved making her uncomfortable. One time after we had started dated, my new girlfriend found out Kathie was in the bar and couldn't wait to see her. We were talking and as she walked by, their eyes locked on to each other. Then my girlfriend leaned over and laid a deep wet kiss on me and made sure Kathie saw it. It was one of those moments you can't make up. It was pretty awesome.

I don't expect to ever have her accept my friend request, since her husband would probably blow a gasket, which is something I take great pride in.

Having your Appendix out is great fun!

2010-08-17T20:31:00.000-07:00

You know you're in trouble when

You wake up in the middle of the night and you're in so much pain, you can't go back to sleep. I've come to realize the body has a unique early warning system when something isn't right. My turn to get face-to-face with my own warning system came at 3:30am, July 25th, 2010. I attempted to ignore the pain and go back to sleep. Thankfully, my body did not listen to me and my pain started to increase. At which point I got out of bed and went out to the couch to spare Bren my tossing and turning which surely woke her up. 90 minutes later and after thinking, "I'd better go in, just to make sure, remember what happened to Mike, don't be stupid." Mike, was my nephew who ignored the pain and had his appendix burst while he was at home. My brother-in-law found him, face down in the fetal position, unable to move because the pain was so intense. Several surgeries and hospital stays later, and he's finally recovered. It was enough to motivate me to inform Bren I was going to the ER to get checked out.

On my way over to the ER, I remembered my 6th grade heath teacher Mr. Kenyon trying to explain, in grave detail, the pain of having an appendicitis "attack" as he called it. Guess he wanted to instill in us how bad it would be. His words were something to the effect of, "You'll know when it happens, imagine someone taking a long sword and stabbing you in side of your torso - repeatedly. Trust me, you'll know it when it happens." As I looked around the room I saw several of my classmates wincing in pain and crumpling their bodies up in weird positions. Now, as I drove to the hospital, I knew what he meant. My pain seemed to be radiating across my whole lower abdominal area. If I took the time to breathe deep and relax, it felt just like he described it. Sharp, deep pains to the right side of my torso. Not very comfortable at all.

Luckily for me, the parking lot was empty when I got there. I reasoned there weren't a lot of stabbings, shootings and other mayhem on Sundays like there normally are on Friday or Saturday night. Last time I had to come to the ER, it was on on a Friday night. It was total chaos. Parking lot was full, cops and ambulances were everywhere, people almost stacked up in the waiting room. Cops arresting people while they were getting stitched up. As a morbid person, there is a certain humor that goes with someone getting handcuffed after getting stitches for doing something stupid. In any case, it was front row parking for me. I went in and explained what was going on. The staff did a great job of getting me in and set up with a bed. They said the doctor would be in shortly to ask me some questions and to try and relax.

When you're in pain, sometimes a friendly face can make all the difference

I'm in my room, thinking about a possible surgery for an appendicitis, and then the doctor walks in. It just happened to be the same doctor that treated me when I injured my shoulder playing hockey several months back. She recognized me right away and asked what it was that had brought me back to the ER. I described my predicament, and she said would do anything to help me out. She left and several nurses came in and started hooking me up to fluids and taking my blood and doing all kinds of other things. About ten minutes later, I felt that unmistakable rumble in my gut. I panicked and started furiously pushing the nurse button. A few minutes earlier I had told the nurse I was feeling a bit nausea and she gave me a bag and quickly exited the room. Now, I knew what was coming and I grabbed the bag and let loose with my dinner from the previous night. I had to sit there for several moments before the nurse finally came in the bag. Of the whole experience, this was my lowest point. The nurses quickly gave me some anti-nausea medicine. They prefaced it with, "They give it pregnant women, it's really safe." Of course the nurse came in and said I needed to take some "contrast" drink so they could do a CAT scan and make sure it was indeed my appendix. This, probably ten minutes after I blew chunks. I was in no mood to hear that, but after another ten minutes, I swallowed my pride and sucked both glasses down. A few minutes later, I was off to get my CAT scan.

The Family shows up

After I got back from the CAT scan, I was feeling better (probably all the drugs they were pumping into my body.) I got a text from Bren, her Mom had come over the watch Kenz and she was on her way over with my Mom and Dad. It was good to see them. My Mom hung around until they transfered me to an upstairs bed after determining it was indeed my appendix and it will have to come out. I was told when I got transferred I should be in surgery by 11:00am. The doctor has one big surgery, then I'd be next in line. It was 9AM.

The time comes, then goes. .

Around 10:00am, the nurse on duty came around and started prepping me for surgery. She put these weird wraps on my legs to increase my circulation. I was thinking, "Hey lady, I'm a hockey player, I have great circulation in my legs!". Nonetheless, she strapped em' on. A few more warm blankets and suddenly 11:00am came and went, then noon, then at 1:00pm, the nurse showed up and told me they had a gunshot victim and so this person needed surgery right away, and as soon as they were ready, they would come and get me. It was now 1:00pm.

I don't think there's anything worse than sitting around waiting to get operated on. As a rookie in the whole surgery thing, I was tough to sit around for so many hours thinking about what was about to happen, Watching "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins" wasn't taking my mind off of the surgery. Having Bren there helped a lot. Another 4 hours drifted by, and at 5pm, the nurse finally came and got me. They wheeled me out and down to the operating room. I guess they have an "on deck" area where the nurses started briefing me about what was about to happen. In another few minutes, the doctor would show and we'd be a go.

Surgery. . finally

12 hours after I had first showed up in the ER, I was now being prepped by some veteran nurses for my surgery. They all had a very light hearted attitude, which was comforting to me. They really soothed my fears as to what was about to happen. The doctor finally showed up and explained what was going to happen. They were going to make three incisions. One in my belly button, one near my pelvic bone and one on my left side. They'd remove my appendix and within about an hour, the surgery would be over. He left to go get ready and the nurses then explained what was about to take place. They were going to give some oxygen and then some anesthesia and within seconds, I'd be out cold. A little more light conversation, then it was game on. They brought me into the operating room, got me on the table, strapped down my arms in the "Jesus Christ" pose as I called it. For a brief moment, I thought to myself, "Is this is what it's like when you're about to be put to death?" Morbid, I know, but it's what was going through my head, the nurse then said she was going to start the oxygen and put the mask over my face. I instantly switched to thinking about McKenzie, my family and my parents. I remember my Dad telling me the nurses told him to think of positive things when they were about to put him under for his surgery, so I was doing the same thing. Then everything went black.

Recovery, the long night away from home, then home at last

I woke up to double vision. Trying to focus was not a good thing to try, but I felt comfortable. The nurses told me the surgery was a success and I did well. My face was itching like crazy and I was in some pain. I try several times to open my eyes, but the double vision wasn't working, so I just closed my eyes and waited till I got back to my bed. Bren waited about another hour to make sure I was ok before she left to go home. She planned on picking me up the next morning after I was discharged. Needless to say, it was a L O N G night. I didn't get much sleep, but the nurse on duty overnight was a real doll. She continually checked in on me and keep getting me warm blankets and kept refueling my ant-pain medication which was a godsend. I barely slept and usually slept only about 45 minutes at a time.By the time 3:30am rolled around, the nurse wanted me to get up and try to go to the bathroom. I said I didn't need to go, but I was warned right before surgery how important it is to get your body functioning again since they pretty much shut your body down during surgery. I reluctantly got up and ambled into the bathroom. I pulled my gown up and waited for what seemed like an eternity. Then I started to pee. Then I stopped. Then it felt like fucking razor blades coming out. I started thinking to myself, "I swear I'm never making fun of those urinary flow commercials EVER again. I can't imagine what it would be like to have this condition all the time. After a short pee, I was thankful to lay back down and pass out for another 45 minutes. By 9am, I had sent a text message to Brenda they were getting ready to discharge me. I would have to eat breakfast first. I had pancakes and eggs along with some water After my discharge, Bren rolled me in the wheelchair to the parking ramp where I got up and walked the rest of the way to the car. I was happy to be going home.

As much as I was told it would be a quick recovery, it took several weeks before I was really feeling good enough to start doing normal thing again. I made the mistake of attempting to mow the lawn a few days after my surgery. I was soooooooooo sore afterwards - but it was a good lesson not to push it.

All in all, it was an interesting experience since I had never had surgery before. For all the after effects, I still give credit to the doctors and nurses at Park Nicolet Medical Center, they really calmed my fears and made the experience quite bearable.

List for the Year 40 posts

2010-07-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

I guess it close enough to let the cat out of the bag. I turn the big 40 in a few weeks and to celebrate, I'm going to blog everyday for a year, just to see how boring my life has become. Since my change in career a few years back, I'm going to keep this blog as my personal blog and then use my Tumblr account more design oriented topics.

As such, you need a lot of ideas for 300+ posts, so I'll be updating this list over the following weeks to keep track of some of the better ideas constantly popping into my head.

This is what I have so far:

1) ~~My appendix surgery experience~~
2) How I got better at hockey - at age 39
3) Why I love some of the software I use like Tumblr, Blogger, Twitter, etc
4) The great FindLaw conspiracy
4) My new job and how its been going
5) Pandora vs. Grooveshark vs. MP3 collection
6) Things that irked me about people I worked with at FindLaw
7) How the door got closed at FindLaw
8) Some future business ideas
9) ~~Why my favorite color is blue (instead of red)~~
10) college story #1 - how I got the nickname "Weasel"
11) ~~Why my college girlfriend won't accept my friend request on Facebook~~
12) Short list of my current interests
13) Why I had to kill my six13 website and associated properties (LinkedIn, Facebook)
14) Going back to school at 40?
15) Why I don't use WordPress like everybody else.

*updated 07-26-2010*

16) Why Porn is bad for guys
17) How I got interested in Web Development
18) College story #2 - How I got kicked out of the dorms & how my parents found out.
19) Top 5 best concerts I've ever attended and why they were so awesome.
20) This is how I choose what music I listen to
21) What happened the day my son was born
22) ~~My one horrific roommate experience in college~~
23) Why I chose to go to NDSU instead of the University of Minnesota
24) How I ended up with a degree in Anthropology instead of Landscape Architecture
25) How I got away with almost burning down my dorm (this is NOT what I got kicked out of the dorms for either) Lucky for me the statute of limitations runs out after 3 years. ;)
26) The 5 weirdest, most insane women I have ever dated
27) The reason I had to put the cork in the bottle and stop drinking altogether
28) What I think the meaning of dreams are.
29) Why dating 18 year old girls can get you busted for DUI
30) How spending 10 years in the wireless industry made me hate salespeople & sales organizations.

*updated 8-11-2010*

31) Why I changed my favorite color from Blue to Green. This may be obvious to most, but there's always a cool story behind it - right?
32) Updates on some of the people who left FindLaw the same time I did and how their new jobs are going.
33) College Story #3 - how I got beat up by a girl at a party and still went home with the best looking woman at the party.
34) How my son has changed my life.
35) The results of my Myers Briggs test and how accurate I think it is.
36) Why I love trance music.
37) What I think FindLaw is good for and why the company will never realize its true potential.
38)A short list of all the jobs I've been fired from and why I got fired and if I really cared or not. Most of these were pre-college.
39)Why I think hockey is the hardest sport to play.
40)Why I finally quit playing soccer after 20+ years and the goal I finally achieved, and why it took so long for me to embrace the sportsmanship side of the game. This might be a LONG post folks. ;)

Only five more days left! I hope I can get a few more ideas out there before I have to start writing.

just a rant or am I seriously depressed?

2010-06-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

Usually I'm in a good mood when I drive home from hockey, but the last two nights I've played (Wednesday and tonight) it's been draining and very frustrating for me. Then I start thinking about the rest of my life and I think I'm missing something. I feel like whatever value I got out of life has evaporated somewhere and I can't seem to find the fun anymore.

Friday night hockey used to be about fun. Then all of a sudden one guy (whom I know very well) felt it necessary to start stacking the teams, floating and doing everything to try and gain an advantage so he could win and win big - which I don't get. Pick up hockey by nature is unstructured and is supposed to be about having fun, but not him. Maybe I'm the old sour puss guy just looking to get some exercise and have some fun, but I'm not having fun and getting frustrated in the process. I've come to the conclusion I should stop playing hockey and go back to the gym and look for other activities where I let certain people get to me.

In any case, I think it's deeper than that since I should be right where I want to be in life. I just left a dead-end job and got a nice raise, the new job is fun, but the tools I have to use to do my job sucks. My six year wedding anniversary was today and I was like, "Huh, who cares?". I just cannot seem to find any jot in my current situation and it's beyond me what I have to do to make it better.

Maybe blog about it to get needless attention?

Maybe a mid life crisis? I know I don't need a 23 year old mistress or a sports car to feel better. So what do I need to find some joy in life and feel like I'm actually worth something to this cold and cruel world?

I think I'll sleep on it and worry about it tomorrow. . . too many things to be pissed about at the moment.

Like Ozzy once said:

Voices, A thousand thousand voices
Whispering, the time has passed for choices
Golden days are passing over, Yeah

See you on the other side folks. . .

Sometimes I wish I could blog about happy things

2010-04-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, today is not the day I post I had a great day and what a wonderful life I have. It's going to be somber and depressing. Today I learned one of my hero's passed away. The lead singer of Type O Negative, Peter Steele died yesterday of heart failure. Today ended with a great sense of grief. One of my favorite bands is gone and someone who I looked up to and related with for so many years is now gone.

It seemed like it was just yesterday when I read the first interview with Pete. It was in Fargo, ND, circa 1994, while I was in college, They were touring with Motley Crue and the local paper did a short interview with him. It was pretty depressing. Pete talked about how he didn't ask to be born, he didn't want to be a human being and thought he would be better off as a maggot on the sidewalk.

The next time I would hear about them was when I heard Black no.1 on the radio. I called the radio station, frantic to find out who this awesome band was. I was shocked to find out - it was Type O Negative. I went out and bought Bloody Kisses and was instantly in love. Pete's voice, the moody, dark atmospheric music, and the overtly sexual lyrics had me hooked.

Soon after Bloody Kisses, I got my first chance to see TON in concert during the October Rust tour in I think 1996. I was living in Minneapolis, but went back to Fargo to see them. It was an amazing concert. Small bar, small stage, and lots of volume.

During this time, I was going through some pretty rough times. My son was born, my ex had moved back to Minneapolis, and I was struggling to find my way in life. I didn't know what the future held for me, and after moving back to get back together with my ex, she didn't want anything to do with me. I was thinking about moving back to Fargo and going to grad school. I was trying to hold on and move on all at the same time. On the October Rust CD, there's a song titled, "Love You To Death. It was a minor hit and getting LOTS of play in Fargo. Towards the end of the song, Pete starts singing: Am I good enough. . am I good enough. . for you? which always made me think about my situation, am I good enough for anybody? Will I ever find happiness?

The song really stayed with me for a long time. The whole album made me think a lot about life, and how much suffering I was going through. I felt like Pete was such a kindered spirit to me. His view on life, how he felt he had been suffering his whole life, it was remarkable how much I looked up to him and related to his struggles to find happiness.

If October Rust was my watershed moment, then the songs off their next album World Coming Down in 1999 was my swan song. I was still pretty depressed in 1999-2000. This album spoke volumes about my life then, what I was experiencing and where I would be in the next few years. At the time, it felt like my world was collapsing in, and there was nobody there for me. I felt so alone and deserted, it was pretty sad. I listened to this album day and night, and it made me get up each morning and keep moving forward. No matter how bad I thought life was, I knew somehwere, sometime it would get better.

After so many years of being such a huge fan, and seeing them multiple times, I knew I would represent them anyway I could. I started having TON wallpapers on my PC, I started wearing the concert t-shirts to work, and then, in 2003, I started this blog. I knew I wanted a TON sort of theme. The title of my blog is a nod to TON. The color scheme, the catch phrase, everything was done as a fan of TON and Pete Steele.

I still have all thier albums and I will continue to listen to their music long after Pete and the rest of TON are gone. They have left an indelible mark on my life and I will never forget what their music has done for me. God, I miss Pete already.

Godspeed old friend, The world will miss you.

PETER STEELE
1962-2010

From BAD to WORSE

2010-02-22T11:26:00.000-08:00

Remember in my last post how I thought I had made the right decision to move to the maintenance team? Well, that was pretty short lived. In the span of three weeks I've went from thinking it was a great move, to one of the worst career choices I ever made. But I'm a fighter, and I always get up after I've been knocked down. In the end, it wasn't me who quit, it was my team lead, who felt it necessary to call off the wolves once and for all.

PLENTY OF BLAME TO GO AROUND

Several things occurred which compounded the problem. I'm not going to say it was everybody else's fault, but there's plenty of blame to go around for sure.

1) No training. Don't know how this happened. I've had several positions within this company and every time I've had training. I'm puzzled why my team lead didn't think I needed training. Surely there were things I should know - right? In any case, I wasn't trained at all. My team lead basically said, "Here's your queue, here's your accounts, go to work."

2) No discussion about the accounts. Had I known the Northeast region was as high maintenance as they were, I probably would have asked for a different region. In fact, everybody on the team wondered why I was given the toughest region and many of the developers who had been dealing with these accounts were given different territories. I'm still puzzled about this decision.

3) No ramp up period. Most of the times when you get a new position with goals, you're given a "ramp up" period to get you familiar with the processes so you can ease your way into being comfortable with your goals. There was no ramp up period. I was given full goals to begin with - again, with no training and no other discussion. I have no idea why this happened. I think my team lead was given his goals and when the new project was rolled out, he was told the team needs to hit their goals. Unfortunately, he couldn't give me a break on my goals since he was already getting pressure from management to make sure the team hit their goals.

4) We took 100% responsibility. I will never know completely, but it seemed like we were taking 100% responsibility for the errors. The AM's never seemed to be accountable for their errors, yet I was constantly inundated with emails and tickets complaining about the accuracy of the work I did. This was probably the toughest pill to swallow since the AM's flat out refused to take responsibility for any of their actions.

Along with this, I'm working way too fast to make sure I keep up with my goals. My work got sloppy and I started getting tickets back from AM's. Issues were compounded by the AM's writing poor, inaccurate, and often times confusing tickets. As a former AM, it was REALLY frustrating to think people were actually this stupid. But time and again, the AM's either didn't read their email's or the ticket's, or just simply disregarded what I had put in the ticket as a response, a nd laid all the blame on me.

LOOKING AHEAD

I've always been a firm believer in destiny and feel if this was meant to be, the proper steps would've been taken to insure I was successful. It didn't happen, and I have to move on. I'm not going to stay on the development team. There have been too many changes and too much micro management. For some weird reason, I'm actually happy about it, since I feel like I have more opportunities to explore now as opposed to having to stay in maintenance for a set period of time. I've also been looking at moving from Thomson to another company, which is also strange for me since I've been here for almost 5 year now.

Either way, it's a win/win situation for me.

Remember When You Loved Your Job?

2010-02-10T20:58:00.000-08:00

When I started as a developer two years ago, I thought I had the world by the balls. I had moved down from being an account manager (considered a lowly position by the developers) and now was working with who I thought of as some of the smartest, sharpest people I knew. Where people came to me to ask about software and firefox plugins when I was an AM, these people were writing grease monkey scripts for Firefox. I was excited, and every day seemed to be a seemingly fascinating journey to learn the process of taking a website's content and integrating with the design. It was more or less a straight forward process, but after a few months of having fairly low goals, I was rocketed into full quota. By then, I had figured out the process, I was developing more and more shortcuts and was ripping out two to three sites a day. My all time best was integrating 12 sites in a single week.

Some months were harder than others, and I did run into some tough sites and a few months I came close to missing my goal, but I never did. In a full year, I went 12 for 12 and was at 100% for every month.

At this same time, we had a "collaboration room" built on our floor. Complete with a Nintendo WII and big screen TV. It seemed everybody had a surplus of free time. People were hanging out in the Collab room, chatting away, playing the WII, watching tv and generally having a great time. At the time, me and two other developers would play Tiger Woods once a day. 9 holes minimum, somtimes 18. And still, I continued to hit my goal month in and month out.

At the same time, people were constantly working to improve the company. Ideas for better collaboration, better relationships between teams, and most people I knew were always looking for ways to improve the company. We had free time to explore our ideas and have managment help us bring these to fruition. It was a pancea and people were knocking our doors down to get in.

THE TRANSITION

There were several factors which has lead to where we are now. First, we moved to a new platform, which would merge our two roles of integration and front end development. Over the next months, we would only have one development role. It would be awesome, you would be able to cut, code and integrate the site as one task, instead of two tasks. It was going to reduce our turn times exponentially. The funny part is it had been in development for the better part of 7 years (depending on who you spoke with) and had stalled and now the finance people were threatening to pull the plug if it didn't get finished. Needless to say, they got it done and then we started a transition period of combining the two roles. Everything, it seemed, was going to get easier.

And then. . . the housing market crashed, the economy tanked, and things started to change.

THE "PRODUCTION PUSH" WHICH NEVER STOPPED.

In July we were told we're in a "production push" which meant goals were going to be raised and production needed to increase for varioud reasons. No problem, goals were increased, and we handled the incoming work fairly easily. As the months progressed, we continued to miss the "company goals" but every month we were handling the incoming work. It seemed that no matter how high the goals went, we never had enough work to hit our company goals. STrange as it seems, goals were never reduced or made to compensate for the lack of incoming work. Soon, Summer turned to Fall. and Fall into Winter. Goals continued to say high, and people were working hard to hit their goals. Having only learned CSS for six months, I was put on full goal, which started at 18 istes/month in the summer and ended at 21 sites/month by the end of the year.

So what happened?

I missed three months the whole year and by the time December rolled around, I realized the whole offic eenvironment had changed. Many of the people I saw on a regular basis I didn't see as much. People were either taking really short lunches or no lunch at all. The office haad gone quiet and you could tell things had changed.

The realization it was different came in late December when I spoke to someone on another team. He assured me, "Trust me, it's shitty EVERYWHERE man. People are dropping out, and I'm not talking about the regular people. I'm talking managers, team leads, people in senior positions. Right now it sucks everywhere. Make no mistake, you're not alone." It was a wake up call. But it was about to get even worse. .

THE END OF THE LINE. . .

From July until December, we were on a production push for six straight months. Goals went up practically every month regardless of incoming business. This alone really made me think whoever was forcasting our business clearly did not know what they were doing. I mean, we've been doing this for years, how you can not determine how long it takes for an order to get from a sales person to our development team is pretty amazing. Every month we heard we were going to be overwhlemed and to be prepared and guess what? Month in and month out we always stayed ahead of the orders. And yet, the goals continued to increase. By the end of the year, we worked out asses off and blew out the business we had. Oh sure, we didn't hit the "company" goals, but we more than blew out the site they put in front of us.

Remember the whole time, we never heard from the management team or the executive committee they were proud of our ability to tackle the challenges they put in front of us. No celebration, no pat on the back, NOTHING, ZERO, NADA.

Fast forward to the first week in January. I was on my way to Maintenance, off the development team and it sounds as if I've made the right decision. The first development team meeting of the new year starts and not even ten minutes in our team lead is telling us our goals are going UP - A G A I N. Now our developers are going to be responsible to get out 6 sites a week. Once again, no pat on the back, no thanks for the great work, no nothing. After talking to people after the meeting many were still in disbelief. Many people echoed the same thing, "We worked our asses off for six months and the reward is having our goals increased? What a load of shit."
As if we didn't more bad news, it came in the form of an email a short time later. In short it read:

"The economy sucks, which means you're not getting your merit increase".

Fucking great. Just in case we weren't already feeling like shit, the very next email was from our CEO which stated:

"Great news, we just bought another multi-million dollar company."

Funny, the details of the deal were not disclosed for fear of a full on fucking mutiny I'm sure.

Once again, the company turned the dagger in. I'm not sure how much longer people are going to put up with this bullshit - but we'll see. Because you know it's a bad economy, and people would kill to have our jobs - right? Right.

One last bonus - I was planning on going back to school to get a masters in information systems management. My manager put the kybosh on that since there's a "freeze" on tuition reimbursement right now. My only way out has now been snubbed out.

I just told myself this morning, "Better buckle up princess, it's going to be a rough ride."

LATE

2009-12-31T20:37:00.000-08:00

AUGUST DUDE, W T F!!!

I can't believe I haven't posted anything since August. It's flat out disappointing in what that is. Liek I've said before, I have no excuses, but here's what's keeping me from the longest running journal of my life recently. Hold on, this might take a while.

Work. Up until recently (as in "up until TODAY") has been nothing short of a fucking nightmare. I've een really burned out at work. I don't like being there, I don't like coding anymore, and I really started to feel like I work in a sweatshop or some huge industrial manufacturing plant on an assembly line. 1 site a day, 1 site a day - over and over and over and over. So fucking monotonous it was enough to make you sick. Add in the fact we're detroying our goals and what's the reward? Higher quota's, a push to get EVEN MORE sites out, and a TON of bullshit to go with it.

Glad I'm switching teams because I found out today they're bumping up our weekly goals by one more site. I could go on for days, but I think you get my point. Anyways, there's more important stuff to talk about anyways - fuck work and all the "company men" who drink the kool-aid and shit on their co-workers. Fuck you.

What else? I'm taking on too many side projects. I'm working for a freelance company and getting paid practically nothing to do some SEO work. It's frustrating because I really want to do other things and get my own site up and running, and then get the other two side projects (family members - MEH) off my plate so I can free up some time and concentrate on learning design. 2010 is going to be my big push to learn design so I need to figure something and figure it out FAST.

Alright, now it's out of my sytem, let's proceed. I gotta cover a few quick things, than I'll get to the run down like I always do, of previous years and in this case, the decade in review.

A few Kkey things which have happened since August? I almost have my site finished, but seem to have stalled out when I needed to write 15 pages of content. Hopefully the three days I took off in January will help to finally make it a reality.

I was playing hockey twice a week and felt like I was really at a peak (both physically and mentally). I was playing defense really well, I was pushing up into odd man situations, backchecking like a champ and really felt good when I was on the puck. I was beating guys and scoring both on Wednesday and Monday's (JMS). One fateful Wednesday night, I chased a puck into the corner (on the last shift of course - damn my luck) and got tied up with a guy, went down and slammed shoulder first into the boards. Of course I wasn't wearing shoulder pads. A trip to the ER, several x-rays later and the Doc thought I fractured my shoulder. I found it amusing since I was Twittering the whole affair while it happened on my iphone. The next day I went to TRIA and the "specialist" there told me not to worry, it wasn't broken. Give it ten days and you'll be fine is what he said. I took 6 weeks off instead. Now I don't chase pucks into the corner, and am back at square 1. Might be a while before I get back to where I was before the injury. Now I wear shoulder pads.

Anyways, Thanksgiving was a bust because Bren was sick, and then Christmas was a bust because Kenz was sick.

I dropped AT&T Wireless and went with Verizon Wireless. I had upgraded my iphone to the HTC Tilt 2 and hated it from day one. The slide out keyboard was nice, but Windows Mobile 6.5 sucks major balls. In order to get the best use out of the phone you needed to use a stylus. Yes, I said STYLUS. You know the thing people used in the 90's with their Palm Pilots. Here it is 2009 and these idiots are still using a stylus to get the most out of their phone? Oh yeah, and the internet was slower than dial-up. I mean, Safari on my iphone was BLAZING compared to the HTC Windows Explorer browser. The final straw was they had about 10 apps in thier online store and most cost money.

After I called their online team, they directed me to go to the store, return the phone and then get the iphone 3Gs, the phone I really wanted. I go in, and the lady tells me since they authorized the upgrade early, and I wasn't eligible until March, I can't get any discount. This means I have to pay and extra $100 for the 3Gs in addition to the $300 I already paid for the Tilt2. Fucking LAME. So I told them I would call the online people back and see what THEY could do for me. No luck. Dude told me I needed to return the phone, reverse the upgrade and then wait a few days (without a phone mind you since I already sold my iphone) and then call back and they'd see what they could do. It was the last straw. The next day, I went to the mall, returned the phone, then went upstairs to the Verizon booth and got the Motorola DROID.

As of right now, I couldn't be happier. Love the phone for a thousand reasons, and the reception and fast internet has been outstanding. I couldn't have asked for anything better.

A few more important events:

1) Got my Linux laptop up and running again. Mandriva 2010 rocks! I have fallen in love again with my Linux. I also decided to take a shot at learning Rails this year and installed the Ruby, Ruby Gems and SQLite packages. I've done a few tutorials and really like it so far.

2) DROID kicks ass. Got a guy at work who's had his for a few months before I got mine so he gave me a list of applications to download and they all rock.

3) Got a new HP computer and then threw done for a 1TB Seagate Free Agent external drive to house all the videos of Kenz and the family pictures we have.

Here's the year in review as well as the decade in review. Some of this is pretty crazy.

Year in review ala Google Wave (how fitting eh?)

The decade in review in a 7 minute video - this one rocks.

Alrights - see you in 2010.

Seacrest OUT.

2009-08-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

IT'S BEEN A WHILE. . . . .

Three months have passed and during these months I keep telling myself, "i should blog about that." or "This would be a great topic for my blog to write about." Unfortunately with so much going on, I can't seem to sit down and just have a decent brain dump, so all these topics keep stacking up. The real question is where do I start?

I barely remember June, my son showed up and the end of July and we went up north and went fishing - which was fun. August was a blur as well. The highlight of the past few months has been Barack Obama's Health care plan which has turned into an all out war. It's still up in the air whether it's going to pass, but right now it's hogging a LOT of the headlines.

The other disturbing thing about 2009 is the amount of celebrity deaths which have occurred this year. Here's the list so far (and we're only in AUGUST!):

2009 - the year of the dead celebrity

A few months ago, I gave up getting up at 5:30am to exercise and now am playing hockey two to three times a week. I'm looking at dropping the Friday night skate and going mountain biking instead. It will save me a few dollars in the long run - but we'll see.

Not much going on at work, except upper management continues to keep the pedal to the floor as we try and squeeze as many sites as humanly possible out the door. This has lead to a large uptick in stress for myself. Maybe that's the reason I haven't been writing. . . too stressed and never had time to just sit down and write about stuff going on in my life. It's funny because I think management doesn't get the fact when you tell people three months in row that we're, "In a production push" people just turn off and you're not going to get people to go the extra mile month after month after month. You can do it every so often, but you can't continue to push people and expect them to perform without any type of break.

Anyways, this is short post, but we'll see if I can find more time to write more soon. . . .

Oh yeah here's a creepy story of Jackson's drug use. I heard on the radio a host saying Jackson was taking so much propofol, it would have been easier to sedate an elephant than it was to get Jackson to go under on this stuff - which is shocking considering how dangerous and powerful this stuff is.

Anyways, more later.

2009-05-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

NOT A DAY TOO SOON.
Well, I was close to keeping my 30 day minimum on posts, but here I am on a Friday, end of the week and end the month with little to do to keep my busy. I'm close to hitting my goals, but anything I start now won't get done this month. This leaves me with a decision. Do I take it easy and then get back to it on Monday, or put in a bunch of effort for little or nothing? I chose the latter. I need the break since I'm getting really burned out. Too many things, too much micro management, and a sense I'm falling behind. Yes, it IS time to stop and take a deep breathe before I continue on. Which brings me to this excellent story I'm about to share with you.

*UPDATE*: I got my Twitter account re-instated. Google thought one of the video's I posted from YouTube contained malware. Oh the irony.

WHEN BEING ON PAGE 1 OF GOOGLE IS NOT A GOOD THING
Most people know I'm on ~~Twitter~~ (not linked because they suspended my account for some reason. I think its because I posted 3 youtube videos over the course of several hours. I'll update this more later) and know my screen name is phiberoptik. I really don't want to get into a huge conversation about why people pick the screen names they do, but I had a specific reason why I picked phiberoptik. It nothing to do with getting a high rank in Google. It was actually as a throw back to the golden age of hacking and world famous hackers. Phiber Optik was part of the hacker group which called themselves Masters of Deception. Many of the members used to be part of the Legion of Doom which also had a group of very famous hackers. I'm not going to rehash all of their exploits, but I can tell you both groups went at each other in an all out war which mostly took place in cyberspace (I hate that word, but what else do you call it?) over the span of several years. Since I was in college at the time and had heard of both groups, I figured it was a cool name and I wouldn't I idolized say Mark Abene, but his skills were impressive to say the least. I also had a roommate who was a hacker and knew of both groups and had meet several of the guys at one the famous 2600 meetings in New York City.

The point of all this is I've had my twitter account for several months and no one has ever message me to find out if I'm the "real" Phiber Optik, until a few weeks ago, I got several direct messages asking me if I was indeed him. I was baffled why all the inquires now, after having my account for so long. I did what any normal does. I went out to Google and typed in phiber optik and wouldn't know what was #3 on the first page? My ~~Twitter~~ account!! I thought it explained a lot and I think I'm going to have to put a disclaimer in my profile to let people know I'm not Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), I'm just a fan.

Which brings me to my brief stint as a hacker. In college, I lived with several engineers, two of which were computer science engineering students. My roommate Clark, was basically going through the motions of getting his degree as he was already programming in true third gen languages (this was in the early 1990's when most people had never heard of C++ and they had already spent several years programming with it) with one of our friends whose Dad owned a software company and employed them both. The funny part is they both worked at Great Plains Software company in Fargo and after they were purchased by Microsoft in early 2000, both were brought back in to help transition the software since much of it had been written by them.

ANYWAYS, my roommate had been a hacker for some time and during the early years of my college career he was doing some data entry for a company at night, doing server updates and patching some of their software. He used the downtime during the updates to log in and use the companies server to get out and jump to several other unprotected servers and generally wonder around, poking around and sniffing in files here and there. His hacking was never done to get passwords or leave sniffers on a person's network, or take down the network, it was done in fun, and as a way to kill several hours while he completed his other work. In a few months, his fun was about to turn very very dangerous.

The story goes, Clark was working on his CS degree, and visited several bulletin boards where all types of people met to swap funny stories, pictures and code. While on one board, one discussion got pretty heated when someone attacked at the programmers saying if it wasn't for engineers, there would be nothing for the programmers to do. Most responses were if the programmers didn't write the code for the engineers, none of their shit would work properly. It is the age old argument of which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Well, my roommate is a pretty laid back guy, but for some reason, the arrogance of this particular poster really irked him. He decided he was going to get even, and so he started to track his prey across the bulletin boards and eventually found out from some low level hacking and human engineering, his target just happened to be a professor at Michigan Tech in Houghton Michigan. Clark decided he needed to take his game up a notch and laid out a plan.

You have to understand these whole scenario was taking place in the early 1990's. Network security back then was almost non-existent. Firewalls? Anti-virus software? Not even close. Clark simply walked right into the NDSU library and told the person at the desk he was a grad student working for an engineering professor and needed his login and password so he could post his grades for tests. No breaking into the network, no lock picking, no nothing. He went in and ASKED for the login and password and the library admin gladly handed it over to me.

The reason Clark did this was for several reasons. First, back in the 1990's network privileges were pretty simple. Either you had administrative logins (like faculty) or non-administrative logins (which were all the students). By having the professors login and password, Clark suddenly had a "super user" on the NDSU network. Although most professors simply used their accounts for email, Clark could use his to mask his real identity as well as jump from network to network by using the NDSU network as a jumping off point.

Now Clark had two things he needed. He knew who his target was, and now he had the proper access to start some real fireworks. He knew he was holding all the aces and gave the professor one more time to recant his arrogance before he let loose with a barrage of attacks on the Michigan Tech networks. He once told me, he tried to reason with the man, but there was no reasoning with him. He gave him an out and he did not take it. He never threatened the professor directly or threaten to damage any of the network at Tech, which was probably the smartest thing he did. He simply told him he should realize the importance of programmers - nothing too major, but he wouldn't recant - he hated programmers. Unfortunately, he was about to change his mind.

I can't divulge the date, but at a certain time and date, Clark logged in using the professors login and skipped across several networks, before sending what appeared to be a harmless email to another Michigan Tech student he befriended on another board with one of his alias names he used when he was hacking. The email contained a trojan horse virus and as soon as the student opened the email, the virus would be launched. It was a simple virus. It scanned the network, looking for files to attack, disable and delete. Clark had no idea how potent his virus was. Within 4 hours, the ENTIRE Michigan Tech network had collapsed. Several days later when he logged onto the bulletin board, he was shocked to see over 100 messages relating what had happened. It took three days to patch the Tech network and get back up and running. 80% of the user accounts had been deleted, including all of the faculty accounts. He had no idea, but he said he walked around for a full week with a huge grin on his face. He had wrought destruction of his target and then he started thinking about rubbing it in. He admitted to me later on, "I got greedy. I was like any other hacker at the time, I wanted people to know it was me. I wanted this professor to understand that programmers were superior, and we could pull the plug whenever we wanted to. Coming out of the woodwork and taunting this professor was pretty dumb, and in the end, it's how the FBI got me."

This is how they caught him. He told me after he went back on the bulletin board and started taunting the professor, asking him why he wasn't on for several days and eventually got him to admit their network crashed. Clark started dropping hints it was him and continued to try and get the professor to admit programmers where superior. It turns out right after the network crashed and Tech had surmised someone let a virus loose on their network and it determined it was done with malicious intent, they brought in the feds and started tracking Clark and comparing Clark's posts to when he was logging in and out of the system. It came to a head one afternoon in one of the old computer clusters.

Clark said it was just like in the movies. He was sitting at his desk when three guys walked into the room. Two in suits (with sunglasses) and the computer admin who ran the cluster room. They walked straight over to him and he tried to blurt something out to the effect of, "Give me just a minute guys, I'm logging out here." to which the two federal agents said, "There's no need to Clark, we know who you are and what you've been up to." Clark told he nearly shit his pants. He knew of the feds, he knew they didn't like hackers and lucky for him, there were no laws in place to deal with him or what he had done.

He got pulled into an office and the agents told him what they knew and if there was anything he'd like to tell them. He knew he was in deep shit and just told them what he did, how he did it, and then told them he didn't mean any harm, it was just a personal thing he had with this professor. The agents told him he was in big trouble but unfortunately there were no laws to prosecute him under and since it would have been a federal case and because he didn't break into any government facilities or download any sensitive files, they weren't going to bring charges against him. He was also told they considered him a small fish in a growing murky backwater of hackers. The feds were after bigger fish to bring the hammer down on. Who was going to care about a hacker in North Dakota who crashed some university system because of an argument?

In any case, he was told he as now "on the list" of hackers who be under surveillance for the next several years, just in case he ever thought about doing something like this again. The feds told him they would be back and they would press charges. They said by then the set of statues being drawn up in congress would be in full effect and the federal charges would bring fines and jail time.

Clark said it was ironic he got busted when he did. Only a few years later the largest federal manhunt resulted in the capture and conviction of Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick was sentenced to 46 months in 1999, 4 years after his capture in 1995.

The university did punish him by taking away his network privileges for a year which meant no email, no computer login and no access to any of the computer clusters on campus. He told me he was lucky, and by god he learned his lesson. He hung up his hacker career and just stuck with developing software. It's something not a lot of people know about Clark, but I do. When people ask him about it, he just shrugs and says, "A hacker? Who me? I write software, I don't break into networks. That stuff is for kids."

2009-04-30T07:11:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER 30 DAYS GONE. . .

Time really does go by fast when you have so many things to keep you busy. The focus of my blog has really been all over the map (if you've been keeping up with me) and I went back to my first post (08-11-2003) and remembered I would share some of my better college stories, funny or otherwise.

I started making a list the other night and decided to use this as the first one.

HOW I CHEATED IN COLLEGE AND GOT AWAY WITH IT

I know what you're thinking. I'm a bad person, I cheated in college to get better grades. Although this was a long long time ago, and I'm completely over the whole problem of the morality of cheating. I looked at it differently then and felt pretty guilty for doing what I did, but there were two possible outcomes. I cheat, I get a horrible grade in a class I don't really need, and my GPA is sunk. OR, I could cheat, get a good grade, and then retain a nice GPA and get on with my life. I chose the latter and it all turned out just fine for me. Although I'm a little suspicious about the really bad ankle sprain I suffered a few days after doing this. I'll leave it up those who believe in Karma if it was me getting payback for doing something ethically sketchy.

Anyways. . .

HOW I DID IT

Some background first. I was a sophomore at NDSU. I had a decent GPA (hovering around a 3.6) and was doing horribly in Psych 101. I hated the class, hated the professor and all the double blind, single blind, Pavlov's dog and Skinner box nonsense. I used to skip this class regularly and it showed in my test scores. I was heading for a D and only had two more tests to get my grade up to a C or a B.

I hatched my plot when I was talking to one of my dorm mates and he said he cheated all the time and said it was pretty easy. He said he ordered this book written by some Harvard guy who advertised in our school paper (the ad was right next to the same book about how to get out of paying speeding tickets. Trust me, the irony was not lost on me) and said I could borrow it. I figured what the hell, what do I have to lose??

I picked up the book later that afternoon and began reading it. Most of the techniques were about how to use your friend to cheat. Stuff like using the positions of a gear shift to tell the guy next to you what the answer was. Up was "a", down was "b", to the right was "c" and to the left was "d". Depending on the position of the non-writing hand, you could communicate what the answer was without making a lot of noise.

Other techniques included how to make crib notes and how to hide them properly so you won't get caught. One of the last ones I really thought would work was the idea of when there are freshman classes, professors usually have several different times and days for the same class. You could go to the test at one time, take the test, take home the questions, and then go to the class you registered for and then take the test again. I did some checking and guess what? My freshman Psych 101 class had two class times. One at 8am and my class which was at 1pm.

My mind was made up. I'd go take the early test, then bring home the questions, get the right answers and go take my "real" test at 1pm. Although there were two classes and both were huge (all freshman classes are), I felt I had to disguise myself to avoid detection. I couldn't wear the same thing both times, even in a classroom full of some 300 people, I thought I'd get caught. I can laugh now, but then I thought I was so smart.

My girlfriend at the time wore glasses and I told her what I was going to do and she reluctantly turned over her glasses to me for a few hours. The other problem was my hair. I had a HUGE mullet, so I took one of her Disneyland hats and tucked my hair up under the cap. I also wore her white tennis shoes to complete the disguise. I must have looked like such a knob, but I knew it was something I had to do in order to avoid getting busted.

At 7:30am my girlfriends alarm went off and I started getting ready. I got to campus and was hoping nobody would recognize me. I took the long walk from the T-2 lot to Stevens Auditorium. To say I was nervous was an understatement. I got there and shuffled in with all the rest of the freshman. I took a seat (of course not in my "normal" spot near the back) off to the left hand side of the main row and about halfway down the aisle. The grad students started passing out the test and I got mine and went to work. I filled in some fictitious student i.d. and starting scanning the test like some diamond thief who just got the master plans to the jewelery store. After waiting for a few people to get up to turn in their tests, I got up with a few other people and strolled down to the front of the class and slide my scantron test under a bunch of other tests already sitting on the professors desk. I strolled out and back to the T-2 thinking I had just completed phase 1 of my little scheme. I thought it was smooth sailing from here on in, but I was about to get the shock of my life. . .

I get back to the house where I lived and started going through the test, question by question. I was matching answers up with the textbook and double checking to make sure I knew the answer. Then my roommate came home and this is when my problems began. He asked me what I was doing and I was pretty confident I was about to usurp the system and get over the man so I told him what I did. I was waiting for the proverbial, "NICE! Way to not let the man hold you down!" but instead I got a twenty minute lecture on the ethics of cheating and how he had to turn me in to thwart my evil plan and restore balance to the universe. This was not something I was prepared for or ready to address. I still had 15 questions I needed to get the answers for and time was running out. . .fast.

I decided to make a deal (something I'm pretty good at) with him. I would take the test as scheduled and then if I got an "A" I would go and turn myself in. If I got a "B" or a "C" we would agree to let it stand for the greater good of keeping my GPA up. Trust me, my argument was a LOT more convoluted, but I could his expression turning to my side and we even had a handshake on it. I thought that was the end of it. . but it wasn't.

THE TEST

1pm came around too fast and I didn't get all the answers. I was about 5 questions short, but felt with the number of answers I had, I could make it work, get a "B", secure my GPA and also clear my good name with my roommate. I went to take the test and strolled in and sat with a few friends. Different hat of course, no glasses and of course, no white tennis shoes. It was a good thing I went for the answers instead of memorizing the letters of the answers. The sneaky professor had changed the order of the answers in the second version of the test. On the first test, the answer to "Why did Pavlov cross the road?" would've been "B", but in this version the correct answer was actually "C". I thought to myself, "The man just tried to thwart me and flush me out as a cheater, but I cut him off at the pass, I'm too smart you can't catch me!"

I finished the test and felt like Val Kilmer in "Real Genius" where he turns in his final test to professor Hathaway with a note that says, "I aced this". I really wanted to, but didn't. I walked out into a sunny spring afternoon, confident I had beaten the system and felt like I was well on my way with my college career. My general classes were now complete and I could finally focus on the really cool classes and the stuff which interested me - no more of this psychology bullshit.

I thought this was the end of the story. . .

AFTERWARD

When I got home later that night, my roommate was there waiting for me. He said he had felt so guilty, he told his academic advisor about my scheme and he in turn had escalated it to the dean of the Architecture Program who I was told will be calling me later that afternoon to discuss what I did. I can't imagine the look on my face when he said it. I started blabbering something about we had a deal and all the "good" reasons for cheating. He stood there for a second and then I could see the smirk on his face, which then turned into a huge smile, and then he started laughing at me really hard. He lied to me and got me - REALLY GOOD. I had a minor heart attack trying to think of what I'm going to say to the fucking dean of Architecture when he asks me why I cheated on a Psych 101 test. In his witty, "The morale of this story. . " voice my roommate gave me another 15 minute lecture on why cheating is bad, but I didn't hear one fucking word he said to me. Later that night I was at the bar basking in the glow of my perfectly executed plan, knowing in a few days all would be back to normal.

Two days later the test scores were posted and I scored a modest 89%. Good enough for a "B". It was the perfect score in my mind. High enough to affect my grade, but not too high to arouse suspicion of a cheat.

I had put together the perfect plan, and executed it to perfection. Although I had a few other times where I bent the rules, they were never as elaborate as this one. Looking back, I laugh at it all now. I should've just gone to class and endured it, and gotten a good grade, but I took a shortcut and it almost came crashing in on me.

If nothing else, I learned never to be so cavalier when doing something clearly beyond the bounds of acceptable academic ethical standards and just keep it to yourself. Then after ten years when it's safe, you can spill the beans.

More stories to come. . .

NEXT TIME:

How I avoided getting a $600 minor consumption ticket my freshman year.

2009-03-31T11:23:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER 30 DAYS IN THE MIX

What's new? Not much. Some recent developments are I'm starting my own SEO / SEM company in order to drum up some freelance work. I'm down to picking two names out and I've already checked for the domains and they're available. I really want to get the business registered with the state before I open my doors so getting paid won't be an issue. I just finished a freelance project and we (my partner and I) had some issues getting paid since neither one of us had a fed tax id, and the guy didn't exactly want to give us cash since he can write off the site as a business expense.

I also have a pretty good idea of what I want the design to look like and have begun writing the content for the site. This should be a fun ride over the next 6 months or so. I pretty amped about going into business for myself. We'll see if my SEO skills are up to the task.

My son came for Spring Break and since I came out to see him in January for his birthday, I couldn't take any more time off to spend with him. We spent the weekend together and went Lacrosse shopping. We dropped some serious cash for his gloves (at least my Moms chipped in $50 so it wasn't horrible) and got him some decent elbow pads. I also picked up a stick so we could play catch. Unfortunately, it rained most of the weekend, so we only got one chance to play outside. After he started fooling around with my stick, he said he liked mine better so I told him he coould take itback to school with him but needed to bring it back if he wanted us to be able to play catch together.

One little hitch was when his Mom emailed me about him downloading an R rated movie and getting busted at school. I was more concerned about him doing sketchy things when we weren'y home, and he confessed he was actually covering for another guy at school who was a senior and who could've gotten kicked out if he got busted so he just made up the story about downloading at my place. Bren wasn't happy about him throwing us under the bus and making me look like a bad parent. I guess I don't really care what the fuck Karis thinks. She's so insecure and has a host of other issues she'll never outgrow - I stopped thinking her opinion mattered to me a LONG LONG time ago. All I can do is try and develop my relationship with my son. If it works,it works, if not, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

Besides the little controversy about the DVD, it's been pretty quiet around mainstreet USA. Nationally there's a ton of stuff going on.

I'm convinced Obama is an idiot. He bails out the banks, then the auto industry. He hands over the cash with no questions asked to the banks, but makes all the auto companies jump through these stupid hoops by making them draw up plans to show the goverment it's got a secure long term plan. Then he comes out and says their plans aren't good enough. Seriously?

Could it be they got burned by the banks and suddenly are realizing what they're doing? Here's a good idea, why don't you make EVERYBODY draw up a plan before you fork over BILLIONS of dollars to them? Clearly he doesn't have a plan, doesn't know what he's doing or a combination of both.

I'm not even going to start on the Treasury Secretary who doesn't pay his taxes, but at least he got grilled by a senator who asked him point blank if he thought his plan to seize private businesses was radical. Pretty funny stuff:

Besides the country completely going socialistic under Chairman Obama's watch, everything else is fine.

i'm holding my breath to see if my Manchester United Red Devils can hang on the premier league title and give them two titles this year. Liverpool is playing out of their minds and have dispatched Real Madrid 4-0, smoked Aston Villa (who were in 4th place) 4-1, and then smoked us 4-0. They're on FIRE right now and I'm hoping with a game in hand, we can hold on.

Well, time to get back to the grind. More on my business and some other random stuff later. . . maybe. . .30 days from now?

I keed I keed.

2009-01-29T11:43:00.000-08:00

UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES

More updates and less than a month has gone by this time. Here's the list of things I need to update:

1) My trip out to Virginia to see my son and how it went
2) My impending trip to Florida with my entire family
3) Hockey
4) Freelance work
5) Some politics
6) Man United back on top

MY TRIP TO VIRGINIA

I went out for the weekend to see my son for his birthday and I must admit I really didn't want to go, but I guess hindsight is always 20/20 right? I flew out on Friday (I took a half day) and then had a long drive from the airport in Raleigh NC to Chatham VA. I picked up Kody at 9:30am and drove back to Greensboro and we got settled in and watched some TV till both of us crashed.

We got to sleep in on Saturday and then got up, went to the local mall and got some lunch and then walked around for a while. Kody picked up some new headphones for his i-pod, and then tool in a movie (Defiance). He wanted to go see Valkrye with TomCruise, but I quickly shot the idea down since I just saw a two hour program about the entire conspiracy on the History channel.

We had planned to go a a Chuck-e-Cheese type place called the Celebration Station for dinner and then we could play some putt putt golf and video games. This is where some pretty funny things happened. First we found out the putt putt course was OUTSIDE not inside like we thought. It was about 30 and we were both just wearing our hoodies. We still went outside and I think we played the fastest 18 holes of putt putt ever played. We completely blazed through the course and then went back inside to see if our pizza was ready.

Sure enough Kody heard them call #23,but our table tent was actually #43. We started arguing and I jsut said we need ot give it some time. We went back upstairs to play some more video games and then we went back downstairs to see if the pizza was ready. I showed the guy my table tent and then he went in the back and come out with that, "I have no idea." look on his face. He went back and forth a fewmore times before he asked me what I ordered. After I told him, he was like, "Oh sorry man, it's been sitting here for a while." At this point I could have made a scene, but was too hungry to bother. The pizza wasn't too cold so it wasn't a total loss. After we ate, we played some more video games and then bailed a short time later. We got back to the hotel and hung out for while before we crashed for the night.

The drrive back to the campus was nice. On Friday night we had some cool conversations, and now the drive back to Chatham was nice and we talked almost the entire way. Kody gave me a short touor of the campus and then I hit road so I could the car back and make my plane to get home on time. Needless to say, I flew home and slept like a baby that night. It was nice to have the day off after a trip with so much driving.

All in all, I didn't want to go, but am glad I did. We got along great and had some fun. I was thinking in future years to go to different cities and hang out in each city like we did in Greensboro. I'm hoping it won't be the same thing every year and then it will seem like we're just doing the same thing every year. In any case, I was happy I went and am looking forward to future trips.

MY IMPENDING TRIP TO FLORIDA WITH MY FAMILY

We leave Monday and I'm having the same feelings I had before I left to go out to Virginia. I'm starting to come around and this is making Bren fairly happy. Maybe it's just because my entire family is going and we're going to have small kids and its not like the usual vacation I take where the goal of the vacation is to do nothing. Sit on the beach, sit by the pool, have some drinks, nap and eat. I'm feeling like we're going to be going from sun up to sun down, which is not my idea of fun by any stretch.

I'm hoping ti will be like ouot trip out to Wisconsin last year which turned out really well. We had some time to ourselves as well as our "family time" with my parents.

Stay tuned for how this will turn out. . .

HOCKEY

Got some new Easton Synergy pants and it's took some equipment tweaks to get them to fit properly. I have two pairs of shin guards. One is longer and one is shorter. The shorter pair would flop over the top of the pants and drove me nuts when I was skating so I switched to the longer pair, went back to my slightly tighter sweats, and am wearing the pants a little lower than I normally do. Bada bing, it feels awesome now.

Saturday hockey has started now and I love the fact I can skate twice a week and get some decent cardio. It's similar to why I useed to play soccer - good cardio, sweat alot and feel great afterwards.

In any case, this is still a good thing.

FREELANCE WORK

We're making some huge changes at work and my next challenge is to learn CSS and learn how to cut and code sites. In March we're also starting on a brand new platform for all of our sites, and this is when the two roles of integration and front end development are to merge. How does this affect my freelance work? Well, it really hasn't. I've only had to two projects, both of them for my family members and both were for free. I also have another project I'm working on for a friend and I might just start looking for a viable template for her site.

I just had a stroke of luck and landed a fairly large project (20 pages, several templates, a lightbox gallery, and full on SEO) with my co-worker. This is going to be my first taste of a legimate project and a good ruler to see how well my SEO techniques are going to work.

All in all, this one has to be done by March 1st. With a short time frame and being out of town for ten days (yeah, I'll be doing some things on vacation, like I always do) and then having a compressed time frame, this is going to be fun!! Not to mention worth some serious $$$$.

Once this project is done, we'll see about future projects.

POLITICS

OMG, where do I start? The latest thing is Obama's stimulus plan. This is the biggest joke ever. He sais he would combat pork spending and his bill is full of it. He said he wants to stimulate the economy quickly which this stimulus bill won't (government construction jobs?? C'mon!) and then telling us we need to do something this year when the majority of the moeny won't be spent until next year.

Some proof. . .

Why it will fail. http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1232450084.php

Is it socialism in disguise? http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1232450084.php

I have more, but I think these two prettymuch lay bare the plan and how horrible it is.

Anyways, at least I'm gainfully employed and have been fortunate not to be working for any of the companies who are laying people off like a kool-aid stand. In the last week over 75,000 people have been laid of and plants and stores are closing all over the counutry. Good thing I bought my TV at Circuit City. Oh wait, they just closed down a few months ago. Whoops.

MAN UNITED BACK ON TOP AGAIN

Well after my Scouser and Blues co-workers taunted me about being 7 points a drift of the lead a few weeks before the FIFA Championship (which we won btw) the joke is now on them as both Liverpool and Chelsea have stalled out and have opened the door for the Red Devils to jump over both and take back the #1 spot in the premiership.

I'm thinking it could be another treble season the why they're playing right now.

Only good things ahead my friends. . .

Oh yeah, andBEcks is over at AC Milan on loan and now that Landon Donovan has left for Bayern Munchen, its been speculated that he won't return to the MLS. Either way, I don't care much.

Till then,

LATE

2009-01-02T11:16:00.000-08:00

I NEVER KNOW WHY

My son goes home in a few days and I've been coming down on him pretty hard the last two days. I've spent some time trying to figure out if it's me or if it's him, or a combination of both. It just seems as it gets closer to time for him to leave, he starts doing things which really piss me off.

Yesterday I just got to the point where I just kept telling myself, "I really don't give a fuck. I've never felt close to my son and now I don't care. Let him do whatever he wants, it doesn't matter to me."

Then I starting thinking it might just be me acting out like he does when it gets close to the time for him to go home. I get pretty frustrated since now is the time when we could be spending a lot of quality time together, and instead with his numerous foot surgeries and his unwillingness to do anything I suggest (unless its a movie or dinner some where) has just pushed me to the edge.

The new thing is we met with his mother when he first got into town and he wants to change his visitation so he can skip Thanksgiving (I knew after this year it would happen, along with his mother's coaching of course) and then take away a week in the summer - which didn't surprise me either. His mother spoke of him starting to work this next summer (weird, since he has ANOTHER foot surgery during the summer) and this would cause him to need to be home to work.

My friends have always told me he will get to an age and then you just have to let him go and when he's ready, he'll come back.

I guess I'll just have to be patient - something I'm not very good at.

For now. . .

SEACREST EWT.

2008-12-31T13:00:00.000-08:00

BEFORE TOMORROW COMES

It's only been about a month - does this mean I'm getting better with my updates? I know my friend over at Hardflip continues to go longer in between posts and he actually has several people working on his site / blog. I guess I shouldn't feel so bad in this regard.

My New Year's Resolution is to try and stop using "THAT" so much in my writing and in my emails and just generally in conversation. I just lean on the word too much and I need to stop using it as a crutch.

Still a lot going on. I've been training to learn CSS and get used to being in a Design Support role. This is where I have to learn how to cut a site up and then code it in HTML and CSS. It's been fun so far. I've only done 4 sites thus far, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it. CSS is a tremendous monster to get a hold of. You really have to know how everything works with each other. It can get out of hand very quickly. I'm confident I have some good trainers and people around me who know what the fuck they're doing - which helps A LOT.

I also pulled another perfect month for my goals. I actually hit every month this year for my goals and had a perfect year. I have yet to determine if this is a good or a bad thing considering I've just unexpectedly raised my own bar for next year. At least I have pretty big challenge ahead of me for 2009. It should be fun. I am right where I want to be.

My son is here for a few more days. It's tough when you have a baby and a restless 13 year old. My GIF doesn't want to get stuck with the baby and I want to spend time with my son, so it's tough trying to make it all work properly and where everybody stays happy.

Got the email today about summer soccer and I will be regretfully declining the invitation to play this year. I want to go back to concentrating on mountain biking (having a $3,000 bike sit in your garage is NOT cool) and playing some golf with some of my co-workers. It will be my first summer without soccer in about 15 years. I just think it;s time to move on and start something new.

I will of course continue to play hockey. When our last game ended, my friend (who NEVER compliments me) told me in the locker room I played the best defense he's ever seen me play. I just hope I don't lose all that karma over the holidays. At least I'm finally starting to feel like a defensemen after coming back from playing center. I don't score too much, but I like shutting guys down and starting the counter attack.

I'm also going to make time to work on my new site which will unveil my personal internet marketing company. It will take a while, but in the end, it will be worth it.

Lots of stuff to get accomplished for 2009.

Just for record, I do this every year, so here's my yearly rundown of the things that happened this year:

Of course there are some many areas which need to be reviewed, so here's a vertible menagerie of stuff to wade through:

2008 month by month review

2008 sports in review (youtube style no less) My favorite was finally seeing KG (Kevin Garnett) finally get his first NBA ring.

Alright - I'm sure I'll think of more to write come Friday since I'll be here and the majority of people will not - which will lead to me to have a LOT of downtime.

Till then folks. . .

SEACREST EWT!!

2008-11-29T12:22:00.000-08:00

THANKSGIVING HAS COME AND GONE. .

And it turned out a lot better than I thought. My son stayed at his grandparents (my parents) and I saw him three days he was here. I still wish his ankle had been fixed so we could go snowboarding. It would have been the earliest I've been out in a LONG LONG time. Like I said, it would have been nice, but I have to understand having his ankle heal properly is more important in the long term.

WHY DO PEOPLE MAKE THE DECISIONS THEY DO?

I always wonder sometimes why people make the decisions they do. I have a friend who does some web stuff and a year ago, he took a big corporate job downtown and hated every minute of it. He posted about it all the time on his site (which shall remain nameless) and finally after a year - he quit. He said he wasn't cut out for the "corporate" life and had already taken a job at a smaller company.

I'm not going to bag on him making his decision, but clearly some people don't need a lot of money to be happy - which is admirable. What I can say is I spent a long time working for small businesses and I never made much money, while I basically ran the place and the owner reaped all the rewards of my hard work. This was something I always resented. Not to mention, I felt like I knew more about the industry in which we both worked,and here I am, still making a pittance for salary and commission.

Several years ago, I felt like I needed a lot more security and saw the writing on the wall in my own industry that changes were taking place and unless I did something, I was going to be out of work - which is not cool. I actually sought out a corporate gig because I felt working for a larger company would give me a stable income with a buttload of benefits.

After almost four years and three positions, I think I finally found where I really want to be. I was successful in my main goal of getting out of sales, and had a career change at *gulp* 38. In less than 3 years, I dug myself out of a sales career, changed positions twice and have arrived at somewhere where I feel challenged every day, in a fast paced environment, with some of the smartest people I've ever worked with. It's a nice perspective when you're not the smartest guy in the room all the time.

Like I said, I don't know why this person opted to get out of his corporate gig, only he will ever know, but he must have felt like he could not find happiness doing the corporate gig during the day and then doing what he loves after his day job. Maybe his friends were harassing him about it, I know when you're a skateboarder, it's pretty uncool to work for the "evil empire" (whatever that evil empire might be) and I've plenty of people laud my decision to work at a large corporation.

In any case, I will never know what motivated him to quit, but I do hope he does find happiness in whatever he does decide to do in the future.

AM I FINISHED WITH CONSPIRACIES. . . . ?

I was thinking this afternoon about how long its been since I've been interested in conspiracies. Maybe its because I don't have much time anymore. In my old job at Mobile Cellular, I could surf the internet all day and do whatever I wanted. I was on several message boards which kept my interest most of the day.

I famously gave up the ghost on the one conspiracy I followed the longest, after a long time of thinking about it and what might or might not be happening. In the end, it never really mattered to me, and I found once I pulled back a bit, I found the people on the above board to be completely fucking insane. The paranoia of these people was pretty intense and pretty shocking.

In any case, I concluded today that conspiracies only have so much life, until they run their course and then what do you do? Where do you go from there? It's like a dead end, nothing else left to do except let people decide what really happened or who was actually behind whatever it is your investigating. In short, it gets boring pretty fast.

SO WHAT IS INTERESTING TO ME NOW?

A LOT of new things. I've set up one of my desktop computers with a Linux system last year (after my laptop took a crap and stopped working) and I've been learning ever since. I consider myself a pretty creative person so I've been looking into how to change the theme on my Mandriva / KDE environment. The one site I lean on a LOT is KDE Look. They have a lot of cool stuff and a hoard of good developers.

I'm also trying to do some low level web development on it as well - just as another challenge. I say its a challenge because its hard to find comparable developer software for Linux, and more specifically Mandriva.

What else? Just more graphic design stuff with Photoshop and Illustrator. Things where I can use my creativity to make cool things.

I might be burned out on soccer, but at this moment, I'm watching Juventus play Reggina in the snow. Juve is up 3-0, late in the second half. Even though I still watch a LOT of games, the bug to play still isn't there. I feel like I've closed the book on my career and want to focus on other things which I've taken an interest in.

WHAT ELSE?

Oh yeah, about a month ago, I got a call from my sister about where the project to re-do her website was going. After trying to wrangle a few guys to do the site, I was pretty disappointed with the results. I guess I shouldn't have expected something amazing since all the guys were working for free and they all had several freelance projects which they should be working on and which had paying clients. In the end, I scrapped it and was moving on when she called me and was talking about how her and her partner were going to close up shop and call it a day for their business.

She was giving it 6 months and then she was moving on. I figured this would be a good opportunity for me to use my savvy business skills and rescue her business. Problem is, she's not very motivated. I know if it was me, I would be working my ass off to make it work, but my sister is a different person than I, and I needed to realize this. I'm going to see her tonight and she's supposed to have some figures for me so I can determine how much monthly overhead they have, and develop a business plan which will work going forward. We'll see if she comes to my parents with the info I need. I know the business is already $25K in the hole, and that's a BIG hole to dig out of, but her partner is responsible for half of the debt, which at least takes care of a large part of the debt - which is good news. Like I said, we'll see.

For now. . this is all I have. .

Sorry, no pics or vids. . just some rambling on a crappy day.

SEACREST EWT.

2008-11-24T10:31:00.000-08:00

A CONSPIRACY NO MORE. . .

Wow it was a long weekend. Two VERY long calls with my son and his Mother, and I finally got him moving in the right direction. We'll see how the reception at the airport goes. He can be pretty chilly when he wants to.

In the end, I had to dig in and play the hard ass in all this. I always think the more time I have to spend with him, the better off I'll be and sometimes you just can't let the other side win and give up and give in to let them get what they want. It also helps when you hold all the aces at the table.

The rest of the week should be pretty smooth (all things considered) and we'll have some good free time before he heads out Friday morning.

I was planning on going snowboarding with him, but his recent ankle surgery, and long recovery time has put that notion in the back seat for now. It would have been nice to get out early this season, but. . .whatever, I'll get over it.

TIME FOR A NEW CHALLENGE. . .

Okay, so I dropped onto the development team like a commando in the dead of night. I'm sure some of my co-workers woke up and were like, "Who the FUCK is this guy?" and here we are a year later and it's been pure paradise. Oh sure, has all been tea and crumpets? Not always, but my co-workers are some of the coolest people I know. I got a great spot, and my two cube mates (Vah Jay Jay and Tief) have made a funny and fairly easy transition. Of course, being, "the new guy" opened me up to some artful hazing, but I took it all in stride. This is the place I finally feel like I WANT to be here and help the team as best I can. And that's no Bull Durham rip off quote.

After a year though, I need a new challenge. I've just found out I will have it come December when I get to learn CSS. I deal with CSS on a daily basis and am well familiar with it, and I've started to do some development projects outside of work with CSS, but this it going to be completely different. The one thing I need to learn to do before I feel like a "real" developer is how to take a PSD design and cut it up into vaild CSS code. Likewise, learning how to design a full site in Photoshop has always been a goal of mine. The ability to combine both and be good at it is one of my long term goals.

The following months are going to be another barn burner.

I'll hit yah back up on the flip side after my son goes back to school.

In the meantime, here's another couple of vids for you to enjoy:

I've always been a skateboarder fan, and a HUGE fan of Plan B. If you don't already know, Plan B formed after H-Street skateboards went defunct and Mike Ternasky (God rest his soul) passed away.

This is the trailer for their video - Live after Death which I think came out sometime in 2007. Anyways, this is the second trailer, you should also check out the Part 1 of this on youtube - its INSANE as you can clearly see in this clip:

The second vid I'm pretty sure hockey fans will like. My soccer career is all but a smoldering bit of ashes right now. After the outdoor season ended and the I played the first session of indoor, I just had no desire to play anymore. It was as if a ghost had finally left my body. Sure, I still love to watch the games on TV, but I have no more desire to play. Dunno what happened to kill my desire to play, but there's not a single bone in my body which wants to play anymore. Instead, I've chosen to play hockey on Wednesdays and am loving it and feel like I'm actually getting better each week. I just feel a lot more confident on the puck and feel like I'm a much better defensemen now. Anywho, hockey is where its at right now, so here's a good one:

Alls I got for right now. . .

Seacrest EWT.

2008-11-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

I'M NOT GOING TO SAY IT ANYMORE. .

All my posts have been few and far between. Free lance jobs, home life, a new daughter and all kinds of other stuff have all but extinguished my blogging. Right now there's so much going on - the election, my son skipping out for Thanksgiving, all the drama surrounding him skipping Thanksgiving, my Mom striking out on her own and opening her own Pilates studio, trying to build a site for my brother in law and getting back into shape.

Lots and lots to write about - just no time to sit down and get all down on paper. What's a guy to do? I was going to try and just leave my Blogger page open on a separate monitor and if something popped into my head, I could write it down. That didn't work so well considering I do web development and I utilize both of my monitors, so in no time, the window with my blog would get closed. Oh well, let's get to the important stuff!!

THE ELECTION

Much to the chagrin of my Mother, I voted for John McCain. My mother and I had some pretty heated debates about Obama and why I was voting Republican. I basically told her it was because of how bad the press have been skewering Bush and giving Obama a free pass on everything from his relationship with Tony Rezko to his affiliation with a radical dictator in Kenya.

I'm pretty sure people voted for Obama for change. But voting simply for change for change's sake isn't a good idea. Now we're faced with a president who is going to raise the capital gains tax, increase taxes on anybody making over $250,000 (which interestingly enough changed from 250, then down to 200, then down 150 and then another Democrat actually said 120,000) per year.

It should be no surprise that the market has been tanking ever since he's been elected. Right now, we're supposed to be in a recession and here he is wanting to RAISE taxes. When asked directly if he would raise taxes next year, he never answered the question. Even his chief of staff couldn't answer the question!

I'll give him 4 years, but what he's already doing now, I don't think he's going to last very long. People are moving their money out of the market right now in order to avoid losing money when he increases the capital gains tax. Not to mention the disastrous consequences of raising taxing during a recession. Oh well, only time will tell I guess.

MY SON, HIS MOTHER, AND THE GREAT THANKSGIVING DAY CONSPIRACY.

Here's the deal:

My son wants to stay out in Washington DC to have Thanksgiving with his Mom and Step Dad and not come here like he's supposed to. Both have conspired to make it happen and now I'm left to play my aces. I've already purchased the ticket and now just have to wait until she violates the court order and then I'll have to bring her for mediation and then I'll have to get my money back for the ticket.

The worst part about this is she has HIM lying to me now telling me he doesn't know where he's going to be for Thanksgiving. They both must think I'm some kind of idiot not to figure out what's going on.

It's too bad, she can't open her eyes and understand what she's doing by letting our 13 year old son make his own decisions. BAD very very BAD. Talk about setting a bad precedent. My son has no legal standing to make ANY decisions himself, but suddenly its convenient for her to have him make his own decisions, so then she says its between me and him. Really!? I'm your fucking father, you get on the plane and you be here then - this is not a discussion, and its NOT YOUR decision - period, end of story.

Just another nail in the coffin. I really wonder what's going to happen when he turns 18. I'll no longer be financially responsible and I believe all these battles are going to have a net negative effect on me. I honestly don't know what he's going to do or who he's going to want to live with. I want to continue the relationship with him, but after so much time, my connection to him is fading. I feel like this is what his Mom wants. After all, it's what she's done his whole life - just put more time and space between me and him. It's like she's always attempted to keep me at arms length from him. I'm just hoping one day he'll figure it out. right now, the only thing I am to him is a cash register. He just calls when he wants something. Maybe it will change, maybe it won't. This is why I wonder what our relationship will be over the next few years.

I've been contemplating sending her email about the all the shit that's been going on the last 13 years just to get a lot of it off my chest, but somehow, I just don't think it will have any effect.

Oh well FUCK HER.

For now I've quit soccer and am just playing Hockey. I've been getting up at 5:30am and working out before I go to work. It's been about 4 weeks and I'm seeing some decent results. My Dad said he noticed it in my forearms, that was cool.

What else? I found a good template site online and built my Mom's website (http://www.pilatesonthehill.com/) it was a rush job since she needed it up and running right away so I just tweaked the CSS and HTML and BAM! There you have it. I'm almost done designing my brother in law's site and will post it when I get a chance. It's a flash site and I think will turn out pretty cool.

The nice thing about my freelance work is child support isn't taken out so my son's mother can't get her little grubby paws on it. This very simple thing makes me so happy I'm getting over her.

Instead of a picture of the day (note to self: DO NOT hotlink images unless you want a picture of big dick on your blog) I have to post this video. It's an old one, but as I was driving home from Hockey this week, it was around midnight and there was a fine mist in the air and I had Perfecto on Tour bumpin through my speakers and I was totally zoning out, thinking about all kinds of deep stuff.

So this is what it felt like, with the lights drifting by, and the mist in the air.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIc8LxcXFk0

After I start thinking about it, I could almost hear Phil singing in the background. I felt like I was running towards some unknown destiny. It was a spooky, uneasy feeling.

Till then. . .

OUT

2008-08-22T20:44:00.000-07:00

LOTS OF NEW STUFF HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!

Where to start? Some quick blurbs maybe??

1) I started playing Golf again. Not that I ever did seriously, but (here comes another soccer reference) since I won't be playing soccer next year, golf is a logical fill in - right? Sure. got a new driver and its already made all the difference. I'm bombing it about 250 on the fly, straight away, which is pretty awesome I think. Been to the range several times with my Dad which is cool because it gives us time to spend together which we really haven't had in a while.

2) Whoah! Another soccer season has started in the Premiership. Lots of new faces, new places and in the Serie A, I was shocked to see some premiership faces come over to the Italian side. My favorite Norwegian Jon Arne Risse has joined AS Roma and will hopefully bring some stability to their back line. I'm hoping to see some of his thunderous left on action on Sundays. Another suprise was to see Jose Mourinho finally come out of hiding and end up at Inter Milan. Everybody is waiting to see who's coming over from Chelsea to play for him again. I guess Lampard is already ruled out, but you never know about a mid season transfer!!

Of course my Reds return with a very strong lineup, but will be hampered the first half of the season with Ronaldo's knee surgery and Tevez still out and Rooney not playing to 100% - it could get out to a sketchy start. So is a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford to Newcastle sketchy? Yeah, I think so.

Nuff said. . . anyways. . .the sniper of London will return soon though, have no fear!

Not much else is going on other than I want a bigger monitor at home for my upcoming desing projects. I big CRT pig isn't cutting it anymore.

Oh yeah, another big news item was my old stab in the back teammate PK calling to tell me this the last season for our Manchester soccer team. I think he was about three years too late. The past few seasons they've been playing in an upper tier for their outdoor and have gotten run pretty bad every season. I kept good tabs on them and they were always at the bottom for their indoor league and then when outdoor started, they never did very well. This year I think they were 2-11-4. Not a fun team to play for. I'm almost thankful he treated me like shit so I wouldn't have to endure those past seasons of getting lit up every game. Trust me, there's no pleasure in that.

The one thing I will take away is I was a key player when the team was in its heyday. Back in the mid to late 1990's I was a terror on the left side of the pitch. Man, those were the days. Our team took so many league titles (both indoor and outdoor) and so many tournaments it was insane - we totally OWNED all the Fargo leagues. We went four complete seasons without losing a league title, it was awesome. Anyways, it had to die, everything dies sooner or later - no matter how long to try to keep it alive. I think this team died a long time ago, PK just finally put it out of its misery. Good riddence, I'll pour out some BLD for ya brother.

My son leaves next Tuesday to go back to school. We chipped in and got him some new boots and some shinguards. Of course HIS MOM couldn't do it. She always complains they're poor, but something tells me she's up to her old tricks again. I know how she works.

Anyways, enough about her. You know I could go on and on, but won't right now.

Okay, okay, so I think we're all caught up right now. . . . . . .

LATE

2008-08-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

FREE TIME MEANS ITS TIME TO UPDATE!

I had some extra time, so I thought I might tackle some of the topics I touched on in my last post. I only have about 30 minutes, so we'll see how much we can get accomplished before I have to bail out.

1) My son came up for a week after getting his foot operated on. He has something called hyperpronation in his ankle and after several years, it was starting to takes its toll on his ankles. They needed to repair both of his ankles so they got in both ankles before he came up. We had about two weeks before we were going to the Dells (even after our scenic" lake emptied). A few days before we were going to go, we went to go see "Wanted" (which was an ok movie, I wasn't impressed at all, but I think my son liked it). He shouldn't have been walking on it, but told me it felt ok. Of course, about 1am he called his Mom and told her he could feel the stint in his ankle. She came over the next day (thankfully, she was still in town) and got the instructions from the doctor on what to look for. It was pretty bad, she said he would need to come back so they could re-operate and move the stint back into the proper place. So that was that. About a week or so, then he was gone for the summer - which really bummed me out. We left a few days later for our vacation to the Wisconsin Dells. It was a great week and I got to take in several water parks. I know I would have enjoyed it a TON more if could've come with. Oh well, I told him next year we'll go again and then we can both enjoy it.

2) The not so glorious end of my soccer career? Yeah, after having one of the guys on another team punch me in the face, I sat down and did some serious soul searching. I decided I have to much to lose to have some idiot put in a hospital for any duration of time. The guy barely grazed me, but it was a wake up call. So no more outdoor, but I'm still going back and forth on playing indoor. Simply because I'm much better at playing indoor and I tend to score quite a bit more. Another indoor session is starting so we'll see soon enough. The other major factor was just trying to stay healthy on a week-to-week basis. It just alwasy seemed like I was nicked up, bruised, tweaked, or just plain sore. I think at 37, it was an easy decision to walk away from the outdoor game.

Time to fly - more later!!

Updated - 08/22/08

One brief note before we get back into it again. . .

A) My birthday came and went htis week and it appears I survived another year. It actually turned out to be a good year (thus far). A job change and some other major life changes have me enjoying life and still dumbfounded I am where I am considering my bleak past (which has been well documented here) and morbid nature I have about everything.

Alright. . more updates. . .

3) Oh yeah, the construction has really picked up the last few weeks. It's been a dirt road outside of our house for so long, I wasn't sure we'd have asphalt before the snow started falling. That all changed today. Not only was our driveway put back together (exposed aggregate trim and all) but we got new curbs (which we did not have before) and now some fresh blacktop. It was nice to finally park in my garage again. It was funny to hear the neighbors finally enjoying getting out and walking in the neighborhood. It seemed all the BS we put up with for so long might actually be worth it. Of course the other major road project is still giving me headaches and slowing me down on the way to work - so the bitching aint over yet!!

4) Being a developer totally kicks ass. I'm learning so much and just trying to absorb it all right now. I'm getting a LOT faster and finally have a decent system to march through my integrations. The real challenge now is to try and pick up design support which is the cutting and coding of sites designed in Photoshop. Once I learn this, the sky is the limit. I've been checking out some tutorials online and am also interested in using my Linux machine for doing some design work. We'll see. I also know my manager has told me I have incredible drive and was a great hire. I've really meshed well with the group and feel like I'm really at home with all the cool stuff I'm learning and finding out about. When you have so many who are plugged into the web - I mean REALLY plugged into the web, there's so much cool stuff out there!!! What I really want to do is get my freelance stuff going soon. I have some projects I want to start up, but finding time right now is hard. Looks like something is going to get sidelined in order to so this - we'll see.

5) Oh shit, changing my blog. Yeah, I've had a few templates, but nothing ever really jumped out at me. Now that I have some programming experience, I might actually try and design a template. Again, finding the time is the key. I might just go Tesla on it and stay up for a few days on end till I get the thing done - who knows. I have a ton of ideas so we'll have to wait and see what happens, no promises!!

6) Mountain biking? *sigh* I think I might have to take a few days off to get this done. I JUST pumped up the tires on my bike this Tuesday and took a few laps in the driveway. Man do I miss riding. After next winter, it will be back near the top of my list since Soccer will be out of the question.

Well, that;'s about it for right now - I'm going to blast out another quick post about some other stuff still on my mind.

LATE

2008-07-31T11:49:00.001-07:00

LAST POST 6/21?? HERE'S ANOTHER FLYBY POST

Once again I'm going to have to leave people hanging on this one. It's been over 30 days since my last post and the last time I said I was going to try and make time to write more frequently. This is failure #23,598 and counting. My advice? Don't get old, your time becomes so expendable, so quickly, you're left with little time for yourself.

Anyways, I could go on all day, but have to throw out a few topics I NEED to write about in the coming days (or for as often as I've been updating, weeks):

1) My son getting his foot operated on on again, going home early from summer vacation, then us going to Wisconsin Dells without him. Fun trip, great time - will do it again for sure.

2) The "traumatic" ending my glorious soccer career. At least I'm going to stop playing outdoor for right now, I'm still debating playing indoor.

3) The continued construction by house and how much I fucking hate the City of Minnetonka

4) How my career as a developer is going thus far. . .7 months in.

5) The redesign of my blog and how I want to change and what I need to know in order to that.

6) Me wanting to mountain bike more and *gasp* play more golf next summer. Oh yeah, and start to work out more - I'm starting to feel tired and weak all the time - not good.

Of course each of these could take up an entire post and I might just handle that way, but we'll see how much I can done between now and the weekend.

Anyways, I gotta get back o the grind.

Seacrest - EWT.

2008-06-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

30+ DAYS IN BETWEEN POSTS NOT CUTTING IT.

There's something about thinking about something to write and then there's actually doing it. Right now, I tend to do very well with the former, and I'm having heaps of trouble with the latter. Take for instance, this past week. All kinds of cool things happened, but I was powerless (aka LAZY) to actually get up the nerve to go to my computer and write. I think it has a lot to do with my set up right now. I got a newer monitor some time ago, and that went on the "newer" P.O.S. machine we got with Vista. I told my gif Vista sucks, but she gave me the old, "Well, everybody will soon be using it, so having it now will help soften the learning curve for later." Oh really? NOBODY wants, needs, or uses Vista by choice. Microsoft also stopped giving people the option to get new computers with XP instead. Lemme tell ya folks, it's a TOTAL hog. My other machine (The one I'm using right now) is a Linux Mandriva machine and it runs like buttah. It has half the RAM as my Vista machine and runs three times as fast. I'm still learning how to do a lot of stuff, but most of it is pretty straight forward and easy.

Of course, my Linux system got usurped for the new monitor, so I'm trudging along with an old 19" CRT monitor. It's not the best, but it gets the job done. Which brings me to my next point. I like my Linux system, but hate the monitor. I hate my Vista system, but the monitor rocks. And no, I've already been warned not to change the monitor because my gif uses the Vista system, so that's not a solution. Remember I said I don't like the enviornment my computers are in? I gotta come up with somethign better and more condusive to harness my creative juices. I used to have a laptop, but I don't want to be on the couch coding web sites. I think the solution is to get something like this - something (gasp) more like my cube at work. I want to get either two monitors (like at work - 22" & 19") or just one large (24"+) monitor. I can get two 19" monitors for about $400.00, and one large one (26"+) would run about $700.00 and up. Obviously, getting dual 19's would be more cost effective, but what about space?

My thought is have a dedicated work area for myself. Something away from what my current set up is like, so when I go there - its to work - period.

In the meantime, I'm going to use my Linux machine to do my web development stuff. Hopefully ti will be adequate to do what I want. If not, I may have to man up, get a new system, and a TON of software. The big three are Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Adobe Flash. OF course there are lower cost alternatives I can use when I'm running a Windows OS, but if you want to build the best, you should have the best - right?

Enough of my bantering about my puters - now for the good stuff.

This week I had dinner with my Dad. We were supposed to go hit a bucket of balls, but it got too late too fast and so we settled for dinner at Fuddruckers. It was a great time and my Dad never ceases to amaze me. I swear the time we have together is so precious for me. I always learn something new from these stories, and I'm glad he's comfortable telling them to me. As I've said before, I've never really known that much about my Dad, so hearing these stories are just so awesome. When I was growing up, it was always about me and my sister, he never sat around and bragged he was making millions of dollars doing what he was doing - he always focused on us and left whatever stories about his life to the side. Now, I'm finally getting to hear these stories and its absolutely amazing for me.

After dinner we were riding back to my parents house and he started telling me how he got involved in computers and how it was really an accident. He had spent several years at the University of Minnesota working on an applied mathematics degree and then trasnferred to St. Cloud State to finish his degree. One day his roommate came in and asked him if he knew anything about computers. Now, this was in early 1970's so computers was something nobody knew about. He told him nothing and then his roommate asked him if he wanted to learn something and said St. John's (down the road in Collegeville) was giving a class on computer programming. They took the class and didn't think much of it till several months later one of their Calc teachers asked if anybody knew anything about computers. Of course they both raised their hands and soon they were teaching classes and showing everybody how to program. Pretty funny huh?

He also told me another story about how he fumbled his way into sales - which is pretty funny as well. Now, I know today my Dad is an all star salesmen and could as one person said about him, "He could sell gum in the lockjaw ward at bellevue hospital", he'e THAT good at sales. In the mid 1970's, it was a different story. He was working for Control Data Corporation at the time as an analyst. You should also realize Control Data was one of the first companies to sell super computers. One day, of his golf buddies Bob Larson (who later went on to open several Neveda Bobs Golf shops) asked him if he ever considered going into sales. HE said not really, but he knew the guys who were in sales, were driving all the BMW's, Csdillac's and Mercedes out int he parking lot and he wouldn't mind making enough money to buy a new car. Well, within a day, his manager called him and told him he was now a sales person and to move his stuff out if his analyst office and into his new sales office. Then he was told he get the files from Bob for the accounts which were in his territory. After doing this, he kinda sat on his hands, not knowing what to do since nobody told him. He went back to his manager to ask me what he was supposed to do. To whcih his manager responded by yelling at him to call the accounts, go meet with them and then try and sell them some equipment. He thought to himself, "What the fuck did I just get myself into." Even funnier? He was working for several months before they sent him to an actual sales training class. The other trainees were shocked to know he already had his territory (for several months) and was already doing a lot of what they were being trained to do. He was the rock star of the group and everyone grilled him for what it was really like out in the field.

Of course the rest is history. He went down as one of the most successful salespeople in the companies history and landed several of the largest contracts. His single largest sale was to then energy company NSP (Northen States Power) now Excel Energy, for $42 million dollars. It took over 6 years to close and was a groundbreaking software advancement for them and many of the components of the system are still in use today.

In any case, it was a great dinner and his stories are always well worth the $20.00 I put up for dinner.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't say I'm glad I got out of sales a few years back, but was thinking about the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. It's the ultimate sales movie and just shows how brutal being a sales person can be. I'll always be proud of the achivements of my father. He was an amazing sales person in his prime and funny, he continues to ply his trade, even now, in his late 60's.

This is the scene that crashed a thousand sales careers before they even got started - and yes, I've had some manger's like the one Alec Baldwin portrays amd I've known evern more sales people just like him.

ENJOY this one boys and girls and remember: COFFEE IS FOR CLOSERS!!!

I have a TON more to cover, but for now, this is good enough.

LATE

2008-05-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

IS SUMMER HERE YET??

WOW, there is soooooooo much going on right now:

Soccer - new team (St. Paul Celtics) and we're off to a killing. First two games we put in 16 goals and gave up ZERO. We have a rock solid team that's very young and very good. This summer is going to be FUN.

Work - The day has finally arrived where I finally feel like I'm in the zone. I can cruise through my integrations with ease and I'm asking few if any questions of the guys around me, which I feel like is a good sign. I feel like I actually KNOW enough to do everything and do it quickly and efficiently.

Home Life - It's like anything. Good days and manageble days. Its hard for me to say there's bad days since I cherish so much where I am in life.

Everything Else - Cody wants to come for four weeks and wants to stay home all day. I'm still going back and forth on ironing out all the details for him and what will be expected of him. I guess I wasn't expecting him to be here for the full four weeks. I know we're going to the Wisconsin Dells and a co-worker has already given me a good tip on the place he usually stays which he like a lot. Summer's coming fast so we gotta get moving on this one.

Softball - I think it was a mistake to sign up for Softball with my neighbor. I'm playing, but often feel like I could be doing something else. Its my own fault for telling him last summer I'd play. I've done pretty well even though our team is still 0-2. I try not take it too serious, its only for fun - right?

Two other things:

I was thinkinig of my friend D the other week. Its painful to read her emails since I know she's having a rough go of it right now. Its been a brutal few years. She's getting older, wants to desperately have kids and her medical issues are preventing her from really living life like she would.

It makes me wonder how ambitious I should be when I compare her life to mine. I feel her suffering in my soul. Its not something I can easily shrug off like I do most things. Then I think I really do have life by the ass, and every night I go to bed, I pray for her to get better and ask God to be her sheppard and watch over her. I still feel her spirit all the time. She says the D I knew so many years is gone, but I know someday soon she'll take flight like she's always meant to. It gives me goosebumps to think of her and the energy we share since we're soul mates. As much as I've had to let go of the notion of us being together, I know she's always with me.

Whoah, so what else is going on? I went to the Minnebar conference for developers and got some really good information about developer tools and how to handle my freelance work. I was sad I ahd to be abck at 1:30 and missed a lot more of the good stuff.

I joined Twitter and am having fun with that so far.

Oh well, its 4pm and time for me to kill the power and head home. I might be on later to try and finish off this post or add another shorter post with some other interesting stuff.

Till then sportsfans!!

(sorry, in too much of a hurry for a pic of the day)

2008-03-31T06:35:00.000-07:00

CATCHING UP ON OLD POSTS

I had to laugh this morning as I was going through the last couple of posts I had and one of them was where I very briefly wondered who I would vote for. Well, that was way back in January and I was hoping to back Mitt Romney. In two months, McCain sealed the deal and wrapped up the nomination. On the Democratic side of the things, Hilary is still fighting tooth and nail with Obama to get the nomination. Most people have said there's no way for her to get the nomination because Obama already has way more delegates than her and her only out is to get the SUPER delegates (don't ask me what they are - but here's a link anyways) to cast their ballots for her instead of Obama. Regardless, McCain will have about a 10 month jump on them with his campaign while Obama and Clinton burn their money trying to get the other to submit.

I will never voted for Hilary and I still haven't heard enough substance from Obama to vote for him. McCain right now is the best bet for me. Unless Obama can give me something more to go on with what he will do with illegal immigartion, the war and the economy, I'm going to stick with McCain.

Alright kids, I know I've been talking about for a while and I've seen all the other kids do it, so here's goes nothing. . .

My first YouTube video!!

This one is Jake Brown. Most people only know him from his slam at the X-Games last summer when he basically fell about 5 stories and walked away. Yeah he did some serious damage to his body including a broken wrist and arm, broken vertebrae and a bruised liver. Not to mention a pretty serious concusion.

Before the X-Games and all the coverage he got from his slam, he had this part in the Blind video which was shot at the DC Ramp. As you can see in the clip, the kid completely rips it up. After seeing this part, my jaw wa laying on the ground for about five minutes.

Anyways, onward to more importat things.

My son showed up for Spring Break and I decided was just going to let him be. Do what he wants, hang out, play his PS2, play on my computer and just let him chill. I decided I wasn't going to set limits and try to keep him in line and see what happens. As I look back now, it was a lot less stressful for both of us. He did play the PS2 and he did spend some time on my computer, but he really managed his time better than I thought he would. I took Monday off so we could spend some more time together. It was fun to go to Game Stop and let him pick out a few games. He brought home his report card and I was really impressed with his progress in the few short months he's been at Hargraves. Personally, I think it has a lot to do with being away from his Mom and learning to be out on his own. He's way more mature than his 13 years would indicate. I'm happy he's found a great environment to thrive in, and it shows in his demeanor and the way we interact with each other now. This summer is going to be the big test. The way things are shaping up, I'm thinking he won't be here for 4 straight weeks, but maybe a week at a time or something where he comes up for a short time, then goes home, then comes back again. I still have to work out the details with his Mom, so we'll see.

As far as work goes, everything is top notch. I hit my number for this month and I pretty much have today off, but hopefully can get a few easy sites to start the month off properly.

The other big news is I'm jumping into the fray and getting my very own

As an ardent non-conformist, I spent a lot of time trying to find something which was even in the same league as the i-phone and couldn't come up with much. I came up with Helio and one of their phones the Ocean. I saw it online and the reviews were okay. They unfortunately use Sprint's network. When I checked out their kiosk in the mall, I was really unimpressed with the phone. It was really small and not very user friendly. The sales person I spoke with told me they were in the midst of transitioning to Verizon's networks, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that ever happening.

The other phone I found was AT&T's Tilt. The phone had pretty much everything anybody would want - except it runs on Windows Mobile. This isn't the dealbreaker, but it gave me pause.

The clincher for the iphone was my co-worker has one and also works in the Apple store at the MOA. He said he could get a good deal on it and since I've seen his in action many times and he knows all the cool programs I should have for it and actually how to use it, I figured he could help me with the learning curve. With the internet and the monthly plan, my bills will be going up, but not tremendously. It should still be relatively manageable.

I'll have to check back in and let you know how its going after I get one - hopefully some time this week. . . .

Here's the pic of the day:

Soccer is coming back around and I'm only playing for one team this summer. I want to log some more mountain biking time this summer and playing with three teams is not going to allow me to do this. Also, the picture reminded of summer and as of right now, its fucking snowing outside which just means soccer, mountain biking or any other spring pursuit is on the back burner for another a few weeks.

DAMN YOU OLD MAN WINTER!!

Out.

2008-03-21T08:09:00.001-07:00

HOW FAST IT ALL GOES BY YOU

Well, its been several months since my last post and as always there's a ton of stuff going on. Maybe too much even to keep my blog up to date. My new job as a developer has left me little precious time during the day to hop on and write freely for an hour or so. I guess I had it pretty easy as an Account Manager huh? I even had a left over Word Press account I was going to document the process of learning my new job. Yeah, that was cool for about the first week, then I got so swamped I just forgot about trying to keep it up to date. Having more work than hours in the day is a new experience for me. The only reason I have time to write now is I all caught up and waiting for the que to clear a bit so I can go in and vulture an easy site to get over 100% and get another site up to get closer to my monthly goal.

I can see I've learned more in the past few months than the past three years here. Developers definitely have some cool tools they use and seem to know jsut about every corner of the internet. This is really what I was looking for. When I was an AM, it was pretty much up to a handful of people to go out and find cool stuff. I found some unusual stuff, but nothing like the stuff they have down here. One of the other developers showed me a cool music player called Pandora. I use it almost every day now. Between that and my Sirius subscription, I have too much stuff to listen to.

I've kinda cooled my jets on Howard Stern lately, and am completely into the Jason Ellis show on Sirius. The guy is so freaking hilarious, its awesome to listen to him. Whenever I'm having a bad day, I know by 2pm, when Ellis comes on, everything will turn out ok. He has some crazy bits like, "The World's Most Awesome Wednesday's" where they give out a topic and then have people call in and give them nominees and then the listeners can vote. Some of the past topics have been - most awesome job, most awesome sport, most awesome animal. He also has a bit called, "Dude is it gay?" which is pretty funny. People call in with there question and he either hits a bell indicating yes its gay, or they get a buzzer effect which means no they're not gay - its radio gold since Ellis alone makes the call, usually with a brief description either way.

In a nutshell, my job is going awesome and I completely love it. I didn't know how the team would accept me since I don't have near the amount of experience most people on the team have. I found out my manager (who got me the gig) said I fit right in and have been accepted by the rest of the team. She never had any worries I could make it, although I had some doubts myself, but I guess my determination to learn and work hard at all aspects of the job thus far has paid off. I still have a TON to learn and the real skills come when I get cross trained in Desgin Support which is actually programming in CSS. Only time will tell how soon I'll be ready for that.

Everything is still well on the home front. We recently found out we actually signed an ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) back when we purchased our house and my GIF was freaked out since we probably would've gotten crushed in two year when the rate went up. We very wisely re-financed to avoid the impending headache. Our monthly payments only went about $100 per month which was a relief. Of course we close on this mortgage later today.

Soccer is still soccer. I dropped my B level indoor team. There were too many guys and we weren't winning many games. It just got boring after a while. I stuck with my A level indoor team and we finally bounced back this session. Last session we had a lot of close games we should have won. We played both the top teams who were undefeated and lost in the last seconds of one game and we tied the other one. Both games were awesome to experience since they were both really clean games and it was just two really good teams going at it. It was a nice change from all the hack fests I've been used to. Of course before my trip to Whitecap (which I'll detail later in this post) I got drilled along the boards. Its several weeks later and my calf still hurts. Oh well, its all part of the game right?

Right now, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to play for Dunesday again. I'm still bitter I played really well for them and they never gave me any indication they would pick me up and give me a full time spot for their indoor teams or the next outdoor season. I've committed to play with some guys who broke off the old Northland Wolves team from last season. I know we're going to have an awesome team. We have lots of young guys and plenty of guys from the Wolves who I've played with before. This will be my only team I'll be playing for. I want to get out and ride my mountain bike more this summer. Playing for two teams was almost too much last summer and when I did get out and ride, it felt great. I really missed riding last summer.

My winter turned out ok. I wanted to snowboard more, but mother nature really cursed me bad this winter. We had snow, and I did get out once and went to Afton Alps for the day. Of course I did get a new board, and this is when the curse finally took hold. I didn't get out until a few weeks ago when we went to Whitecap. Here's my recap of that trip:

Thursday Night:
We leave Minneapolis about 8pm. Get to the one star hotel The Hurley Inn about midnight. Walk in and immediately greeted by the staff who are apparently half in the bag. Several bar patrons come out and tell us we have five minutes to drop our bags and get to the bar as our first round was on them. I was also asked if I was a pro snowboarder. Weird, but then again, this is Hurley WI.

Get to bar about 1pm, upon our arrival, we're met with a fresh beer. We play a game of darts, are given several free shots and several more drinks, I think we paid for one round total. The bar closes as my buzz is just getting started.

I already know this will be a good trip. Pray for LOTS of snow tomorrow.

Friday:

Get to Whitecap nice and early. Its completly deserted. I figure its just a weekday. My first run sucks. Not even a new board and a fresh wax job can help with the fact Whitecap doesn't groom their trails and the snow is shit. Hard and crusty with icy spots in several places. I'm thinking this was a bad idea to go so late in the season. The weather is overcast, cold and slightly windy. We'll see.

Around lunch time, they finally send out the groomer. We have lunch, and I remember the food at the resort totally sucks. Two undercooked brats, an order of nacho and cheese and a 16oz pop (which I had to pay another $1.50 to get a refill) almost filled me up. My Powerbar helped a little.

After lunch Michelle (Dave's whatever you want to call her) decides she wants to take the "Eagle's Nest" chairlift. Yeah, count me OUT. I meet them on the other side after bombing a run and then walking on the tram trail over to the chairlift. After getting to the top and meeting back up with them, find out she had a panic attack on the way over. I just laughed it off.

They close at 4pm and I'm pretty exhausted. Back to the hotel for some hot tub action and a nice nap.

Friday night:
We eat at a local joint and have pizza. I was actually surprised, the pizza was awesome. We polished off two large pizzas and an order of cheesebread. We go back to the hotel to get ready - it was about 9pm.

We went to several bars and I've realized we've gone too late in the season. Most of the bars have a handful of locals in them and not much else. After several hours of going up and down the mainstreet, and taking in several sub-par strippers, we call it a night. I put back a ton of beers, but am not all that drunk.

We go back to the hotel wondering if we can still catch last call - no chance. We wonder back to the room about 2am. Dave and Michelle stop and have sex for two hours in one of the tanning bed rooms they have at the hotel. I'm awoken at 4am with Dave shouting, "Wake up and look at me!" to which I opened my eyes to the horror of him gyrating his hips and shaking his dick at me from across the room. Without anything close to throw at him, I just passed back out and wondered if tomorrow would be better at Indianhead.

Saturday:
I high hopes for this day and Indianhead didn't disappoint. Freshly groomed trails, not a ton of people around made for a great start to the day. Even the long chairlift rides and several stops didn't matter that much to me. We carved that place to shreds. Indianhead has a great terrain park and I was eager to see if the pipe had been maintained this year. I went a few years back and it was simply awesome. I had such a great time, I was hoping for a repeat performance. I didn't have much time before we took lunch.

Let me just say the food at Indianhead was head and shoulder sabove Whitecap. I had a half pund angus cheeseburger and a heaping pile of fries. I barely finished my burger and hardly touched my fries and I was stuffed. I even got a free refill from the lady at the bar. Then my day got much better. Someone told us the "Bikini Race" was just starting and we better get out to check it out. We headed over and were not disappointed. Dave even got the last girl (a snowboarder no less) captured on his phone as a video - awesome!!

As if the day couldn't get any better, the SUN came out. We rode in the 20+ degree day for the last few hours and it was simply paradise. I split up and rode in the terrain park for about two hours and then headed in around 3pm, totally exhuasted. I knew I better save up some energy for tonight since it was St. Patricks weekend and there would be a lot more people out tonight.

Friday night:
We got back to the hotel and chilled out in the hot tub again and then figured we'd crash for a few hours (like we did the previous night) and then get ready around 9pm again. Ummmmmmmmmm yeah, we crashed HARD and didn't get up till 10:30pm!! We got up and hurried to get ready. We ordered pizza at the bar and then headed out about 11:30pm. We went back to the same bar (The Horse's Corral or something) and there were more people around, but the music was still horseshit. Then played BuckCherry's "Crazy Bith" four times within the first 30 minutes. Michelle wanted to go check out the rest of the bars. We went to virtually every bar and NOBODY, I mean NOBODY was out. The whole town was empty except for this one bar. We went back, had several more drinks and bascially hung out. We lamented on the trip and all agreed, next year, we're going to come up a few weeks earlier.

Sunday:
A lazy ride home was nice. Sunny and in the lower 30's. It was a great day to talk about the trip, the strange things Hurley offered up and lament about next year. Next year. . . . .

No pictures for the day, sorry - I gotta get to lunch!!!

Seacrest OUT.

2008-01-17T12:08:00.000-08:00

WHO WILL I VOTE FOR?

This is the year of another presidentail election and I really have no idea who I'm going to back. The last two elections I voted for Bush. The first time I voted for Bush, I thought he was in a good position to really go after terrorits and have some good effect on the middle east and the whole Saddam Hussein issue. the second time I voted for him it was purely out of spite for the Liberals and Democrats who just went after him. I thought the Libs just didn;t have any idea of how to fight terrorism and would leave us vunerable to another 9/11 attack. Not to mention, they were going to raise taxes and they clearly had no idea how to fix social security. It was the year of the flip flops with the Democrats and it drove me crazy.

I've always fancied myself as an independent. I've voted pretty much for every party at one time or another. I jsut go with the party who I think will best run the country. Although I want a "fiscally" responsible government, I also want better environmental policies, I want us to get off our dpenedence of foreign oil, and also be tough on illegal immigration and terrorism.

I have no idea which candidate will do this the best. The election is only in the primaries and the last time I did one of those 2008 Presidential Candidate Quizes It said the best candidate for me was Fred Thompson. Given he was nowhere to be found in any of the primaries so far, I'm kinda a little
nervous because if Fred isn't the nominee, i really don't know who I'll vote for. I know I'm not voting for Hilary (too liberal for me) or Barack (no experience) . Which I guess pretty much rules out voting Democrat - again.

Right now besides Fred Thompson, it looks like Mitt Romney is the closet thing I can get to an ideal candidate.

We'll see. . .

2008-01-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

WELCOME 2008. . .

Well its finally here - 2008. 2007 is but a memory, and it was a decent year. Very little drama (thank god) lots of stability (thank god) and a ton of things happening out in the real world.

For a recap of what happened - here's a brief list courtesy of Info Please. I don't remember what resource I used last year, but it is what it is.

I really haven't blogged as much as I would have liked to - does anybody though? With all the stability in my life, the drama in my life usually centered around my relationship with the mother of my son, my son, and my parents. There was some interesting things which happened around my soccer teams, which I'm pretty usre I've already written
about.

The big happenings for me was finally getting on a top tier soccer team (at 37 mind you) and playing well in the top tier (the 1st Division) of our soccer league. My parents selling thier house for a pile of dough and than running into major problems with a contractor who was a family friend. Every time I spoke to my parents, it was something new. The house is, for the most part, finally done. The last big project was their kitchen which was finished right before Christmas. Of course, they had everybody over for dinner to show off 95% of the renovations which are now completed.

Hmmmmm, my son getting sent off to military school in Virginia was a biggie. Check the school out here. Of course it ain't cheap. After I spoke with her telling her I wouldn't support her decision, she blurted out she was going to go back to court and get my support increased in order to get my share of the expenses for him
attending the school.  I got a good laugh after I met with an attorney and he said not to be
too concerned, since my payments would most likely go DOWN if she dragged me into court.
I think my Mom got my son a cell phone so he can call us from school. It was funny to see him go bonzo over the thing and carry it around with him wherever he went. He then proceeded to call his Mom every night after 7 9since its free mind you). I don't have any problem with it, I think its cool he's so into his new gadget, he just wants to get familiar with it - which is cool. I guess I know now how I act whenever I get some new geeky gadget and want to know every single thing about it.

I'm about to change jobs again for the new year. I landed a development job and will be movinig over on January 21st. I had a WordPress blog and am seriously considering using it as a play-by-play for my new job. We'll see, we'll see.

With every new year, we need to troll out our resolutions for the coming year. I think my big resolution last year was to really get into my blog and expand beyond the simple text
and hyperlinking and really go nuts with it.  I at least got a new theme, but am still interested
in getting Video on my blog and some other interesting things.

As with a billion other people, I've vowed to work out more and get my weight down again. Although every year, after the holidays, I get back on my diet and start eating better and of course, soccer and hockey resume shortly after the holidays. I eat like shit every year and pack on about 4 pounds over the holidays. I think I put on MORE this year, so my preparation for this summer is going to take a more diligent effort this year.

The guys I usually play hockey with on Friday nights decided not to continue getting ice time. One of my friends told me it was because one of the guys running it was not getting paid and just decided to end it. My only other option (besides joining an actual league) would be to play on Wednesday's. I really don't know if I'm going to be up for this since they get ice time at about 9:45pm. This means getting home around midnight and not getting to bed until about 1am. I wouldn't mind on Thursday or Friday, but midweek can be tough to catch up the rest of the week.

The other development is my new team which was put together from the remains of the Northland Wolves squad. Out of the 22 players on that team, we took almost the entire team to start this new team.

We played last session at Corner Kick and we ended up third in the league. I think we only lost two games - which was a nice change of pace. I guess the two guys running it wanted to get into a more "outdoor" league which doesn't use boards and uses a wider field so we can prepare for the outdoor season. I'm pretty sure we waited too long before we registered with another league and now I'm feeling like we're going to get locked out and will have to wait another session before getting back in, which will be about another 2 months - YUCK!

What will 2008 bring? Who knows, at least this past year went off without a hitch. i can only hope for more blessings for the coming year.

God Willing of course

2007-12-20T10:02:00.001-08:00

TV RANTS AND REVIEWS

Well, my favorite show recently got canceled and I'm still seething over it. NBC pulled the plug on Journeyman just 13 episodes in. They let them air the full lot of episodes they produced in order to give the show some form of a ending so it would work if they got picked up for the following season or give some of the viewers at least a few answers to some of the questions the show produced.

I thought the show was great and had started with a sort of x-files direction with the introduction of a rogue FBI agent and then the sudden death of this agent, a professor who knew about time travel but acted strange whenever the main character Dan questioned him about what was happening. Then the last episode Dan meets another time traveller. I thought the storyline was really picking up and starting to stretch out from the standard "Quantum Leap" storyline and brought a much more humanistic feel to it. I'm told this was due to the producers from the West Wing working on this show.

I recently read an interview with one of the producers and you could tell he was upset over the fact NBC never properly promoted the show, which I believe. The time slot wasn't the best, and you never saw and promotions for the show during football games or on the weekends. To me, this was a biggie. Bda time slot, poor promotion = low ratings.

In any case, I hope NBC releases the rights to the show so another channel can pick it up and continue the series. I more pissed I really found a show I like on mainstream tv, and then it gets yanked. Brutal, just brutal.

The other thing which really puzzles me is how ~~"Chuck"~~ got picked up for a full season as well as ~~"Life"~~. I've seen Chuck a few times and the show seemed so one dimensional.
Geek has hot CIA agent and CIA sidekick. Geek saves the world every week after having an entire database full of information. The acting was lame, the dialogue was even worse and after a few weeks, it just seemed like the same show over and over again. No character development and nothing really exciting because you already knew how it would turn out. As far as "Life" goes, I have to admit I've never seen the show, but I thought the premise was cool - cop gets locked up for a long time, then gets out and goes back to being a cop, but never played by the rules - a little Dirty Harry if you will. Then I read the reviews and it just got torn apart by the critics. I just checked out and never watched it. Again, I'm surprised why it got picked up for a full season.

Keeping on my TV rant, let's try and tackle The Real Housewives of Orange County on Bravo. I watched the first season and it was like a train wreck.  Arogant rich people, arogant rich
kids and all the "drama" which followed.  The only thing which was interesting about  the show was all the women had big fake boobs. Nearly every outfit they wore had plenty of cleavage. Beyond the low grade T & A, the family drama was pretty humerous for me. It was like I was routing for bad things to happen to t his rich, spoiled snobs. When things did happen, I was talking to the tv saying, "Serves you right you dumb mother fuckers."

One of the more interesting themes was the enpowerment of women on the show. A majority of the women were all very successful. The two who stuck out were Jeana and Vicki. Jeana was a real estate baron and Vicki was an insurance agent.

Jeana was successful enough to have purchased a house for each of her three kids. She married a pro baseball player who got beaned in the dugout (imagine that) which almost killed him and turned him into a surly, quick tempered husband. He was never on camera much, but when he was, it was funny. He was like the grumpy old man, cursing and yelling at everybody for no reason. Hilarious. In the new season, Jeana's now talking divorce. Then again, she was saying the same thing during the first season, so I'm wondering how much of this is scripted for the cameras.

In the first season Vicki's husband got laid off from Home Depot and in need of a job so this meant Vicki was the sole provider for her family. It seemed like it wasn't a big deal since Vicki had been so successful as an insurance broker. After he finally got a new job, it meant they didn't see each other very much and the dreaded "D" word was uttered. She was totally neurotic and really got on my nerves.  Her voice was like hearing two cats humping in my back
yard.

This new season was a lot like last season. Jo and one of the other Blondies moved on and are no longer part of the show - thank god. Jo was a total gold digger. She wanted all the $$$$ and no responsibility and her boyfriend wanted some woman who stayed home with the kids, cleaned the house and humped him when he wanted it. Dude just didn't get she was still like 23 and needed to be out there and be wild and crazy when she wants to - she was no where near what "smiley" really wanted. it was funny to see her just walk all over him and then watch him cry when she would break up with him.

ANYWAYS, getting back to this season. More moronic kids and arogant a-holes who don't seem to appreciate what the value of hard work. I felt bad for the girls whose dad Lou died. He was the guy last year who got the girls set up to market their "OC Energy" drink. I guess his Thai mail order bride took off with all of his money and told the ex wife and kids to F off. NOW THAT was funny. Although the two daughters seem to be the only grounded kids on the show. I guess not having all the money and power will do it to you huh? Looks like Jeana strapped on about 15 pounds since last year. She looks like crap, her face is all puffy and youc an see she's packed on a few. At least her two sons are getting along and her daughter seems to have her head screwed on straight.

There's some new blonde on who has the fake rack and is in real estate and last episode landing two big clients and then took them out and then proceeded to act like awhore in front of them. It seemed rather scripted for the show, but she comes off like a stupid blonde.

Oh well, we'll see where this season goes, but I just thank the lord when I see these people I feel like I have a "normal" life.

This is all I have for right now. What a day, only about 15 mintues left and then its time for me to pack it in for the day.

I'm sure I'll be writing more now I'm transitioning out of my current job. I already made my numbers for the year and I'm going to coast till the end fo the year.

LATERS BRAH!!

2007-12-19T10:40:00.000-08:00

RAMBLIN ON

Wow, its already been another month? Jesus time flys when you get old. There's been so much going on, I've just been riding the wave right now and trying to stay out of the fallout.

In a nutshell, here'e what's transpired in the last month at work:

Our department continues to expand and contract. We added four new positions. These "team lead" positions were just filled afew weeks ago and now they need to "backfill" the rest of the positions. This included around 11 open positions.

Here's where it gets interesting. . . .

I had the opportunity to interview for the position directly below the Team Lead, whcih would mean an increase in responsibility, an increase in salary and some other duties. I was also working on the training agenda and program for next year (which is a totally different story) but it's about to get shelved.

I decided to take another gig on another team and leave my nice comfy job I'm currently in. This will effectively end our training program because I'm really the only guy working on it and trying to get the materials together.

The new position is more programming oriented and I'll be doing a more developement stuff, which is what I'm really interested in. It's a lateral move, but next year I'll get another raise so at least the future looks bright.

I'll lament later on what a weird process it was for me to get the new job.

What else? Meh. Still arguing with the mother of my son about various things, including sending him to a military school, visitation and the cost of future traveling costs. I just wish she'd get a clue, wise up and actually compromise. I guess you can't win em all huh?

Man, I gotta change the station I'm listening to right now. My creative juices are lacking because I'm listening to the history of Howard Stern and its really confusing to try and recall everything that's happened over the past
month and be witty and thoughtful
when I'm half listening, half thinking about what to write. In any case, the show's been awesome
thus far. Lots of things I never knew about Howard and how his current show on Sirius is really
the evolution of something he's been working his whole life on. Its really cool.

I switched it up and am now listening to Trance music on my Sirius streaming player which at least has me able to concentrate better on what I want to say.

I guess over the next few weeks I'll have to post something witty about the year, review what's happened in my own life and what else is happening aroudn the world. I know I posted a cool timeline last year, so maybe I'll do something similar.

I think tonight I'll have some commentary on my United Red Devils, how I feel about NBC cancelling my favorite show Journeyman, ( I might have to re-do the link to Wikipedia or something because I'm fairly certain the show is canceled) and my thoughts on the new season of Housewives of Orange County.

Till then homies, keep your sticks on the ice.

2007-11-20T07:18:00.000-08:00

ITS WAS A GOOD WEEKEND.

This past weekend was a nice one. I went to Fargo for the annual Flatlands indoor tournament. WE kinda took the gas pipe and went 1-3. We barely lost our first game 1-0 to some chippy Crookston team, then beat up on a Grand Forks team 4-0. The GF game we pretty much dominated the entire game. Then on Sunday, we needed to win to stay alive. I personally didn't care too much since I was ready to go home at that point. We played some young, fast team, and our keeper let in some "soft" goals, but we kep tit close the whole game, but lost in the end 6-4. As fate would have it, we played the GF team we smoked 4-0 on Saturday for our last game to decide 5th or 6th place (out of 6 teams mind you). It hought we had the game bagged when we went up 5-4 with less than 3 minutes to play. Yeah, they scored and we went to sudden death overtime. Basically, whoever scores first, wins. They had one really good forward. Guy had some moves and played clean, so I gotta give him some props. Of course he got free on a break one v. one and had a nice slip move to the corner and toe poked it in for the win.

Besides playing well despite a pulled calf muscle and not playing the last two weeks, I still managed 4 goals and several assists. I kept my head and my mouth shut the whole weekend except when we played the coorkston team who's goalie elbowed me in the neck, the punched me in the back of the head. No call either time. So I boarded the shit out of him
and got a two minute penalty for it. Then when I was wrestling int he corner, I checked him again pretty hard and did some damage to his elbow. I didn't care, their team was a buch of hacks, and I was all to happy to lay out some hits and damage to their guys.

Besides the good soccer, my friend Dave ordered UFC 78 so we got to watch some pretty good fighting. It was funny to hear the guys who were unfamiliar with MMA and the UFC talk about it. I was dropping all the lingo like, half guard, full guard, back control, full mount, etc. Everytime Dave and I would use these terms people would ask me what they meant, it was funny.

When I left on Sunday, I was glad I came. I know last year I was poo pooing the whole affair, but I really did enjoy myself this year, and I'm pretty sure the guys were glad I played.
The ride home was long, but worth it.

The only thing worth mentioning is my son's mother is going to take me back to court to try and get my child support increased to pay for his military school ($26K per year). I've already spoke to several attorneys and they all say I shouldn't even be scared. When we did the calculations online at the state site, it actually came up lower, so the odds of her getting a court to double my support simply to pay for his school is not going to happen.

Anyways, turkey day is right around the corner, so we'll see how the rest of the week and the holiday goes.

LATE

2007-11-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FALL OFF THE NETWORK?

Jesus time flys when you get old. Like I always say, "There's always too mcuh going on to say up with." Not to mention to try and Blog about my boring, domestic life.

Of course, the last two months have seen some pretty funny stuff happen, some pretty stupid stuff and everything else in between. My cousin is going back to Iraq. He was just recently pinned as a Major and is moving up the ranks FAST. He told his parents he wants to get involved in politics. It wouldn't be so bad, but his parents are bleeding heart Liberals and he said he'd run as a Cnservative. I had a good laugh when my Mom seemed so shocked. The poltiical divide in out family is a whole nother conversation for another day.

The second big topic is my son getting sent away to a military school. I could probably write five pages on this topic alone, but will spare you all in the internal drama and back stories. Let's just say my son's mother is now paying the price for being so controlling when it comes to the time she allows me to spend with him. Every time I wanted to get some form of physical or joint legal custody, she fought me tooth and nail When I wanted to re-do our visitation schedule just to get more time to see him, she fought me every step of the way. Now, those choices are coming back to haunt her in spades. Some ofthe decisions I really question, but then again, its always been about her and only her. She always told me she wanted a father for her son, and wanted to have a stable home life and stable life for Cody since he needs structure so bad. Ummmm, so why did you marry a military guy who moves about evey 2-3 years, and is gone most of the time? Really stable there princess. cody oftent ells me his step father could care less about him and never has time to do stuff with him. Again, another fine example of something you wanted to give your son, but your own choices came before those which affected your family.

This is merely a nice transition to the current topic of her once again trying to rectify a probelm she created by shipping out our son to a military school without really considering all of the options first - like coming to live here with me. The one huge fucking problem this is going to create is the issue of my child support.

Now, I went through this little battle with her a few months ago when after my arrearages ran out - or had almost ran out, she called, looking for more money. I was like, "You're such a cunt, I can't handle it sometimes." After some testy conversations (mainly on my side, mind you) we agreed on a slightly increased amount per month. One thing she said, which I now harken back to, is her saying, "Do I need what the state minimum is? No. Do I think its a bit excessive, YES. Let's just find a decent amount and we'll go from there." Those words are so haunting now she needs to pony up 26K to send him to this school, and bascially threatened me when I said both my gif and my Mom (who loves my son to death and will do or pay pretty much anything to get him whatever he needs) put the kybosh on my idea of getting any financial support.

This leaves me in a very precarious position. I've contacted an attorney to find out what my options are and to try and determine how much my support would actually go up. This story isn't over by a long shot.

This has been by far the biggest story the last few weeks. The only other minor thing is I got screwed by my D1 soccer team. After a full year of playing as a sub, filling in, being dependable and playing well, I get kicked to the curb again for the next indoor league. At least I found a great replacement for them. I got picked up by an MASL team who play in the 4th division which is actually above the MRSL league I've played in for the past few years. I got picked up by their indoor team, and now I'm playing with them and another group of guys who quit my summer D3 team the Wolves.

It was funny to see the email from my manager Tony saying it was a minority of players who had egos and now they're all gone. Well, if you mean 12 guys out the 20 we had had, if that's a minority, then I'm Chris Rock.

The new team is called the St. Paul Celtics and I think we have a great squad. If we play in D3 again, I think we'll do just fine. Monday nights is probably where we'll end up. There's too many "legacy" teams in the Sunday night league. You know, the teams who lose just enough games to stay where they're at and not move up, but have enought alent to beat just about anybody? Pikers I call them.

Anywyas, more personal stuff later. . . Sunday is Beckham at the dome which should be fun. I'm looking forward to it. I even rocked my LA Galaxy jersey today.

LATES 4 NOW

2007-08-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

IT'S BEEN A LONG FEW WEEKS. . .

Well, I was going to start a post about three weeks ago when all hell was breaking loose in the sports world. All summer long its been about Barry Bonds and his steroid use, then it was all about Michael Vick and his dog fighting ring
and getting charged, then having the NFL commish bar him from going to training camp. THEN
as a cycling fan, I tuned into the 2007 Tour De France only to see several riders test positive for doping and three teams drop out and then the leader Michael Rasmussen who held the yellow jersey for ten days, was removed from the tour by his own team and fired because of the skepticism about his whereabouts prior to the tour starting and his skipping of the pre-tour doping tests.

Just about the time I was getting over this, another bombshell dropped. An NBA ref was charged with betting on NBA games and fixing games.

Mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnn talk about a fruitful summer. So much going on, the sports talk radio shows have had plenty of fodder. Besides Barry breaking Hank Aaron's coveted home run record. We also have A-Rod about to pass 500 home runs and Tom Galvine about to get this 300th win as a pitcher.

If all this wasn't enough, David Beckham finally made a short debut for the Galaxy after a TON of speculation all night long. I did see his feverish 12 minutes on the pitch and the crowd went nuts everytime the ball was near him. Good to see Becks finally getting comfy in LA.

Okay, so after all the sports hoopla, last night turned into a nightmare for local residents here in Minneapolis. A bridge collasped over the Mississippi river around 6:30pm and a highway which was packed during the back end of rush hour traffic. Witnesses said the bridge was bumper to bumper when it gave way.

Pictures here
Video here

Yeah, its been a hectic few weeks in my world to say the least. So many shoes dropping all over the place it's been fun keeping track of all the comings and goings in all of my favorite sports.

Changing gears slightly, one of my summer soccer teams is about to end our season on a very, very sour note. We started out 7-2, and then the wheels completely fell off. People wouldn't show up, people skipped practice and a cadre of other things which lead to our downfall. One of the other big issues was the manager/player Tony. I think people had issues with him from day one and just never tried
to talk to him about it. The issues just continued to pile up until the last few games when people were absent and we finally lost to the worst team in the league last week - it spilled over. Several emails went back and forth, accusations were made, several players piped in and said they bailed because of issues with Tony, other chimed in and supported him. Its at a point now where lines have been drawn and people are choosing sides and I have no idea where I should end up.

I live down south and driving 45 minutes up north to our home field in Andover is a haul. The team they're forming is for indoor and I'm not sure I want to have to drive 40 minutes to play indoor when I can drive 15 minutes and drive to a facility and play with guys who I've played with for much longer. Right now, I dunno.

On a higher note, I've been playing lights out for my first division team and they have will be playing in Roseville in their outdoor season, and then they also want me to play with them at the Augsburg indoor league which we did very well in last year. I'm excited to conitnue to play with these guys and leave some of the drama with the Northland Wolves beyond me for now.

Right now, this is all I got. . .

LATE

2007-07-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

LIFE MUST GO ON

What a weird couple of days. Sunday night we lost another soccer game. I can't put my finger on what's wrong with our team, we're still 7-3 and firmly in control of first place in the 3rd division. We still haven't put it all together yet, and I don't know when it will happen. There's a few things stuck in my craw so to speak about certain players and they're selfishness when they play, but nothing too major. I mean, we're still in first place, and we've missed a few guys over the past four games - so maybe when we get everybody together we'll click.

The big thing right now
is "practice".  Like Allen Iverson once said, "We're talking about practice - practice.  No no no not a game,
practice." Why should I drive an hour in rush hour traffice to do 6th grade drills and a little scrimmaging? It's not worth it to me. Since there are several people who never show for practice but routinely start games, but if I miss practice, then I won't start, I just really wonder about the consistency of how certain decisions are made. Since my son is here now, it won't really matter the rest of the season because I won't be going to practice and I'll be putting in my time and playing hard and I'll just leave it at that.

At least my 1st division team is doing better. I always play well when I play with those guys. Last night was no exception. I had some great chances and also had several really nice crosses into guys.  We did we ended up winning 2-1 which felt good. My legs felt great and I still had plenty of energy when the final whistle blew. I've really fit in well with this team, which makes the struggles I'm having with my 3rd division team all the more mysterious. Maybe it's because I can give a cross or a pass to someone on my Monday night team and I have full confidence they will get to it and make something happen, as opposed to some guy(s) on my sunday night that when I don't pass to them, they cry like babies. I don't get it, they want the ball all the time, but then don't go to the ball when I cross it in, or pass to someone else. After a while, if there's no effort on their part, I'm just going to go to someone else. I just have to play my game and not think about the cry babies I guess.

Besides having to get that off my chest, some other things have come to my attention. It finally became official last week - I'm going to be a daddy again. Our adoption plans finally came together and we matched with a couple and by the end of this week we'll have a baby girl come home with us. This has lead me to email or call all of my friends to let them know what's going on. I hadn't talked with my best bud Mozi for about four months and felt awful for not calling sooner to keep in touch. We talked for about an hour last night about everything, it was really cool. He's dating some woman he's really happy with, just interviewed for a new position with his company and might be moving out to Syracuse NY. He said its doubtful since there's 7 people in the running for the job, but you never know. I might actually join his fantasy football league this year since I keep sandbagging on him every year saying I'm in, but then something comes up. Anyways, it was a great conversation and he was really excited for us - which was really cool.

On a more sour note, I finally tried to extend the peace sign to PK over the whole Manchester thing, our impending adoption and trying to repair our "friendship". Oh well, so much for that effort. I emailed him on Friday and its Tuesday now and nothing yet. No call, no email, no nothing. I guess I'm not too surprised. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, but pretty much anybody I've told has been all over us congratulating us and wishing us well. Maybe its just time to burn the bridge and move on for good. I can't say I didn't try and repair our "friendship", and beisded, I think I'm better off anyways.

To me, this is why I am the way I am. I only have a few close friends and I prefer it that way. It's just shit like this that drives me insane. You think people are your friends, then they cut your throat and stab you in the back every chance they get. I could go on for hours about this, but its not worth the long rambling diatribe. I'll unload sometime later.

The point here is the people I've always been close with know what's going on in my life, everybody else I could give a shit about. I guess it's what happens when you get married, settle down and start your own life. I just don't need people around who are going to treat me poorly and not act like a friend.  My life is pretty complete as it is right now.  I've got a son,
I've got a wife, dog, cat, a great house in the suburbs, soon to have another daughter, a nice car,
a great job, incredible co-workers, I play on two soccer teams. I finally achieved a huge personal goal this past season by getting on a first division team. I've really gotten much better and have brought my game up another notch. I could never have done it with the
Manchester guys - pure and simple. If anything, now I see how much they were holding me back.

Right now, I have the world by the tail and I'm loving every minute. There's a minimum amount of stress in my life and everything else just feels right. And it doesn't really get much better than this.

Sorry, no pics for today - maybe tomorrow.

I still have to address Beck's coming to America since he's here now, getting out of Iraq, and some other strange things which have been on my mind lately.

2007-06-29T21:44:00.001-07:00

AM I OFFICIALLY OLD NOW??

My most recent post (ahem, over a month ago now) talked about my mid life crisis and my fears of growing old. My fears have been somewhat confirmed. Like my lack of committment? I do, it allows me to talk about getting older, without actually admitting it. Better my ego and my subconscious don't take it too seriously. But I digress. I had an eye appointment a few weeks back and was dreading it. I know I squint a lot and since I sit in front of a computer all day, I figured I was about due. I go in and the first thing is the doc asked me if anybody in my family has glasses. I said yeah, they all do - except me. After a few quick tests, he gave me the "good" news. I have astigmatism with my eyes and over time, it will most likely get worse.  Since I stare at a PC all day long, he thought glasses
would help me see better and of course it will be easier on my eyes.  The perscription he gave me was
pretty weak compared to my family members. When I showed my father my perscription, he basically laughed at me and said I was lucky. Without his glasses, my Dad is basically blind. Needless to say, it made me fell better I needed glasses, but not that bad. So now I have a pair of glasses I use at work and they work awesome. I can really tell my eyes don't have to work as hard anymore. I think I'm still in the breaking in period because when I take them off, my eyes take a minute or two to adjust to not wearing them. Hopefully soon I'll be ok either way.

Here I am on a Saturday night, listening to Leo Cohen's "I'm Your Man" cd. Its an old CD and it reminds me of Fargo. Which is                                                                            a nice transition into the next topic at hand.  I'm having a LOT of dreams about NDSU again.
least I think I'm finally coming to terms with these demons. Instead of the agonizing, depressing, lost dreams I used to have, they've become more joyful at least.  More laughing, more interesting and less sad.  I dunno how to address this
new take on these dreams, but it has been something I can ponder during my 35 minute drive to work in the morning.

Soccer is going well. My 3rd Division team is 6-1 and on top of the divison. My 1st divison team isn't doing all that well, we're 3-2 and in the middle of the pack. I dunno why I don't get more playing time on my 1st division team. In our last game, I had two assists on both goals. If not for our sweeper, we would've won 2-1, instead of losing 3-2. I guess that's why they play the game huh? Oh well, at least that "other" team isn't doing so well either. 2-4 and sucking fumes at the bottom of their divison. They also went 0-6-1 in their indoor league. I'm jsut wondering when their going to get sick of losing and wise up. Guess its not my place. I was considering contacting PK, but just haven't had the balls to yet. I mean, it was probably the best thing for me since I dropped about 10 lbs, got quicker and my shot is harder than it was in college. I've also achived my goal of finally playing on a 1st division team. I'm pretty sure afte this year, I'll get more playing time. Our team is just so deep at the midfield position, its hard to play well when all the guys are so good.

Just as an update, the immigration bill failed and thank gawd for that. It would have granted a sort of "amensty" to illegals already here and allow them to get citizenship. What a stupid bill. I seriously doubt anything will get done with any of these major issues till afte the election. Bush is too lame duck right now and both parties are posturing for a shot at the white house.

The Apple iphone was finally released this week amid a ton of speculation and long lines at AT&T stores nationwide.  You can read all about it
at Engadget. I'm not even remotely interested in it, but it's been about the biggest hyped techno gadget over the past 5 years or so. There are many cool things about like the removal of any keys and an all touch screen interface. Only time will tell if its truly worth its weight in gold.

Anways, no soccer on these days, just this stupid soccer show.  Which is sad considering I'm kinda getting into it now that I've attempted to get through a
whole episode. I cound it curious the show's team Harchester United sounds remarkably similar to my other favorite premier league team Manchester United. I can't say I've ever delved into investigating if there are any links intentional or not. All I know is there are some serious betty's on the show:

2007-05-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?

I've often wondered when my mid-life crisis will hit. I'm quickly approaching 40, and after listening to people, I'm at a ripe age for this to happen. For some reason, I just don't think its going to happen to me. I've often thought of who I really am, and tonight was no exception. Went to the new movie The Invisible and it was rather depressing. It was about a guy who almost gets killed and then is in a state of purgatory and has to find out who jacked him. The irony is the girl who he knows does this to him dies at the end and in effect saves him. Of course she dies, but he lives - weird. On the way home, in the darkness, my mind once again started to wonder.

I saw the dark lights of the highway and saw a few cars passing by, I've always loved the darkness and the night. The wind blowing over the concrete and grass and the trees singing their song to the shadows. It made me think again about who I really am. This is by all measures, what 20 minutes of deep thinking got me.. .

I am for all intense purposes a chameleon. Not by the usual standards mind you. I blend. Into everything and into any situation, group or conversation. I like to think of myself as somewhat undefineable. I love sports but follow few teams closly. I watch ESPN and get enough info to hold a decent conversation at the lunch table with the other people I work with. I listen to talk to radio and get enough fodder to hold my own with either conservatives or liberals. I literally stand for something but nothing, all at the same time. Right now, I'm in a more conservative phase. One of my true loves is really music. I have such diverse tastes in music (thanks mom and dad) I can hold any conversation and actually know quite a bit about everything from the Stones to black metal, punk and trance and techno. Its probably the only thing which a spend a considerable amount of time studying and loving. As far as dress goes, I can go with the three piece suit, or dress down with the long baggy shorts, t-short and baseball cap pulled down low. I can walk into any situation and instantly blend in. In order to do so, you must not stand out, but simply the opposite. You can't be too boisterous or loud, you can't be staunch about anything and above all - OBSERVE EVERYTHING.

I feel I don't mislead people, but merely change what their perceptions of me are. Once, when my friends and I were in Wisconsin on a snowboarding trip, we ended up at a strip club. We were early and went to a side table. Lucky for us, two dancers just got done and came over to talk with us. I hate strip clubs since I don't get the premise for guys anyways. You go somewhere, have some half naked woman rub her tits on you. You can't touch her, but you willing give her $20 for her trouble??
You pay some women to get you all aroused and hard as hell, but you can't To me, this is just another classic example of how women really do run the world. ANYWAYS, two strippers come over and sit down. Now my friends are big fans of the strippers - me not so much. My friends attempt to start several conversations. I find out one of our half naked friends likes Marilyn Manson and I notice she has a small lunch box. If you're a Manson fan, you know Ol Marilyn used to haul around a small lunchbox. His fans caught on, and then they too started this fad of carrying aroung a little aluminum lunchbox. Urban Legends abound about his minions bringing the lunchboxes to gigs and passing out X to everybody. So I make light of this and ask if the lunchbox had anything to do with her fondness for the band. All I got was a deer in the headlights look. I quickly realized I just tried to start a conversation with someone with little or no knowledge about music, she just liked his music, and really didn't care too much beyond this. After several more attempts to start conversations by my friends with really nice ones like, "Are your tits fake or real" and several other gems, I decided I would have a little fun with our new friends. I leaned over and told her I was josing for some nose candy and its been over six months since I got out of treatment. Now, I've never been in treatment, and no, I've never even done coke. I was merely drawing on my knowledge of strippers, and going with thlowest common denominator - drugs. What followed could only be described as radio gold. Of course she was going crazy too, did I have any? Did I want to go in the back room and do some bumps with her before her act? After some careful wording of my reply, we continued to talk about her addiction and the cruel world of hole-in-the wall strip clubs, and life on the road. Jesus, there are just sometimes you wish you could tape record what people say just to play it back later and muse at the funny situations you talk yourself into. Even though I was half in the bag, it was still hilarious to me.

There ya have it. If you asked all the people I work with about who I am and what my tastes are, or what I stand for, you'd probably get 20 different answers, but this is how I want it. I want to be mysterious, I like keeping people at a distance, and not completely giving up all of my secrets. Here's another reason for my blog. Not too many people know about it even now, and I would venture even less read it on a regular or semi regular basis. I do not look at this like a diary, I do not give up my secrets that easily (and I have few doozies, let me tell you) and doubt I will anytime soon. As being a stundent of time, I hope my writing will do the same.

I guess you never know. Loreena Mckennitt playing on youtube, this on my laptop, and the dog at my feet, quietly breathing, dreaming about chasing the deer out of our yard. After my experiences with D (more secrets - actually just an earlier post) she said she could never listen to Loreena again because of our mutal connection to her music. I still get pretty emotional from it too, but I still listen to it, she has such a haunting, emotional voice. It just naturally puts me in a trance, just like Enya's voice. I thing I've always known is there's other places beyind what we perceive as reality. The gateway to these places, I feel is music like this. It strikes you so deep in your soul, you can't help but let your soul take your heart and your mind away from this mind numbing, cold place. It's like setting yourself free, if only for a few minutes. Sometimes its all you need to fiind your center again.

How can you not think these are rather powerful lyrics?

May it be an evening star
Shines down upon you
May it be when darkness falls
Your heart will be true
You walk a lonely road
Oh! How far you are from home

Mornie utúlië (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornie alantië (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now

May it be the shadows call
Will fly away
May it be you journey on
To light the day
When the night is overcome
You may rise to find the sun

Mornie utúlië (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornie alantië (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now

A promise lives within you now

Yeah, pretty intense shit. Anyways, here's a pic for the day. I was listening to the song and the images from the Lord of the Rings movie is pretty intense.

On that note, here you go:

PURE AWESOMENESS.

Till the next time. . .

2007-04-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

TOP 5 BREAKUPS OF ALL TIME

I just finished watching "High Fidelity" with John Cusak. If you're not a fan of music, or were living under a rock in 2000, then you missed one hell of a great movie. I've already seen the movie multiple times, but thought I would watch it tonight to get some writing ideas. Boy, did I come up with a great idea. I'm going to do the same thing Cusak's character does - go through my top 5 breakups of all time. . .starting of course in 9th grade with Anne Nelson. In order to completely expose the innocence, I will use their real names. the chances they'll actually read this is about a million to one - I betting the one will take a long long time to arrive - so here goes.

#5 Anne Nelson
It was 9th grade and I had exactlY three girlfriends prior to Anne. She was really the first time I really felt like I was in love with a girl. To be frank, I had never even kissed a girl before her. Oh sure, some pecks on the cheek and stuff, but not like kissing ya know? Our cute puppy love lasted almost a year. Everything was great until she went out of town. The few weeks prior to this, the school slut, Colleen Thomas was flirting with me nonstop. She'd say hi in the hallway, smile at me and flirt with me all the time. Anne went out of town and suddenly Colleen was all over me - at my locker, talking and calling me. Needless to say, I got taken in by the trashy whore and felt like Anne and I were over. It was hard, Anne and I stayed friends for a while and me and Colleen only lasted a few weeks. I tried to get back together with Anne, but it was to no avail, she already moved on. I broke her heart, then let her break mine - I was a victim of the "one in the hand, two in the bush" thought. There were several valuable lessons I learned here. A) Never drop someone you love for something you think is better. B) Don't try and stay friends with your ex's, it only severly complicates things and C) Never give your ex a shoulder to cry on, she'll only use it to make you feel guilty and a bunch of other lame stuff.

#4 Kristine Woodruff
She was blonde, smart, had a decent body and was a femminist. The femminist didn't bother me too much. I was a sophmore in college, and it was 1991. I had just finally gotten over my last ex of two and some odd years Kathie (#3 on our list) and was ready for something fresh. It lasted anout 6 months. I knew her roommates and it was a weird situation at first. The first time we met and hit it off, I was drunk and high and her roommates had lined her up with 5 guys at one of their house parties - I got lucky and survived the cut because I could carry a decent conversation, and I didn't pull out her panties and use them as a toy to play with her new kitten. Kristine enjoyed sex (rare for a femminist I know) and we got along well. She was pretty quiet, but smart and determined. I was also dating a few other women at the time and after I kissed one of my friends on the lips good night after getting dropped off, she found out and abruptly broke up with me. I told her what had happened but it was of no use. Since I had other women I was dating, it didn't kill me, but it sure irked me for some strange reason. I ran into her a few times later and her femminazi attitude had gotten much worse and far more radical. When I spoke to her, it really bugged me. I wouldn't doubt if she was a lesbian by now.

The next three are awfully tight, but #1 will never change, but the next two are neck and neck. Some days I think one is #3 and the other is #2, depending on how much I analyze it.

#3 - Kathie Musch
I was still a sopmore and she was a freshman. We hit it off right away and had a lot in common, We dated and it was very much a love/hate relationship. We argued and fought a lot, but we were both sexually adventurous. She was the woman who taught me a LOT about sex. She also taught me how sex can used as a weapon. I fell in love and when things were great, they were awesome. Unfortunately, she was from rural america and I was a suburban boy with rich parents. Her parents were farmers. We were from to different backgrounds and I think it never could have lasted. I really did lover her and we were off and on for for about two years, until I finally gave up and she moved away with the guy she dated right after me. This seemed to be a pattern with me, most the women I dated married the guys they dated right after me. I really have no idea how to take this, but it has happened more than once - this being the case here. The funny thing about Kathie is right after she started dating her present husband, he left for summer vacation and Kathie stayed in Fargo. I got several calls to come over and satisfy her. I guess I was the only guy who ever figured out how to give her the big O. It happened three or four times, and I'm sure he probably will never know. I guess he didn't like me much. I have no idea why, since after I finally got over her, I decided never to get involved with my heart unless it was absolutely necessary. As far as I was concerned, I knew how to use sex as a weapon, and how to not get emotionally involved unless absolutely necessary.

#2 CJ
Probably one of the hardest relationships I had to give up. Several years out of college, several years removed from realtionship breaker #1 on the list (Karis), several years of a stable job, living alone and enjoying my bachelor lifestyle. Lots of partying, even more women, and comfy with where I was in my life. We met at the Gasthoff in Minneapolis and we found out we had a TON in common. She was a jock, I was a jock. She liked hard rock music, I loved hard rock music. She worked with kids, I had a son. There was a lot of stuff we hit it off with right away. The realtionship lasted several years and I was off and on with her. I couldn't really make up my mind. She was great in bed, wore sexy clothes, and got along great with my son. The breakup was the hardest for me because I was ready to settle down and was also dating tow other older women who made over 100K per year, owned their own house and wanted me to get serious with them. At the time, I felt our future together did not look well. Lots of struggling financially, and the feeling of never getting ahead really scared the hell out of me. I already had three friends who were in the midst of divorces and they all said it was mainly over money. It was hard to say goodbye, but I had to. It was a shile since I really cried over a woman and I really miss her still. I was emotionally involved to the hilt and the pain lasts to this day.

Four down and one left. This one is at the top of the list for several reasons. I'll keep it short and sweet, so here's #1 with a bullet - KARIS.

#1 - KARIS

we hit off strong and fast. I was a junior in college, she was senior. She was graduating in two weeks and I had another full year. Once again, I found out we had a ton in common. We were both sexual dynamos in bed, we were both jocks, we both wanted to go to grad school together. Within six months, she made me move out of the house I was living in with my soccer buds, was pregnant, and wanted me to settle down with her and give up my partying ways and not hang out with my friends. I didn't want to get meoitonally involved. I just got out of my realtionship with breakup #3 and was just getting my life bacj in order. One night, with only several days left in her college life, Karis rolled over and asked me what I wanted to do. After only two weeks I had to decide if I wanted to get serious or walk away. It was a major crossroad I was not prepared for. I took the relationship but was not prepared at ALL for what was about to happen to my life.

In 6 months, my life was turned upside down. In another year I had a beautiful baby boy, we moved in and then she moved back to Minneapolis. We broke up and got back together seveal times. I moved several times and was under the impression we'd get back together (her words) and now 11 years later and I still ove my son dearly and have an awesome relationship, but the tremors from our relationship are still being felt today. We're as unpleasant to each other as ever, and I don't think it will ever get settled. Did I fuck up a few times while we were datiing and she was pregnant? You bet. However, the only thing which has brought me any happiness has been my son. The pain, agony and misery she has caused has crossed 11 years. For the most part, I'm over it, but the bitterness will always be there. The only thing which could take away a remote amount of paing would be her admitting she did some wrong things too - but it hasn't happened yet, and I doubt it ever will.

2007-04-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

LONG TRIP AHEAD. . .

What a week this has been. My son was here last week and he left on Saturday. Now, the big news is the terrible shooting massacre at Virgina Tech college. Now I'm sitting here in the airport on a low battery (pos laptop) and typing furiously to try and get this entry hammered out before I get on a plane on my way to Portland for my trip. My sidekick Steve is already out in Portland, having taken the early flight out. Being a night owl, I opted for the late flight. I can sleep or read, whatever. Three and some hours to kill – f u n

Today is the day after the massacre at VT, and now the names are being released of the 33 people who were killed. What a sad and depressing day for a LOT of people. I can't imagine sending my son of to college, never to have him return. Guess they're having a hard time finding out information about the shooter as well. He was a pretty big loner and had a lot of issues he was probably dealing with, In one of his classes, he refused to say “hi” to anybody, and simply signed in with a “?” instead of his name. His creative writing professors also mentioned his writing was rather disturbing. So much so, they referred him to counseling. This story is going to have a ton of legs and will probably dominate the headlines for some time. Read all about it here

Anyways, what else is new? Not much, my son came and went in a flash, It's like I always say, it goes by way too fast. My job has been rather taxing as of late. I'm the point person for this new AM training program the director requested. I wanted the program to be for all incoming AM's, as opposed to all of the existing account managers like the director wants. This last week was pre-testing for the first module and it was a bit rocky. Some people can really get on my nerves and I have no idea how Jon keeps a level head dealing with these people. It seems like no matter what, they're never happy. One woman is married and I don't like her – she bugs. She always has a chip on her shoulder and no matter what I do and try and accommodate her, its just not good enough. Oh well, she can STFU and FO for all I care. Other than some really minor push back, things finally went a lot smoother. This next week (April 23^rd) is the start of normal training. It will be nice to not be so responsible for so much because I didn't get much done last week, which sucks. If I didn't have the training program to take of, I'd probably be around 60K in renewals. I'm still closing in on 40, so it's all good. I figure if I can book a half million in renewals, get my star and pull this training program off, I'm in for some major bonus points with Pat our director.

More later. . . .

2007-03-16T17:53:00.000-07:00

ITS OVER. . .

Not anything you might think is over, but something near and dear to my hear. The people who bought my parents quaint 1950's style rabler have chosen to level the house. I went by the house and the place I knew as home for over 20 years is now gone. A very large, muddy crater is all that's left. As I drove by, my heart sank and it wa hard not to ball my eyes out. I feel like these rich assholes are coming into Edina everywhere, leveling these houses, and putting up these obscene 8 million dollar homes. They don't fit into the area, and stand out like sore thumbs.

In the old neighborhood, within a block of my parents house, I counted 4 places this has already happened, count my parents house and another one around the corner and it's 6 total.

Awful, just awful. Usually people say, "There goes the neighborhood." when some white trash people or folks from the inner city move in, but its very fitting in this case.

I drove home, letting all the memories flood my brain and allowed me to shut everything out till I was aware I was parked in my garage for who knows how long. I can't call my Mom and tell her because of her frail state right now - she'd probably have a fricking heart attack. We all knew this was going to happen, but to stand there, looking into a place I spent so many happy times, was devastating for me. So much, and nwo its all gone.

I don't have anything else to say, other than to feel the sorrow and try to move on. I have no pics to post, I just want to keep those happy memories - happy.

R.I.P.
6320 Westwood Court
1985-2007

OUT

2007-03-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

TOO MUCH GOING ON. . .

Wow, where do I start? So much has happened since the last post about a month ago. My parents renovation has turned into a disaster, my Mom is having a nervous breakdown because of how slow the guys working on the house are going, my Dad is ready to fire them all and finish it himself, my son attacked his Mom and is now in line for Juvi court, and I'm still here, half awake (soccer game last night at 10:00pm) and trying to keep my eyes open.

Yeah, the remodeling job is not going well. My Mom has decided to just flip the house and move on. The contractor is an asshole (friend of the family)and continues to drag his feet, much to the dismay of my parents. Their project is one the largest he's had and on top of this, he continues to take on more work. I went over and spoke with them on Monday and my mom said he now has 8 projects he's working on - 8!! The guy is spread so thin, and they're only about halfway through my parents deal, which should be DONE this month. I feel for them, this has been an awful experience for my parents. I'm sure the house is going to turn out nice, but theys till have to knock out two walls, redo the kitchen, the living room and put on siding. This is in addition to the rest of the stuff they only have half done. I'm thinking maybe they'll be done by May or June. My mom wants to get this house on the market as fast as she can, even in lieu of the poor market. I could be wrong about the market though, her real estate agent told her she's closed 8 deals in the last two months, and says the market is fine. Well, yeah for a millionaire it probably is.

The nice thing was at least Moms got to take a week off and go to Florida with my gif. They both had a great time, got some sun and relaxed quite a bit. I got a sweatshirt outa the deal and a t-shirt which was cool. While they were away, my Dad and I got to chill and spend some time together. We took in a few high school hockey games (poor Edina, they lost to Grand Rapids in the semi's of the State Championship) and got dinner on two of the nights. It was an exceptionally cool time for me because I learned more in those few days than the last 30 years I've know my father. I found out he had a fricking Q Clearance which I never knew about. He told me some funny stories about being in the military, how he joined, and what he did. All these stories were great because I always thought he was just a telecom guy and had a mathematics degree. He told me about how even his CO in his reserve unit couldn't ask him about what he did because of his clearance - funny stuff. He also shared some more college stories about him and his frat buddies and some of the crazy stunts they pulled. He told me a story about how they somehow got a hold of a mine sweeping boat and they had planned to take out for a summer and just drift up and down the coast of California with his frat brothers. the crazy thing is this was back in the 70's when there was no internet, they did all this stuff with just their brains and some crafty engineers and some basic knowhow - insane. In any case, I hope to make out trek to the pizza joint a weekly or monthly trip, I really feel much closer to him now.

For the past two weeks I've been trying to get a hold of my son, and it seems I didn't get to him in time. A few days ago, things a bit out of hand with his Mom and he had quite the meltdown. Throwing things and really going off. He called his Mom a few choice things, then threw a drumstick at her, then threw two D batteries and hit her arm (she was holding her baby daughter Kate at the time) so she called the cops. Cops filled out the form, and told her they would be in contact with her. I guess the cops asked her if she wanted him removed from the house and she said "no". The cop went over to my son and told him the only reason he wasn't going to jail was because of his mother and he should feel lucky and thank her.

I have no idea where this is going, but it doesn't sound good. I could've told this has been a long time coming. His mom said they think it's his meds, but I disagree. She's going to try and get him into to see a psychiatrist so they can prescribe more drugs for him - fucking brilliant. What a great way to take care of a problem, medicate him and forget about him. I asked where all this anger is coming from and she just mumbled something and then said she thinks its his meds. Whatever. You're oppressing the poor child. sooner or later, all this anger has to manifest itself. she grounds him for weeks on end, takes away all of his stuff and trys to control his life WAY too much. His stepdad could give a shit about him, and she's wrapped up in her new baby, leaving him on the outside looking in. What a brutal way to live. I surprised it hasn't happened sooner. Like I've always said, I feel for him. His mother is a control freak and he's a teenager trying to find his way and get some form of independence from her. I'm thinking he'll be up here within the next year or so at the latest, which I'm looking forward to. Her family has always been so dysfunctional, and now this. Soemthing has to change, and no amount of drugs or therapy I feel is going to do the trick. I just hope he can hold on long enough. . .

On to bigger and better things - sort of. My first divison soccer team has been taking the gaspipe as of late. We wrapped up the championship in the rec league over at Augsburg, but then moved up the open division which was a great big eye opener. We won two games and we have our last game next week. The two games we won came against the same team - funny huh? After this session we're moving over to another league in Plymouth. I have no idea how hard this league is going to be, but it will be good prep for this usummer, which is another story. I guess there was so much discrepencies between the teams coming up from the 2nd division to the 1st division, many teams didn't want to go up for fear of getting smoked on a weekly basis. On team quickly came to mind - my old nemesis Manchester. They won the league two years in a row and still wouldn't go up - pussies. The irony here is they had no problem getting smoked on a weekly basis in the comp indoor league, but for some reason didn't want to move up with their outdoor team. I don't think I'll ever figure those A-holes out. I won't have to now anyways.

My other team, Northland Wolves FC is really ramping up. I think we're going to smoke the Broze divison. We have two more scrimmages on a larger field, so the next couple of weeks, I'm really going to try and relax and work on my individual skills. I still need to find a couple of decent one-v-one moves to break guys down. I've lost enough weight where I'm much quicker, but I just need a move to creat enough space for me to blast into and get by a guy. I've playing a LOT on the right side on both Sundays (rec indoor league) and on Tuesdays (Augsburg open league). I'm just not comfortable on the right side. I had some good stuff last night, but I'm just not satisfied yet. Once we start practicing more, I'll be able to hone those skills more. Oh well, practice, practice, practice - right? More downstairs sessions I guess.

I have a lot more I could scribble here about music, my upcoming trip to Portland, old girlfriends and current events (Anna Nicols saga, Richard Jeni killing himself) but I'll let it go till next time. I thinking I'll bust out another post tomorrow when I get bored.

Oh yeah - almost forgot. . .

Rammstein. They kick MAJOR ass. I've been listening and watching their stuff on youtube quite a bit lately. Its made me want to start taking german classes again. Fun stuff.

2007-02-11T14:38:00.000-08:00

LIFE CAN BE RATHER DEPRESSING SOME TIMES

News flash - right? I just got back from watching, "The Good Shepard" which was quite depressing. The movie is essentially about the "humble" beginnings of the CIA. It focuses on Matt Damon's character and his life while all this was going on. I'm not going to bore you with any long winded review, but at the end of the movie, nobody gets what they want. And Damon's character is never happy, even when the CIA is officially formed and he has reached the #2 spot in the agency. Sad, so very sad.

I guess when I see a movie I feel is this depressing, it really makes me stop and look at my own life and take stock. I dont want to end up like the charcaters in the movie did. Alone with nothing. All the characters seemed to find happiness, but it was only fleeting. The son has his girlfriend (a KGB agent) who falls in love with Damon's son. Only to get murdered (because she was a security risk) before ther wedding. Damon and his wife (Angelina Jolie) are estranged throughout the movie and never connect. Damon falls in love with a girlfriend from college, only to have Jolie get pregnant and so he has to marry her - negating his love for his college sweetheart. All in all, everybody was looking something they could never find or have.

Sometimes I'm really thankful for what I have. It's not to think where I could be right now without the life I have now. I feel sorry for people who fractered realtionships and search their whole lives and come up empty. This brings me to the next point - my annual snowboard trip.

I haven't gone the past two years, and this year I was hoping things would be different. Friend 1 rolled his ankle and is still recovering. Friend 2 got screwed and work and has to work over the weekend we were supposed to go. Its hard to think something which brought me so much happiness over the years has faded rather quickly. After thinking long and hard, I felt my heart just wasn't in it anymore. Maybe it was the weather - no snow for the first few months of the year, then we got snow, and then the temperature dropped off well below zero. Maybe I'm just a snowboarding snob, but I want the conditions to be almost perfect. In any case, the trip is going ot be cancelled. My buddy asked me if this was possibly the end of our annual trip. I didn't have a good answer. I guess when things are good and fun, you never want it to end. It's hard to end something that's been going on for so long. At my age, I'm coming to the realization all good things must come to an end, which is happening all too frequently.

Anyways, I don't have a nice pic of the day, just some depressing views of reality.

I'll have more "happy" news later. . ..

LATE

2007-01-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

A SHOT AT THE TITLE

. . . . . This week brought good news. For the past few years I've been looking for a good team to play on and find the next five to seven years of my soccer career and play with a team that wanted me and utilized my skills. My New Year's resolution was to drop 10lbs and get back to a manageable weight. I felt like this would allow me to get my quickness and agility back that I'd been missing for so long. This indoor season has been forgettable. Playing for the Thomson team has been terrible. I never got a spot on my Harveys team and quite frankly I don't care anymore. they sucked it too. I was hoping to catch on with the Hurricanses team, but Dennis, the manager, already had enough guys -s so I thought a bold move was in order.

I posted a note ont he MRSL (minnesota recreational soccer league) messga board that I was looking for a team to play for. Sure enough, I got picked up by a new team forming called the Northland Wolves (I love that name). Tony, the guy running it is doing everything right. We have a website, someone video taping the games, and a great field and a horde of young talent. We're starting out in the Bronze league, but I'm confident we'll move up fast.

The other bit of good news came earlier this week when I had another manager email me about possibly playing for them. They're a first division team and thought I would be a natural fit for them. After several emails back and forth, they invited me to play with them on Monday night at Augsburg. If all goes well - which I know it will, I'll probably get asked to play with them. this would be a dream come true. Finally playing withs ome great talent and pushing my fitness and soccer skills to the next level. Its a challenge I'm willing to take on. My only concern is my game fitness. I've already dropped several pounds after a diet change, and hopefully will continue to drop pounds till I get back to 160-165. I just have a good feeling about this. It made me feel even better knowing the team I was "trying out" for is 5-0 in the league, and we're playing a 1-3-1 team. Exactly the circumstances I need to excel. Oh yea, and they don't play in the competitive league - they play in the rec league so I know I have the skills to take guys on and make things happen - should be fun!!!

UPDATE 10-17/07

The game on Tuesday went well. I scored once and got a two assists. The manager said he had already committed to another guy, but this other guy won't be playing outdoor with them and he'd much rather have someone who will play through indoor and outdoor with them instead and find a permenant replacement for the outside midfielder they lost.

My son's birthday was this week and he was happy to get all the gifts he did. Lots of gift certificates and other stuff. He got an i-pod for Christmas but his Mom can't make sense of the I-Tunes site so he hasn't been able to download any more songs to his i-pod shuffle. I guess his step Dad doesn't have time to show either one of them how to use it - pretty funny stuff if you ask me.

Anyways, besides the new Northland Wolves site, not much is going on at work. Our FindLaw CEO just got snatched up by the Inside Sales organization - which is funny. Hopefully
He can turn that place around - God knows is a STEEP nose dive right now.

Some more good news I got last week was there will an opening for a Premier AM position after they fill the current Senior position and the senior in my group told me he'd like to see me apply for the position. This is good news for me - at least I can move up a bit faster than I had previously thought. I do enjoy my current job - the customers are pretty low maintenance to begin with and its fairly easy for me to keep up with them. The only kink in the plan I'm expecting is when our new system "FUEGO" fires up next week. This system will start shooting through accounts which are due for renewal and are eligible for refreshes. I'm wondering how this will affect my mundane day-to-day tasks.

The other HUGe news is David Beckham is finally coming to play in the US. He signed a 5 year $250 million contract to play for the LA Galaxy. Too bad for him, he still has 6 months remaining on his old contract at Real Madrid. This led the GM at Real to start running his mouth and taking pot shots at Becks. The coach also benched him for the rest of the season as well. The Galaxy are now looking to try and get h im out of his contract and bring him here early so he's here for the start of the new season.

Read all about here. . . .

http://www.alaskareport.com/reu77277.htm

http://msn.foxsports.com/soccer/story/6358544

So in lieu of Becks coming here - here's some pictures for the day. . .

And see plenty of goals like this. . .

http://youtube.com/watch?v=a9G_aT43rrU

All in all - its good news.

2007-01-02T06:56:00.000-08:00

JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT. .

Another year, another set of big changes in my life. Hopefully this year will see more stability and less dramatic change, but who knows - right?

In case you missed it, here's a timeline from 2006.

This year ended pretty messy. The Vikes went down in flames, the T-Wolves are .500 at best, and Michigan lost to USC - I HATE USC and Pete Carroll!!! On the bright side, Texas won their bowl game so that was good news.

My son left early, early yesterday morning. Getting up at 5am to take him to the airport was hard. After staying up well past midnight we all had to peel ourselves off our beds to get up - it was brutal. And of course we got lit up (finally) with some snow and freezing rain, so the roads were less than perfect. It was cold, it was dark, and the airport was jammed thick with people heading home. Afterwards I went home and crashed HARD. We had friends come over at 1pm for the two bowl games, so I woke up at 10:30am and had to snowblow out the driveway and then get cleaned up before everybody shoed up. They stayed till almost 8pm (the end of the USC/Michigan game) which is a long long day for me.

I played some SoCom II for an hour then watched the news and then fell asleep shortly thereafter. If was a long weekend, and was sad to see my son go home, but I'm pretty sure he got all the presents he wanted for X-Mas. New shoes, a Texas jersey, and I-Pod (so his freaky Mom can control his life just that much more) and some cool stuff like an I-Pod jukebox that pulses when you put your I-pod in its dock.

Sunday night (new years eve) was hard for my son. We couldn't stay late to see the ball in NYC drop because we all had to get up early, and then he got pissy with me so we sat down and spoke about a lot of things. I felt better after we spoke, I hope he did too.

What else is going on? Been at my job almost a year and am loving it - big time. This time last year, I was hating life being in inside sales on the West side of the building. Life kicks ass here at FindLaw.

Soccer was been a dud. I though it would turn out better in terms of indoor teams. I thought my summer team was going to pick me up (Hurricanes) but after telling me they wanted me to play for them, they trun around and tell me the team is full. Then, my Sunday night team (Harvey's) totally blew me off and I'm gald I'm done with them because they suck anyways. They only won as many games as they did because I was averaging about 3 goals a game when I was playing for them. Instead of being one of the top three teams, they're back down in the gutter. This will set up an interesting situation when summer starts becuase I joined a new team which just got started up by a guy who's going to do things right. I've waited so long to find a team and a manager that's going in the right direction. We're going to start in the Bronze division (same as Harvey's) and see what happens. I think we'll do well, and I'll look forward to kicking their asses when we play. Playing with the Hurricanes again will be great as well. It should be an awesome summer. My son coming back will be great as well.

The other big news is my parents are buying a new house and actually moving out of Edina to Minnetonka. It's only a few miles from where they live now, but all the same, it's a big move for them. Of course my Mom's going to do her bit and completely remodel the house - but it sounds like its going to be pretty nice when they get it done.

More calls to make - I'll try and be a bit more prompt on my writing this year and keeping this thing up to date. Not too many stories to tell right now.

Photo of the day. . .

Paul Scholes - "He scores goals."

Best news of the weekend. United up 7 points at the top of the Premiership. I'm hoping they can hold on and usurp Chelsea this year. It will give me plenty of bragging rights with one of my co-workers who's an ardent Blues fan.

OUT

2006-11-22T10:20:00.000-08:00

SLOW JUST SLOWER

As the minutes drag. I'm sitting in my office trying to figure out how to waste another 30 minutes of time before I can leave. 1 call and 1 email today, the busiest travelling day of the year (or os I'm told) and I'm stuck here. Not that I mind, I just can think of several other places I'd liked to be - that's all.

I've found momentary comfort from Pink Floyd streaming through my headphones. Today's CD, "The Division Bell" is a hauntingly good cd. Lots of emotions and agony and sorrow - those same friends who never seem to let me go, but hang around long enough so that they're never forgotten.

At least there is some happiness going on later today. I'm heading down to Iowa to pick up my son for the weekend, which will be fun. Happy Days are here again - huh? You know, all things considered, I can't be too down or pessimistic, my life is good and I have a lot of things I never thought I could achieve. Nice house, brand new car (2007 Dodge Caliber), great job, great wife. What more could a guy ask for? I think happiness is found in what you have, not what we think we lack. This brings me to the philosophical question of the day: When you go through a mess of shit, and come out the other side, and look around and you thank your God (whomever that may be) you survived, do you look and around and just appreciate you're alive and doing well and accept what you have. Or do you have to push on, to do more, be more successful and continue to strive to achieve more?? I asjked my Dad this since we both went through some insanely depressing times and went through hell ourselves. He had an interesting take. He said you go through it, you survive and look forward, never back, and never accept mediocrity. He said if you get into a mode where you think you have everything, what are you still missing? We're all still missing something - aren't we??

It was an interesting take. I always gave my father's opinons a lot of weight. I saw what he did with his life and have to believe someday I'll make him proud. I'm pretty sure he's already proud of me, but in my own mind, I can't compare my success to his - its just not something I can do.

I continue to have all of these deep thoughts at times when I really need to have a laptop or at least some paper handy to jot some of this stuff down. Its as if I'm at the crossroads of my life (still) and am not confused on what direction I want to go, I'm just enjoying being there - trying to take in as much of my life as I can.

It's like I said, when you've come out on the other side of a shit storm, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, and the grass is greener. Nowadays, sometimes I so in touch with my senses, it's crazy. Just to pause and watch life go by can be rather amazing and theraputic.

17 minutes and counting . . . . .

The one thing I do have to get back to is my relaxation excercises and getting back in tune with the ASC part of me which has been seriously lacking. My soul is restless, and needs its excercise too - right?

Here's a sampling of what's going on in current events right now. . .

1) Democrats took back the Senate from the Republicans - there was much rejoicing at my parents house - not so much ours though.
2) We're still in Iraq, still looking for a way out. I recently read a Newsweek article which had the best solution I've laid out in a long long time.
3) Remember those 4-2 Vikings? Yeah, try 4-6 now Vikings. Sucks to lose your last 4 games eh?
4) Thanksgiving is right around the corner. . .oh the joy!!
5) 5 Muslim Imams were kicked off a Minneapolis flight after they claimed they were "just practicing their religion" other passengers didn't think so and they got the boot. CAIR was notified and now Muslims are going to boycott US Airways. Gimme a fricking break.
6) YOUTUBE.com still kicks ASS.

Hockey is going well. I put up 5 goals a couple of weeks ago, but have struggled to score since then. I'm playing two nights a week and soccer has been shelved for now. We'll see what next the next session of indoor brings. Maybe I'll play, maybe I'll stick with Hockey for right now.

I got "invited" to go play in the Great Plains Invitational indoor soccer tourney a few weeks ago by my X "best friend" Pat. I eventually turned them down. I had it in my head it would be a great time, but as the days wore on I finally figured that it wouldn't be as much as I thought it would be. These A-holes think I'm good enough to play with them in some tourney, trying to get our old team back together, but not good enough to play with them on a full time basis?? What the fuck? I think I thought it would be fun, but I just don't know these guys any more. I don't think I ever really knew them anyways, so why would I waste a bunch of money and time to go up there, only to find out things haven't changed and these guys are all the same guys??

I relented and didn't go - thank god. Sometimes its hard to move on, but at some point, you have to learn and move on. I've moved on and I'm glad I didn't go.

Well, its about that time again. Got time for a nice pic of the day??

Happiness is out there. . . believe me. . it is.

SEACREST OUT.

2006-09-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

LIFE COMES AT YOU FAST

When I started this thing *gulp* three years ago, I never knew where it would go or how much I would write in it. I started out not having anything to do at work and thought it would be a great way to keep a journal of my ramblings, so I can look back and see where I've been.

Then, somewhere along the lines it all became so much more than that. It became the vehicle to tell my son what my life is, was and what goes on with me when I can just let loose and let everything go - stream of consciousness stuff - ya know? Someday, he'll take some time and read this and hopefully get a better picture of his father. I thought I knew my father,r ight up until all the wheels fell off the bus and we had an intervention my life went to shit for about 3-4 years.

2 years of dealing with the mother of my son, then finally getting out that debacle, only to have my brain, my emotions and my life twisted in so many directions when my father finally hit rock bottom. We all came out ok, but it was pretty touch and go for a while. I got his initials tattooed on my arm so I NEVER forget the fragility of life and how fast it can all be taken away from you.

Now I'm pushing 40, but I'll always be 28 in my own mind, no matter how old I get. That's such a timeless age. You're wise, you're still considered young, you can go out and party, and your body is still in good shape. To me, this is how I will always see myself. Not the puffy 36 year old I am now, which brings me to my next point - about my life.

I'm having a sort of midlife crisi right now. I still have dreams about NDSU, I still dream about what I left behind, about being so depressed for so long, and now I have the life I want. It's like I ran through a maze of darkness, survived all the demons, and now I'm on other side. But what was the damage? What did I leave behind? I keep thinking about how good my life USED to be. The fantastic times I had in college, it's all gone now. The sad thing is, I don't really have much proof of those years. I few pictures and a TON of memories to carry around. It's depressing to think about. I often think about what if I did this, or what if I did that - where would I be now? I think without my son, I'd still be in Fargo, dating anything that moved and looking for a way out. My son gave me the jolt I needed. I couldn't live in Fargo. There are too many bad memories. When I was there months ago, I just got bad vibes, an incredible sense of sadness that I had wasted my time there, that I didn't truly appreciate it for what it was - the best times of my life.

What to do now? I don't know. Try and look forward to having a family? Look forward to seeing my own son succeed and do well in sports? I want so bad for him to do better than me, get a better education, get a better job. IT's something I hammer him about all the time. Go hard now, push yourself, so when you get to be my age, life is easy, you'll have all the answers then.

Maybe I'm just dreading watching my own parents pass on, leaving me and my sister to our devices. It will be the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with. The emotional attachment I have to my parents is pretty incredible. I credit them for raising me properly, for giving me all the opportunity to succeed and always standing by me. I don't know how I'm going to say goodbye, it makes me tear up just thinking about it - so, time to moce on to something else.

What's happening in the real world? Well, Iran and the US met separatly with the UN, this IRanian dude is certifiable. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is his name, and the guy has lost his yarbles for sure.

Just read this and tell me the guy is on the up and up.

Iranian weirdo addresses UN

The Vikings are 2-0 under the new leadership of Brad Childress. Hopefully he can stay a bit longer than Mike Tice. Tice was a good guy, but didn't have many fans and was hampered by a) not getting paid enough, b) the constant scandals surrounding himself and his team, c) a shitty team and d) an owner unwilling to invest in players ro the organization. Good ol' red tried so hard to just leech as much money as possible out the franchise. The guy's front office was a fricking skeleton crew of people. amazing they won ANY games, really.

Anna Nicole has a kid and her 20 year old son dies, how weird is that?

Steve Irwin "The Crocodile Hunter" died in a freak accident by getting his heart impaled after a stingray reacted to him swimming over the top of him and stung him with its tail. Everybody knew the guy would go out like that, but it happened so fast. Guy was a real conservationist and a reall hero. It will be missed, no doubt about it.

Well, I guess its time for a pic of the day - eh?

Here's my old homies onesidezero. They were my fav more than af ew years ago. Crazy band. Broke up and now back together "working" on new material. They took down the message board, and now they just have their myspace.com page. I gave up hope a while ago, but now I just put in, "Is This Room Getting Smaller" and I remember why I lvoed them so much. They are amazingly orginal and don't sound like any other band - something very few bands can say these days. Anyways, here's to my newest, oldest band.

One of my favorite songs off that album

The Day We Lied

I'll tuck you in
make sure the noose is tight
moving from side to side
inhibits your will to fight
I'll hold you always
clipping your wings away
laughing at your dismay
until your end is crowned
hold you always
beauty in your eyes
escape to your world please
ambush your thoughts this way
believe in this love affair
collecting your silent pleas
comfort all your fears
but I'll hold you always
clipping your wings away
tying you up this way
until your end is crowned
hold you alwaysbeauty in your eyes
escape to your world please
I'll hold you always
beauty in your eyes
escape to your world please
tying you up this way
clipping your wings away
I'm holding you always
I'm clipping your wings away
don't you wish you could fly
I'll come close, the end is near
hold you always
beauty in your eyes
escape to your world please

Hopefully they will return soon. If not, I'm planning on going out to Cali to see them. Wouldn't THAT be awesome??

OUT

2006-09-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

ITS GOOD TO BE FREE AGAIN.

When our superhero last left you. . . it was a scant four months ago and the future looked pretty bleak. The Inside Sales department ship was sinking fast and our superhero could see the water lapping over his shoelaces. So what happened? Where did our superhero land? Well. . . . .

First of all, I totally jacked the Marketing Interview (probably for the better), I Got an offer from the DC Group, and as fate would have it - I got a job offer from Thomson, specifically, a job offer from FindLAw. You know, the fastest growing group within the Thomson West family. Here I am, in late April, having to decide between FindLaw and The DC Group. AlwaysBeThere just didn't have the pay scale I was interested in, or more importantly, could live on. Not to mention, I'd be taking a HUGE pay cut and working long hours and possibly weekends. With 10 years of experience in my bag, it didn't seem like a wise move. With all the fancy stuff the staff had at their disposal, it still wasn't enough. Maybe 5-7 years ago, I would've jumped at this job, but where I am now. . . no way. I totally blew off the last interview with the two owners. It was a lame interview anyways. I've had better questions asked for my bagger job at Byerly's than the ones they asked me at aBt. There were some other warning signs as well - but what can I say? The job wasn't for me. They didn't call me back and make me an offer, and I wasn't going to chase them down for it.

This leaves DC Group and FindLaw. I was pretty sure I was moving to the DC Group, then out of the blue, I got hooked up with the job at FindLaw. Chad, my manager was salivating over my resume. I had all the experience they wanted. Internet, web page experience, sales, training, management, I was the complete package. It was a no brainer for me to come up and work from them.

This left the hard task of telling the DC Group I wasn't coming to work for them. It was a tough call, but DC Group only offered, 2-$300.00 more than FindLaw and the deal breaker was a big one - on call duty. This meant weekends and nights of carrying a laptop and cellphone wherever I went. No weekends and no on call with FindLaw - thanks goes to Chad for making my choice so easy.

Now I'm 4 months into the job and absolutely love it. I learn something just about eveyday, my HTML skills are going through the roof and now that I'm busting my ass to get lockins and retain customers, I've already gotten some great feedback from my manager. It's the best decision I've made. I get to still see my buds in inside sales and have a job I love coming to work for. So whatever happened to the "segmentation experiment"??

Not so good. Lots of people coming and going (mostly going), several people moving into different departments and general maheim has ensued. My timing couldn't have been better. People are going long stretches without making their quotas and it's not imprving, it still getting worse. I've heard from friends in marketing they're seeing some major changes coming down the pipe with the pilots they're running now and even they say they can't see the bottom of this thing yet - how scary is that? It's like falling into a well, you haven't hit bottom yet, but its black around you. WOAH!!!!!

Anyways, lots more going on, but its time for me to get out for a long holiday weekend.

2006-04-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

NEVER SAY GOODBYE

Ken,

Although I have tendered my resignation, I wanted to drop you a quick note and express some feelings about what's been going on lately since this "segmentation" experiment has taken place. I'm going to point out some good things, and also let you about the current gripes within your own division you may or may not be aware of.

It's obvious you are trying hard to do a good job and I see you working. I know Ann and Brad have been on all the managers about the lack of success across the board. I admire you sticking it out and continuing to try and work with the salespeople. Unfortunately, I feel the situation will not get better anytime soon, nor do I see a change in the management style that would allow me to continue working as an inside sales person. I feel this reflects more on the present upper management than it does you. They are in essence trying to create a telemarketing group, not a successful inside sales department.

On page 34 of your annual report it clearly states print sales are declining. Why would a sales organization actually INCREASE quotas when they know the future of their sales organization is in a different channel? As an organization, West has know this for some time. No sales retention policies, increased, unattainable quotas, micro-management, segmentation, etc, etc. All of this things are counter productive to retaining and keeping good salespeople.

2006-04-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

WHEN DO YOU SAY ITS TIME TO MOVE ON?

This week was wonderful. My son visited for his spring break. Lots of good times, lots of laughs, good quality time you just can't enjoy enough. Today (Easter Sunday) was great. Catholic service at my old church in Minneapolis, then brunch at the Marriot. Then a quick trip home and then we bounced out to the airport where my son got on the plane and went back to Georgia. It's tough seeing him go. Everytime he comes up he asks why it can't be easier, why can't his mom live here. I think the same thing, and maybe someday it will change - for now, it is what it is and I deal with the ups of seeing him arrive, and the depression of seeing him go again.

My job as of late has been miserable, I have a lot going on. Interviewing for several positions within Thomson, not to mention tow other jobs with companies I cand efinitely see working for. One aBt is a wireless company that is doing what I lvoe, what I've put 10 years into - wireless. The other is an account management position with DC Group in Minneapolis. The next two weeks id going to be I N S A N E. A lot going on, a lot coming and going. I'll keep ya'll up to date as to where the dice fall and when everything sorts itself out. As a premptive strike, here's the letter I intend to send out to my managers and several others if and when I have to quit.

See following post. . .

2006-03-21T12:37:00.000-08:00

THE DIVISON BELL HAD BEGUN TO RING

Its been a few weeks and here I am, at work, bored out my mind, enough calls already for the day, and its only 2:30pm. I only have an hour left, so that's good. When I started this job a year ago, I thought this was it, the last stop, somehwere I could hang my hat and do good things. I planned on putting in my year and then either moving in marketing or getting into management. How wrong I was. The people here are great, the upper management has ideas, like crazy ideas. I won't go into detail, but when you have several people not caring, not doing their jobs, and looking for employment elsewhere, you have a problem. People who are performing well, who want to leave.

Right now I have two ways to go. I'm working on putting together a business plan for a bike park for BMX/Dirtjumoers and freestylers. No skateboards allowed! I'm also looking for another job (like many of my co-workers). I have an interview with a cool company this Thursday which I'm looking forward to.

Oh well, I gotta make the rest of my "dials". More to come!!!

late

2006-02-16T08:54:00.000-08:00

More than a month has come and gone. Many good things have happened, and life has remained somewhat static. Work is fine, but I'm looking for a new position within the company I work at now. I want to get out of sales so bad and having a regular paying job with a decent salary is all I'm looking for right now. No biggie right? Right.

Life is stable, life is predictible. I work every day, play soccer twice a week and hockey on Fridays. The weekends are spent running errands, cleaning the house and basically catching up on everything I didn't get done during the week. I talk to my son about four or five times during the week and that's all good. He's coming up again over spring break in April and I'm looking forward to him coming up.

I'm happy right now. The soccer teams I play on value me as a player. I've found my scoring touch again and have gelled with the teams I'm playing on right now. Where's my old club? 1-5 and struggling in the comp league. My leaving the team has been nothing but positive for me, and they're still sucking ass like they always have. It's good to see this turned out well for me, and they're well, they still suck, which makes me feel good.

The big news? The mother of my son is pregnant. At first I didn't know how to take this news. It struck me at first, then I got pissed, then I talked with some people at work and my family and my opinon has changed. I think my feelings of never living up her haven't completely faded away yet. I always have this desire to show her I've succeeded without her, that my life is just fine without her, and I don't need her for anything. Its too bad since I've changed so much over the past 10 years and have found success in my career, success in the sports I play and some decent success financially. I always thought I would be ok not knowing she would another child without me. When she got married, I thought it was all but in the books it would happen. I forgot those feelings until I found out she was pregnant. I think its interesting she didn't have the courage to tell me herself. I had to find out from my son telling me over the phone in a very round about way. But thena gain, this has been her MO forever. I'm still trying to deal with this so maybe its better to move on.

The olympics are on, don't care too much. It is what it is. The snowboarding was awesome, the mogul skiing was cool, although the judging was pretty lame. The Vice president shot some guy and the press had a hissy fit, Iran is building nukes, Muslims drive me nuts - not just over the whole cartoon thing either, we're still in Iraq cleaning up and a whole host of other stuff.

That's all I got for right now. Sorry, no pics of the day.

LATE

2005-12-30T06:15:00.000-08:00

WHEN YOU'RE ALL ALONE

Yesterday was like any other day in my life. Got up, kissed the wife goodbye, and went to work. Typical day at the office. End of the month, end of the year mayhem. Since I had already made my month, I was trying to get a few more orders in to get to the next commission level. Nothing big, nothing major. Went home, spent time with my cat and dog and hung out. Put my clothes out for today and started to get ready for bed like I always do. Then her phone rang, it was her mom.

Her Uncle had shot himself in the head while his wife was out getting groceries. He only left the note, "Dont go downstairs, call 911 or the coroner." She called 911 and left it up to the paramendics. They took him to the hospital, that's when we got the call. A few more details I didn't need to hear about and it really shook me. Having seen Bob just a few days ago, he seemed fine, no warning signs there. Nothing to indicate what he was about to do. My last memories of him are listening to his old WW II stories in the living room of Bren's Mom's house for Christmas. He seemed fine, he seemed ok. I sat up for a long time thinking about the whole episode.

There are just too many what if questions you ask yourself. What IF our family was more accpeting of him, what IF we really did want to hear his stories, what IF things were different? I don't know. That's what I'm left with, too many questions and not enough answers. Hopefully over the next couple of days we'll find out more.

These kind of things are always a shock to your emotions. It makes you re-evaluate your life, take inventory, and think you may just be sleepwalking through life - your day-to-day activities that hold little or no meaning. It re-enforces the idea of life's fragility, that you can go at any time. Hearing something like this makes me glad I have such a thirst to live, to look around and smell the roses every day. To get something out of my life everyday. It makes me wonder what it takes to get to a point where you feel this is the only way out.

HAve I been depressed? It's well documented in my blogs my months of depression after the mother of my son left me. No vehicle, no money, and no friends. It would have been easy to take that route and just kiss it all goodbye. At the time, I just looked at as if it was a test of my faith. I needed to stay strong, I knew that someday it would get better, that someday there would be light at the end fo the tunnel. It would pass and things would be better. I knew I would, I knew I could get through it. Maybe Bob didn't think that way. It's a big hole to climb out of, but I believed it would get better, it HAD to get better. Maybe he didn't have the optimism. At age 80, that faith can be tested daily, so I can understand how hard it must have been.

Unfortunately, suicide is the most brutal manifestation of selfishness one can deliver upon another human being. Let alone those who care and love you. It's like a fragmentation grenade going off in a family. EVERYONE is affected, we are all innocent victims when someone does this. Of course, now every year, for a few days, our lives will derail to remember this dreadful, sad day. We'll say a few words, raise a toast and then go with our lvies again. For better or worse, I don't know yet. I dont even know when the funeral is, what arrangements have been made, I'm just trying to cope through these words. the more I express my thoughts, the harder it is to deal with.

For right now I will conclude by saying I hope Bob is in a better place. So long and godspeed old friend, I barely knew ya.

2005-10-07T10:48:00.000-07:00

MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME. . .

Something completely different and not so out of right field for once. Remeber all of those posts going back a few years compalining about our indoor soccer team? Yeah, well it seems people were listening, they just didn't care to hear what I had to say - or better yet care at all. This came to a boiling point last night when I was informed by our new manager that I will no longer have a current spot on the team roster. He cracked up by rambling on and on about all the reasons he came to and not wanting me to play with the team anymore. They included such things as, a) my mouth - yeah I'm a fiery competitor, I get loud. b) The number of cards I got was half of the teams total - don't know where he came up with this one, but he stood by it. c) Never played a full session - well, when you lose 14-3 on aregular basis, and have to drive 40 minutes to take part in getting throttled, it loses some of its luster. That was about it. I didn't know what to say, but it seems odd that a few things happened all at the same time.

First of the all, the previous manager had left town and moved too far north to manage the team anymore, leaving the team to this guy. We picked up one good player and suddenly we actually started winning again - which was good. It was easy for me to keep my mouth shut when we were winning, but nobody ever remembers that - do they? Then we go to outdoor and without this same guy, we never would be where we are now. Take away his goals, and you have pretty much nothing. I surmised that when he showed up and the team returned to winning again (as it has) suddenly my services weren't needed anymore. Weird how that happens huh?

Am I pissed? Yeah, I feel like I got stabbed in the back by a guy who was actually in my own fucking wedding, try and figure that one out. Friendship or soccer? Hmmmmmmmm tough one there. Anyways, after thinking about it, I figure they will continue down the same road - getting older, playing younger teams, until they get their asses handed to them too many times for the players to take. I guess what really sucks is that I've wanted to quit for so long, and it just never turned out I could do it on my own terms. That's what sucks shit. I would have felt better if I had walked away, instead of getting a call a week before the season starts. Friend? Friend? I thought so, but I'm glad I never put too much stock in our friendship since I never really considered him a friend anyways (just look at previous posts). Nothing gained, nothing lost - right? It was time to quit this team a long time ago. I don't know why I held out for so long. Maybe I just thought it would get better, sooner and just never did. One winning season over the course of four years. Not exactly anything to write home about. 3 sessions of indoor, 1 season of outdoor. that's a lot of losing mind you over that course of four years.

It's funny to think your teammates love your play on the field, but open your mouth to bitch and suddenly your expendable. What a great bunch of backstabbing a-holes. I guess I never really felt like I was apart of the team, apart of the "inner circle" . Hard to just show up, put on a happy face and play though it. So what do I get for my hard work, busting ass, getting injured, goals scored and effort? I big fucking knife in the back.

They will have fun next year when they end up in a tougher division for outdoor, and still have 13 people showing up for games. I expect to see them in the gutter again, back where they belong. I'll keep watching the scores come up on the Ralia website to see how they're doing. I was thinking of going to some of their games, as a joke. How great would be to show up, watch them get smoked by 8 goals and then walk out laughing - knowing I made the right decision to stay away?

It's time for a change. It was just too stressful for me to play with those guys anyways. Plenty of bitching to go around for everyone, not just me. Which is why I knew it was time. i can play in Burnsville and have fun again and know that at 35, my years of glory are gone. I prefer to play for the love of the game now and am done having to put up with the bullshit that surrounds Manchester.

So long, farewell bitches. May you never reach the top three ever again.

I'm out

2005-09-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!

Almost a month under the waves, I thought it was time I came up for some air and drop some thoughts on the catastrophe in Naw Lans (New Orleans for you city folk out there), my new house, and some new conspiracies fresh out of the oven!

So the past week or so, the country has collectively, gasped, sighed and sat with mouths agape as the tradegy unfolded in Louisana. A category 5 hurricane just cold cocked that state in the grill, a levee broke and 80% of the city was flooded. What should have been a standard FEMA operation quickly got ugly when search and rescue people couldn't get into the city, and nobody could get out. With such hopelessness, the human condition suffered terribly. Looting, murder, rape and general chaos was rampant. Reporters basically said that the city was too dangerous to stay in after the sun went down at night.

Read all about it here

I don't know why I just used a British news source for an American story. . don't ask aight?

Aside from all of that, the loony left wingers got out in full force and jumped all over Bush - so what ELSE is new? Having given up on the UFO and Chemtrails conspiracy, these nutbags came up a grand new conspiracy - BUSH WAS AT FAULT for what happened. Not only that, but they also said since he is part of the NWO and Bilderberg group and skull and bones, he actually delayed aid getting into to help the mostly poor black residents since he wanted to see them die?? Kayne West is such a fucking loser. He added fuel to the fire by saying at a televised fund raiser that Bush doesn't care for Black people and is allowing the national guardsmen to shoot them. What does Kayne West do again? Oh yeah - he's a RAPPER. Well maybe YOUR people shouldn't shoot at the rescue helicopter when they're trying to save YOUR people ya fricking idiot!!! What an asshat that guy is. . .

More me and less news, right? What else is new?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm, screwed up my knee playing soccer - big surprise. Although this time I think it may be a bit more serious than I initially thought. I'm going to see my doctor tomorrow in the afternoon to really find out how bad it is. It's been almost a month and it still gets sore and when I turn over it bed I get sharp pains that I don't think are good. On a better note, the team did make it to the championship game - but came up short. We lost 4-1. I have NO idea we would actually get that far in the first place, so I was happy with the season as a whole.

What else? Work is going great. Still making quota and having a blast. Mobile Celluar who?

Some other notes as of late:

- Watched "Miami Ink" again last night. Everytime I see that show I want another tattoo. It will take some time to figure out exactly what I want to do, but some thoughts:

1) BIG Type O Negative logo on my calf or between my shoulder blades
2) Man United crest on my calf or on my quad (top of my leg)
3) Some sort of theme to incldue my fathers initials and the Iron Cross on my bicep.
4) The word B E L I E V E across my back in large letters

Either way, I need some C O L O R in my tatts, and something fairly big, colorful and incorporates what I already have. . . .

- I tried switiching one of our laptops over to Linux. I went to CompUSA and picked up a $50.00 copy of the Linespire OS. Boy was THAT a mistake! You get the OS, and nothing else. Unless you're familiar with how Linux works (mostly at the UNIX/Dos level) then you will get frustrated quite quickly. Linespire has a CNR (click and run) option for these people. Oops! It costs around $50 for the year, and you can only pick and download what they have in their little CNR shop. How lame is that? What I do? I downloaded the free copy of Mandrake and now just have to burn the 3 cd's and load that onto the laptop. Hopefully things will go better with this copy.

- I had an interesting run-in at a nude beach when I went riding at Thodeore Wirth in Minneapolis. Nothing like riding a mountain bike into a nudist beach and dudes looking you up and down like a piece of meat. Not cool, not cool AT ALL. I quickly retreated and had a good laugh afterwards.

- ERIKS has been trying lately. Crazy Eddy has been having girl problems and seems to think it's ok to take them out on his co-workers. Nut up man and either move on or balance your riding lifestyle with your personal relationships. I love the guy to death, but this crap gets on nerves a lot. Even funnier was the store got slapped with a five day penalty for listening to "unacceptable" music, no kidding. Dave-O tried to sneak in on Saturday to check up on us. What a goof. He tries to go all James Bond and park like halfway down the lot so we can't see him coming. Guess he doesn't trust us so much, huh? Until next week, it's ALL Salsa music. *GAG*

- Not much else on the domestci front. My sister's daughter's birthday was on Friday. That was WAY fun. Taco Bar, relatives, got to see my mom and dad, it was all good. Her two daughters just crack me up all the time.

- One disturbing note. My mother switched the beneficiaries on her will from my dad to me and my siter. Don't know why and know I feel bad for my father. i don't know the reasons or the details. Just a bad feeling that if my mother dies, he won't get anything from her. On the flip side, I would make damn sure my father is taken care of and is not left on hardship - ya know?

- Another funny note. MY SON IS HITTING PUBERTY!!! He called the other night and was having some "guy troubles". I can't describe it like he did, but to hear him talk about his "wet dreams" was pretty funny for me. His mother told him it was normal and I had to reassure him it was. After a long talk about what he's going to go through over the next few years, it all made sense to him.

Oh well, that's all I have for right now - time to get back to the grind!!!

Here's the pic for the day too:

My fondness for this band now knows no limits. Their follow up to their scorching intial release "Sweet Vengence" is "Descend of Chaos". I downloaded the single "Being Nothing" and just love it. The song just rips. It's about all fo these people that go through life empty. They take the life out of you, and those around you. No good. Here is a pic fo the band. . .if you want to listen to their single "Being Nothing" you can find it here

Here they are in all of their glory:

LATE

2005-07-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

THAT HAUNTING FEELING. . .

Wow! So much to cover in the what, last 4 months. I'm so Catholic, I feel so guilty that I haven't kept this up to date. With my new job, new house (cutting my lawn now takes over an hour!) my son coming this month, I just haven't had the free time to write as often as I would like. There have been so many times while sitting awake in bed that something hit me, I just want to get up, run down stairs and jot it down. Oh well, such is life, you only get one shot. Some of thos impulses you have to lsiten to and others, well, they just drift away as you fall into never never land.

Lately, I've been having these incredible feelings of being inadequate. It hit me again last night when I was watching the show "inked". I won't bore you with the details of the show other than there was a tattoo artist who had a son he hadn't seen in a while since he took this new job at the tattoo parlor in Vegas (his son was in LA). He talked about how he just wanted to spend as much time as he could with his son and how much he missed him and how he had grown up in poverty and he wanted to give his son the life he never had, etc, etc. It was pretty moving for me, and I could tell the guy had his priorities in the right place and was a good guy. So I go to bed and start thinking about what I've given back to my father. And that's when it hit, he gave me everything, he was like the guy in the show. He grew up with nothing, gave me everything, and amde my life SO much easier. With him getting older, I can't escape the thoughts of my parents passing away and it just blows me away. I just broke down in the darkness. I did finally fall asleep, but it was not easy, and the thoughts just kept flooding my brain. I jsut kept thinking I need to make sure I can take of them when the time comes. This means kicking ass at my new job, making every opportunity to build my financial picture with the consideration of taking care of them. My parents are pretty stuborn and I know they will have nothing to do with that - but I WANT to give them back something. This is where these feelings tear at my heart.

Onto something better, and less depressing. . .

So what is new? Not much, you can add another person I know that is going voer to Iraq. My manager at work is getting called up to go over to Iraq. He's a LT. Colonel in the National Guard. He said he'll be back sometime in 2007, and will be in communique during his time over there. This week he's really been a ghost, jsut geting all of his ducks in a row for when he leaves. I feel for the guy, no doubt about it.

Our summer soccer team is kicking MAJOR ass lately. After winning the indoor champioship, we've been rolling the competition in our summer league. The next few games will be critical, but I think we're well on our way to locking up the league.

What's been in the news lately?

The London bombings
Lance Armstrong's 7th Tour De France Victory
Karl rove on Valerie Plame
Iraq Iraq Iraq Iraq
Hockey's CBA almost done

Hockey got cancelled, for how long, I don;t know, but for now, while my son is here, all bets are off. I've played two games, and have done nothing to keep my cherubic figure in shape. After my son leaves, it's back on the bike, and back ont he skateboard. My son has my old setup (it's a "new school" set up and I don't like it very much)which means, it's time for a new set up for daddy!!!

That's all I have for now, I'm at work and gotta get back to hittin the phones. I wish I could write more, but you know how it goes. . .

My pledge for August - I'm about to turn 35!!!!!!!!!!! ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Is to keep this bugger a bit more up to date - okay? Okay Dokay.

Gotta get that pic O' the day up too. . .so many choices to too! Should it be Lance? Maybe something Hockey realted in light of the league getting back on it's feet and ending the lockout? Maybe Danny Way jumping the Great Wall of China?

Or maybe just something completely different. . a tattoo I want to get done sometime in the near future. .

My ANGEL. . .

LATE

2005-04-19T05:35:00.000-07:00

LONG TIME. . .NO POSTS?

Yes, its been a while and things have been cruising along just fine. since I've quit my job at MCU, my job here at thomson West has been a lot of hard work, but also a lot of fun. The people are awesome and everyday is a new challenge, which is something I have not yet had in a long, long, time. So it feels good to use my brain instead of running all day on auto pilot, ya know?

Aside from all the major news happenings in the past month (Terry Schiavo, Pope dying, the Baseball steroid scandal)out in the real world, some good things have begun to take shape.

Frist of all, our soccer team has finally managed to find our form and are actually in the championship game tomorrow. Either way, I'll be happy - win or loose. Then we have one more session before outdoor starts. I joined a team here at work that plays in the recreational division, which will be a nice change of pace from the smashmouth style you have to play in the competitive league. I'm looking forward to keeping my good form and working on a few new moves. Keeping my fitness up will be key, so I'll be prepared when summer finally starts.

One other big thing that has happened is my son wants to go with his church to New Zealand this next spring. It just so happens to take place when he should be here visiting. I'm sure this is going to be the first of many things he will want to do in leu of spending time here with me - his father. I'm going to let him go, but I'm going to make sure his mother makes concessions regarding his visitation so I'm not losing a week of seeing him.

For now I shelved my skateboarding activities. Between soccer and hockey, there's not much time left to partake. I took up skateboarding because soccer had become bothersome and my teammates pissed me off. Perhaps this summer I might take up the plywood again and ride. But for right now, I have no plans in the near future.

I did have one unusual experience yesterday though. Since I am an NDSU grad, I get a nice, glossy, bi-monthly magazine that includes stuff about art, the sociology department, and the general goings on at the university. There never really is anything in the magazine that appeals to me. A few years back, one issue did get to me. It had a three page story of Phil Hansen. He was a stand out football player at NDSU while I was there and he was drafted by the Buffalo Bills and spent 10 years in the NFL. Upon his retirement, they did a story on him. It really brought back a ton of memories about my college experience and what it meant to me. I wrote a long emotional letter to the editor. Unformtunately, it got lost or deleted before I could send it. Since it was a "stream of consciousness" writing style, I couldn't remember a lot of what I wrote and I feared I really couldn't re-capture the feelings I had in another letter, so I just dropped it and forgot about it.

Welllllllllllllllllllll, guess what showed up on my doorstep yesterday? The NDSU magazine, with a really big article on my nemisis professor Dr. Clark. He was a professor of Anthropology at NDSU and for some reason we never got along so well. So when I saw the article and all the incredible stuff he's done with the Archeology department I was pretty happy for him. They had a picture of him and mannnnnn did he look old. Its funny to think the guy was in his mid 40's when I met him, and I figured he was at the top of his game then. In the picture he looked run down, old, and had put on a few pounds. The article strummed up a lot of memories again about my days in the Sociology Department and my college experiences all over again. I was moved to email him and try to mend the fences after so many years and congratulate him on making the department such a success. I also wondered where some of friends and colleagues were that I had spent so many years being around and where their lives have led them.

It all made me wonder how lucky I am to be where I am today. College started out as a joy ride and ended in disaster for me. It never ended on my terms, but somebody elses. To this day, I know I carry that baggage with me. For me, its ALWAYS about having control. When I lost that, it devastated me. Maybe it was some kind of weird pennace I had to go through to understand how destiny works, God's plan and all that jazz. Strange where I could have landed. Its something that makes think everyday how my life could have been different. I don't think of it in any negative terms, just different terms. I love life right now, I made it through and I have a ton to be thankful for. But seeing that magazine and reading the stories of my old university brings back some dark memories. The longing to go back and do it RIGHT this time. I think that is unltimately what kills me in the end. The stern realization that I can't go back and fix it.

Enough of my morbid fascination with the past. . . . .

the pic of the day - as usual:

my boyz, back from the brink. . . ONE SIDE ZERO.

An April 4th gig and rumors of an EP in the making. My life can now go on again. You have NO IDEA how long I've hung with these guys waiting for them to get their shit together and get going again. An amazing band that deserves a lot more run they have received thus far. Oh well, my rant is done. Enjoi!

OUT

2005-03-11T14:15:00.000-08:00

A NEW DAY HAS DAWNED. . .

My new job starts soon, my last day at MCU was March 8th. A nice five day vacation, my son arrives on Saturday the 12th (tomorrow) and my training starts for my new job on Monday MArch 14th.

Too much going on right now to type about. I'll have to catch up laters.

OUT

2005-02-22T07:51:00.000-08:00

EVERYTHING I LEARNED

There is a famous sign that hangs in many offices. There’s actually a book written on the same subject. “Everything I know, I learned in Kindergarten.” It is true in some respects, but in the grand scheme of things, I would beg to differ that my parents had a lot to do with shaping a lot of my opinions, thoughts, idea’s, morality, and the infinite other things you need to equip yourself with before you finally hit the real world. Then, when you finally do end up in the cold hard world of reality, you finally realize what your parents had been telling you along – was all true!
When you get to my age (mid 30’s) you do one of two things. You either have something happen to you, or others around you, that makes you question your mortality. Or, you have an early mid life crisis. You know the kind, where the life you’re living suddenly becomes null and void over night. You don’t know why, but the meaning is suddenly gone, and you embark on a journey to find out who you truly are. I thankfully had the previous happen to me. I had several of my friends loose their parents, either one or both. I went to a few funerals, and started to wonder what life would be like without my parents. When you do such things, it’s the clarity of what they have given you over the course of your life that becomes crystal clear. Not that you would be happy they are gone, but the sudden realization of how deeply they have affected your life becomes apparent. So here I am, at work, writing this little piece of journalism, not for my parents, but more for myself. So I can truly understand and be thankful for everything they have given me. Things so irreplaceable, that loosing one’s wallet and credit cards pale by comparison. These are things you will have your lifetime, which you cannot undo. Yet, every single day for the past two years (the approximation of my examination), I have found something I’ve said, something I’ve thought, something I wanted to do, could all be traced back to something my parents taught me. Scary isn’t it? Not scary in the sense that the idea of freewill is usurped, it’s the mere idea of how large an impact my parents have had in my life. It often gives me time to pause and consider the implications. So the following are just a few of the monumental things my parents have taught me, and how these have no doubt shaped how I see the world, interact with people in this cold, harsh reality of life, and the tools they have given me to survive and succeed, on my own.
Before I do that though, there are a few things I must present in order to frame the following. If you could ever have two parents more diametrically opposed, it would be my parents. My father came from a large family, living in a small suburb of Minneapolis, in a small house. His parents (from what my Mum tells me) were ungodly cruel to him. Physical and psychological torture was the common theme in the household. It was a blue-collar family that struggled to survive every month. My mum, on the other hand, came from a wealthy family, in a rich suburb of Minneapolis. Her father was a self made man. Accountant. Absolutely brilliant, his mind was as sharp as a sword. My parents came from different sides of the railroad tracks, but their philosophies on how to raise my Sister and I was born of their own families. My father wanted us to have everything growing up. My Mother wanted us to know the importance of hard work and effort. This, I suppose was the first thing I was learned. The second was more important, but infinitely tied to the first.
So let’s start with what both of my parents contributed to my “worldview” of reality. The first was to always appreciate the role of hard work in your life. Nothing will be given to you. My Father didn’t want us to have to work for things. He worked his ass off to provide for us, and wanted us to appreciate the better things in life. My Mom wanted us to know the importance of hard work. Both came across, and I blended the two in my own mind to get a greater message. You will be rewarded for your hard work. Don’t take anything for granted. There are no handouts in life, and if you truly want something, you ultimately will have to work hard to get them. When you’ve reached a certain level, things do become easy with money, but never forget where you came from. The old saying, “As soon as you forget where you came from, that’s when you’re headed back there.” certainly applies. So they both instilled in me that hard work pays off. The most important thing you can have in life is to have a great work ethic. Work hard till the job is done, and done right. This brings me to the second thing my parents taught me – compromise.
Although my parents fought over the most minor stuff, somehow they always found some kind of compromise. I don’t think they ever picked up that this really hit home with me, but it did. Having two completely different approaches to child rearing, they always had to find some middle ground. Right? Well, I got that one loud and clear. Sometimes my dad won out, sometimes my mom. In either case, I knew it was important to compromise to get to a solution both people could live with. As I grow older, I don’t have that surly fight in me so much, this one thing has made my life much easier.
Fashion. What could be more important than your first impression? Nothing. My father is an incredibly smart man. He had very little growing up, got a degree in mathematics from the University of Minnesota and made millions selling high technology for many, many years. His work ethic was second to none. Both my mother and father impressed me early on the importance of dressing properly and conservatively. My mother would coordinate, and my father always told me to iron your shirt, press your suit, and polish your shoes. They both instilled in me to dress properly when I would go out for anything like church, an interview, a new job, or a date. Any occasion where making a first impression was important, and to maintain the idea you weren’t a slob.
When I was 14, I went to my first job (because my dad wanted me to work as soon as I was old enough) “interview”. My dad yelled at me for twenty minutes about how I’m not wearing jeans, I have to tuck in my shirt and I shouldn’t go there and present myself like a slob to a potential new boss. I finally relented and did as I was told. It was funny, because as soon as I got there, the manager came over, looked me up and own, and smiled. He asked me two questions, then told me I was hired and to show up the next day for work. It was something I thought was stupid, but when the manager looked me up and down, I knew my dad was right. It was the first lesson, and will always be seared in my memory.
To this day, I always hear him when I’m getting ready for an interview. Black sox, black shoes, black belt. Dress conservatively. Choose a modest tie, conservative pinstripe or solid color suit. I always hear my mother in my mind telling me what colors go with which, what tie will look good, but not overbearing. I see people (CEO’s of companies for Christ sake!) all the time who obviously have never been told how to dress properly. They wear brown belts with black shoes, crazy ass ties that scream “looser!!”, and the most gawdy suits you can imagine. I see all this and look heavenward, and thank God and god for my parents putting me on the right track when it comes to dressing myself. Since I took a lot of what they said together and melded that into one thing, let’s look at some things my mom and dad separately have done to impact my life.
I’ll start with my father. I can honestly say I’ve always held him in high regard and have always been proud and fortunate to have him as my father. There are so many things he’s taught me, the list would be too long to list them all. I’ll focus on some of the things that have struck me in the last few years.
Since sports have always been a big part of my life, my father instilled so many things about sports that I’ve applied to my own life. The single, most important thing I took from his teachings with regards to sports was this: always be a fighter, never give up. I know now, how important this was in his own life, so to hammer this theme a lot over my sports career separated me from the normal jocks who I was always compete ting against. This one thing has served me well. Now don’t think my father basically said to fight everybody, be a cheap-ass and play unfairly. It just meant to never give up. You get hacked from someone; you don’t lie around looking for the call. You get up, and keep going. This always gave me something a lot of guys I knew didn’t have – heart. There were some many jocks at my high school that coasted through sports simply because of talent. When stuff got hard, they got like soft serve ice cream and packed it in. I loved it when the stress levels went up; I loved it when things got tough. It separated the people who were determined to win, from those who simply wanted to showcase their talent. Being somewhat smaller (around 5’6” in high school), I had to have that burning desire to fight through the rough and tumble stuff to survive. Now take this and apply it to any part of your life and you see how important this one lesson is.
Another critical thing my father taught me was to learn how to help yourself, be self-sufficient. It seems an odd thing, but over the years, it has helped me in ways that looking back, were the difference between living and dying. It was THAT important. The one example I always use is when my ex-girlfriend (and mother of my son) left me high and dry in Fargo. She moved back to Minneapolis, and I suddenly had to pay child support, finish off my senior year in college and somehow work 50 hours a week to get by. My daily routine became the same thing day in, day out, my friends abandoned me, and I was left to my devices for months on end. It was a pitiless existence, and I was severely depressed. But just as my father had instilled in me when I was playing hockey, I just never gave up. I got up every morning, I did what I needed to do, and I trudged on. I didn’t want to ask for help, I knew if I wanted to get through it, it was up to me. No counseling, no drugs to numb the pain. I just took it on the chin and never went down. That was the difference between giving up and ending my life, or battling through it, knowing there was light at the end of the tunnel. One lesson, so many applications, but that was the hardest, most difficult time of my life. It was a great life lesson to know what happens when you get left out in the cold in life, and there’s no one around to help you.
Of course, my father gave me something I never fully appreciated until I had my own son. The idea of sacrifice and being un-selfish was something I completely overlooked. I look back now and am simply amazed at how much my father sacrificed to be at my soccer games, my baseball games, my hockey games, my communion, fishing, and a bizillion other things. It meant so much to him to be there for me when I got off the ice, just to pat me on the back and tell me. “Good work, great game.” I always thought this was normal, talking about the game on the ride home, what I did well, what I needed to do better. Now I have my son, I want so much to be that dad for him. It’s only now, I fully understand many of the other kids who had parents who were divorced and one parent or neither one of their parents would show up for their stuff. It must have been really hard on them now that I think about it. I was lucky; my father would work 8 hours a day, drive 45 minutes home, change his clothes and spend an hour outside throwing the football around with me. He never got mad, and never said, “No, not tonight Karl, I’m too tired”. There was so much time he gave me when I was growing up. It showed me how important sacrificing for your kids is, and being un-selfish with your time can have a really positive impact on kids. It did on me. Only now, can I really understand how important that was growing up.
Understand my father was a mathematician. He was so very analytical in everything he did. If he were building something, he would map it out, analyze it, put together an approach and then move on in the order that he wanted to. As a child, this meant actually reading the directions for ANYTHING before we plugged it in or put two legos together. As trivial as it seemed as a child, I now understand how important it was. As an adult, I still read the directions anytime I get a new VCR, DVD player, walkman, etc. His analytical, logical thought process has helped me out of many jams. When all else fails, you still have to read the directions. No jumping ahead, no cutting corners. Read the directions, and everything will be just fine. I saw how he broke things down, examined things and did things in a logical manner. His teachings helped me to sort things out, untangle problems one step at a time. It’s something small, but probably has had the biggest impact on my life overall. This also taught me to be patient. Take your time, and do it right the first time. His attention to the smallest detail showed me you couldn’t overlook anything.
The one thing I do give full credit to my father for is my warped sense of humor. Making me laugh was always the easiest thing to do, but my father had such an intelligent, witty sense of humor to him. Something I latched onto early in my life. The way he told jokes, and the way he told stories were so unique. Just a few nights ago, my wife and I stopped over to give my mother her birthday present and chat a bit. My dad told me an old story about one of his co-workers at one of his old jobs, and how he put in his two-week notice. It was a story I had never heard, but he had me rolling after a few lines. The funny thing? I knew I told stories the same way, with the same facial expressions and the same delivery – VERBATUM. When I always tell a story like the one he told, I can hear my father’s voice, and visualize his expressions in my mind. It’s me talking, but it is for sure my father, always coming through in some weird way. It’s weird to think you would develop your own sense of humor, but mine mirrors my father’s in ways I could never dream of. I often think this is some strange genetic link that will be passed to my son. Something of a sub-conscious family heirloom passed on from generation to generation. So now on to my mother, and the wonderful things she’s inspired in me to do.
My mother is the pacifist, the environmentalist, the activist, and the spiritual superwoman. What my father didn’t give me, my mother more than filled in the blanks. It was the classic case of Ying and Yang. Whatever my father left out, my mother aptly filled in the blanks. Were there was strength, my mother provided restraint. Were there was fight, my mother provided pacifism. Where there was amplified voices and loudness, my mother provided calm. Where there was callousness, she provided emotion and empathy. My mother (and my sister, god love her) took great care in making sure I was in touch with my feminine side. There are many things she taught me, but below are some of the big ones I have carried with me my whole life.
My mother was a pacifist. She told me never to fight, walk away. My father taught to fight. Sometimes I would fight, and other times I would simply walk away. As I grew older, my mother instilled in me that my intelligence was a more dangerous weapon than my fists. Once I started to learn this, it became a fun game to simply outwit the people who wanted to fight me. Mental toughness and metal finesse is what she gave me. Over the years, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve simply talked my way out of a jam in a bar with some drunken idiot. Because of this, my nickname quickly became “the weasel”. As I’ve gotten older, I employ these techniques much more frequently. I basically avoid confrontation, and allow my superior mental skills to carry me through. This of course, also gave me the basis for how to properly argue with people. My mother gave me the great foundation; and it was my college professors who sharpened my wit and made my arguing skills far more nimble.
More than anything, my mother fostered my own creativity. Where my father showed me the analytical side of life, my mother always encouraged my artistic, creative side. I could draw for hours, color pages and pages of books, and let my mind explore. My mom could give me some pencils and paper and I was in wonderland for hours. It was a part of my childhood that I loved. My mother always encouraged this side of us, and it served me well in college and in other areas of my life. It was something fairly simple, but gave me another angle to life. She told me my imagination was something very powerful and potent. Simply honing my imagination to use in other areas of my life has been incredible. Without my mother encouraging this side of me, I never could appreciate art, sculpture, architecture and many other things that to so many people see as dour and un-interesting.
Life, how precious is life? My mother instilled very deeply in me the importance of feelings, emotion and empathy. When you hurt other people how does it feel? How does it feel when you hurt? Simple lessons, but something that has grown so deep in me, it’s hard to NOT think of anything on an emotional level. Making sure I’m aware of other people’s feelings, their emotions and being considerate of that is so important. Tolerance is what she taught me. Being reserved, balanced in your emotions. Curb your anger, look inside your own emotions, and think beyond the physical anger you feel. Pretty deep huh? Once you start see the implications, it becomes staggering how important this became in my own life. How to deal with people that have never learned this is scary. I realize she taught something not many people have or cherish. It is the humanistic level some people never get to. It’s a whole other level of emotional stability and feeling.
My mother, even in her non-violent manner, also instilled in me to never underestimate the underdog, and her fiery spirit always taught me to never, ever, underestimate people. She also showed me that sometimes you have go your own way to be successful. The best example is when she (a woman) coached my hockey team in a league that had all male coaches. She got hazed and they dumped on her and what not. She just didn’t listen to the negativity and just pushed on. Well, well, what happened? Only the city championship, that’s all. She never told the other male coaches to go shove it; she just didn’t listen and did her job. Trailblazer? You bet. Strongest willed woman I know? You bet. I was young enough, but smart enough to know this was the example to follow. She never bothered anybody; she just let her work speak for itself. How wonderful is that? She showed me how to take the negative and turn into something positive.
My mother has also been a fiery woman when it came to politics. She really hammered home a ton of stuff that I have taken to heart. She instilled a very strong environmental awareness; she always spoke up, no matter the consequence. She taught me to make sure my voice is heard. If you don’t stand for something, you’ll go for anything was what I learned. Never be silent, speak up. Being an individual is more important than simply going along with other people because they THINK they know best. My mother has never taken shit from anybody, and her fiery, activist attitude is definitely strong with me. Many, many times in college I stood alone in defending my viewpoints and philosophies. I didn’t do it to be cool; I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. Standing by what you believe in is very important to me, and is something I look for in my friends. I would prefer someone who takes a position and defends it, rather than to simply cave in and tell me I’m right. This is something that was instilled early in me and has simply grown over the years.
Some of the very nature of my life, I think a lot of these things have been amplified over the years. People always talk of how their friends influence them. How they take a lot of their beliefs and make them their own. I know a lot of people like that. I know a ton more people who simply follow whatever their friends do or say to fit in. Through my whole life I’ve thought of myself as an individual. I never had a clique in high school to hang out with. I always saw those people as rich snobs. People who saw themselves above everybody else. I was a jock, but didn’t like hanging with the jocks. I skateboarded (much to the dismay of my parents) and even those guys didn’t take to me very well because I was a jock. It’s not that I didn’t fit in; I never WANTED to fit in anywhere. Thus, I cast off my friends in high school, and started a new in college. When shit got bad in college, I found I really only had a few real friends. To this day, I probably have three people who can I honestly say are my real friends. Is that sad? Nope, it doesn’t bother me; I choose to live my life like I have. Having said that, my influences to a large degree were my parents. When I told my parents because of sports I never drank until college, they thought that was good. I knew people who had DUI’s before they were in college. They thought it was funny, I thought they were morons. Is that how you get “cool points” with your friends? Maybe that helps explain why I didn’t get those people. Maybe that’s why now I can look back at the first part of my life and be thankful my parents influenced me to the degree they did. They showed me the right stuff to follow; they pushed me in the right direction. I’m not in drug rehab, I’m healthy and still enjoying life like I’m 25. This isn’t a thank you letter; it’s just a bit of information to tell them they did a great job raising me. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and I wouldn’t want any other parents. They should take solace in the fact that there are many parts of me that are them. Many parts of them I hear when I talk to people, when I argue with people, when I tell jokes. When I hold my wife close and love just holding her in my arms. When I hurt when my son cries, when I score a goal when somebody told me I couldn’t. When I close my eyes and dream in vivid color, When I open a new DVD player and grab and read the directions first, when I read a spy novel book and get lost in myself. When I change jobs and my dad says, “You’re doing the right thing son.” When I fall asleep every night knowing my parents have given everything of themselves to make me who I am. I want them to know we are infinitely connected; they are so much a part of me. They can sleep well at night, knowing I intend to pass all of this knowledge to my son and future children. It was all worth it, every day, every minute.

Goodnight now.

Karl

2005-02-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

SOMETIMES THINGS HAPPEN SO FAST. . .

First is was the impending lockout, then there were the debates, then the whispers started, and now the circle is complete. . .

First of all, I'm sooooooooooooo pissed and depressed today. Hockey finally conceded and cancelled it's season after the NHL failed to secure a new collective bargaining agreement between the owners and the players. So what happens now? Who knows, but its going to be a very long summer for hockey fans.

Other big news this week was the sacking of Flip Saunders from the Timberpuppies and Kevin McHale took over as the coach. The verdict is till out on McHale as a coach, he's 1-1 so far.

So what good news is there? Well, my Manchester United Red Devils beat their rivals Manchester City 2-0 in one of the most hyped Derby's this eason.

The best news though? I'm leaving my current employer in a handful of weeks and some days. I'm already pumped to see my checks get a shot in the arm. Too many months wondering what the fuck I'm going to do to get by after I get paid. Stability can be such a nice thing sometimes.

That's all I got today, nothing major, just a little update. Can't think of any funny stories, soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo bored, I guess??

LATE

2005-02-08T14:02:00.000-08:00

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU SAY "OH FUCK"

Starting a new job isn't easy. Hell, changing careers is in the top ten of stress related life changes. Well, add me to the list of these poor bastards.

As of exactly two days ago, I accepted an inside job at a monolithic company. You see, I just read a funny article about a guy who started a blog after he got a gig at Goggle. It didn't go so well, too much information for Google's likening ended up on the internet. Read about it here. So I will spare you the details of my high profile earnings, comp package, etc. I always wanted to live in the corporate world, tell people I work at some big name place. You know those conversations right?

"So where do you work?"
"insert big corporate name here"
"Wow! That's really cool, what do you do there?"
"I'm in sales, we do (insert really cool product here)"
"So what do those do? "

Instant gratification, instant corporate cred. It makes you look cool, like you have your life together and are in the process of working your way up. It also usually means your making good money and have a stable job. At least that's the perception - right?

Who wouldn't want that? Me! For so many years I lauded my friends who were running en mass to big corporations after their college graduations. Me? Nahhhhhhhh, I would prefer having a dynamic life, do my own thing, make 30K a year and have my personal freedom.

So when does 30K not cut it anymore? When do you get out of your futon in the morning and WISH you had a better bed, a better apartment (or better, an actual house or townhome) to live in, or just better STUFF? Well, for me, it happened right around 34. I figure with no 401K at my present employer, and a hard cap on my earnings, I figured out my dreams had changed, my life has changed, and I want out.

When your 25, you appreciate working in a mall, picking up 18 year old girls with fake i.d.'s. You don't need much else. When your over 30, picking up 25 year old women is hard because you don't have enough money to get yourself a beer. This is when you know things must change.

So I spent many, many, months devouring the internet looking for a job with a big company. I work in wireless (cell phones) so I thought a jump to a major carrier would be an easy fix. I got several interviews with those carriers. However, when you know more about what the people interviewing you do about THEIR OWN product, it creates some animosity. For instance:

"So why do you want to be a sales trainer for Verizon Wireless?"
"Because I know your product inside and out and I know the best way to sell that product and which trainers are good, and which trainers are terrible. So I know what works and what doesn't"
*sarcastic look on woman's face*
"What do you think doesn't work in regards to our trainers?"
(nice - just set me up you pissy bitch. I can't believe she actually asked me that.)
"The trainers that just spew the information to the sales people. The ones who don't give you any good ideas on how to sell something they've never sold. There are trainers who really don't train slaes people, in my opinon"
*another pissy look from interviewer*
"Interesting, would you care to name a few?"
(at this point, it's confrontational, and time for me to go!)
"I don't think that's necessary, and I don't think this interview is going much further - is it? Because (here's where I get pissed and unload some stress) you came and got me 20 minutes late, have asked me poorly stated questions from the get go, and honestly, if you're going to be my boss, I wouldn't last a week. I have much more important things to do then to sit here and be grilled by a bunch of people who couldn't carry my jock in regards to selling your products. So if you want a trainer who can train the hell out of sales people and make them produce, then hire me. If you're just looking for some lackey on a leash, then I'm not your guy - oaky?"
*stunned silence*

So I get up, put my stuff back on and walk out still fuming. So this is how it went. Several interviews, some good, some great, and some just plain miserable. I finally came to the conclusion that I have too much knowledge and too much experience. Oh yeah, got shitloads of retail interest to run a retail store. I've worked retail, I know how it's a grind during the holidays. I don't want that. I don't want to have to work on the weekends. Thanks, but no thanks. Sothese carriers, they don't want people with experience, so they can mold them into their own little robots. I've spent 7 years in this god forsaken industry, which is a lifetime and this is what I get. So here I am, ready to flush all this stuff down and start over.

So I changed gears and started looking at inside sales positions at large companies. Suddenly I started getting stuff here and there. And sure enough I finally got my offer. So as of next month, I'm a ghost in this industry. Gone, see ya, bu-bye!!

I was hesitant at first, but as the time drags on and the more customers I have to deal with, I'm glad I'm moving to cube land. I'm geeked to come in and produce like the top dogs. Go balls out for the next two months and get to where I want to go.

So now its a toss up. My next blog, will it be a book or corporate experience??

The future is uncertain at this point. . .

Which leads me to my picture of the day:

The weather man sez we've only had 12" of snow this winter! How pathetic! So now, at my other work, we're already taking down our snowboard displays and trying to get rid of the stuff. So that means spring can't be too far off, right? So in the midst of of all this tuff, I can't help to post a few pics of mountain biking. Enjoy. Also, I'll be posting pics of my new bike (as of last summer) as soon as I get em' off of my camera.

Yeah, I know, she's riding a POS GT, so save your emails for somebody else!

LATE

2005-02-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

ONE FROM THE EDGE. .

I read blogs, mostly for fun, sometimes for material or something to jar a memory loose so I can have something to write about. Today was special though. I just remembered this great story about an old roommate.

Now, I must preface this by saying I've never had any really bad roommates. Most of my roommates in college were on my soccer team. So acting stupid when you're lit up, or peeing in their shoes after a long night of drinking was common. Going days and not showering, using all of your roommates soap (the always dangerous mamalian bar trick), and generally acting like a slob didn't go well with the sort I lived it. It was accepted we all had some class and chose to be respectful of those around us.

When I moved back to Minneapolis, I wasn't so fortunate to pick out decent roommates. You see, I didn't want to live with my parents, so after I got a job (which was a really shitty one) I moved in some of my co-workers. ALL of them were cards in their own right, but the best was probably Terry or Josh. Terry was one of these people that didn't believe in showering or changing clothes for that matter. He would basically work 11 hours in the summer heat, with a full polyester suit. Then come home, lay down on the couch fall asleep, get up the next morning and just go to work. I think his all time record was like 5 days doing this. He FINALLY took a shower after several people mentioned a nostril flaring stench following him wherever he went. Thus, he was nicknamed "DISenterry". Now Josh, he was another ball of wax. I nicknamed him "Yoshi" because he had a glass pot pipe shaped like a mushroom that reminded me of the Super Mario Bros game.

Anyways, the guy was a pothead, and four years older than anybody in the apartment (which put him around 29,30). This guy just mystified me to no end. He got caught up with some English broad that liked fancy gifts and expensive food. It wouldn't be anything for them to go out and blow $200 on lunch. Of course, Josh was a sucker for a nice ass and big tits. He ALWAYS ended up paying the tab. Of course, none of us were making any money, let alone enough to be supporting a fucking English mistress and her expensive habits.

So after several months of doing this instead of paying the bills and more importantly RENT, we were on the verge of being evicted. So one night his skank English bitch comes over for one more roll in the hay before she heads back across the pond.

As fate would have it, they were drunk and started to get pretty loud. She was such a fucking screamer, I always had to put on my walkman in order to avoid hearing them knock boots till all hours of the morning. Tonight was no different. So as they were getting louder, I started to pound on the wall and yell "Put a sock in that bitches mouth motherfucker!! I'm trying to sleep!!" Then it would quiet down for a bit, then escalate again. This is when I finally started to plot. You see, they'd go on and on for like an hour, then break and come out into the living room, then go back in for another session. In between sessions, I went into my other roommates bathroom and got her baby powder and put it all over his sheets, then pulled his comforter back over the evidence. I was banking on it being dark (he liked letting candles burn all night long) when they were getting it on. Of course, being drunk and horny, they never noticed it until they were almost done. The reaction was PRICELESS.

It went something like this. . .

HER: Oh god, pound me baby, pound me so hard!!"
HIM: Oh yeah baby!! Oh yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhh!!"
*then abrupt stop*
HIM: "What the fuck did you put on me?"
HER: "Ummmmmm nothing Josh, why?"
HIM: "Because there's shit all over in my bed!!"
HER: *screams*
HIM: "WHAT THE FUCK IS IN MY BED?!?!?!"
HER: "Oh my god, look all this pasty shit in the bed!!!"
HIM: "What the FUCK is IT?"

Just the sheer panic in his voice had me laughing hysterically for hours. Not to mention everytime I thought about it, it just made me laugh out loud. Classic, completely classic.

The funny thing is this. We did get evicted. We moved into another place under the condition with the landlord we would be on a month-to-month lease. Yeah, we moved in in May and on August 31 (that's just four months later kiddies) we got a letter that said our landlord wasn't going to renew our lease. After inquiring as to why he wasn't, it was pretty simple. Josh hadn't paid rent for the past 3 months!! So the landlord simply reclaimed mine and my roommates deposit in order to pay for the rent this dumbass never paid.

Needless to say, everytime I went to go rent an apartment, I got refused because the eviction was now on my renters history. So in order to get this off, I had to take all of my roommates to court, have them sign a shitload of papers about what happened so I could be absolved. It was a MAJOR headache and something I'm glad I've never had to go through since.

After that little experience, I ended up moving in with my best friend. Which was better in many regards, but not all. I'll get a few of those experiences later. . .

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh shit yyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh

the pic, errrrrrrr pics of the day. . .

After John O Shea's goal sealed the deal for the Red Devils. The announcer said he could play for 15 more years and never have a prettier goal.

What can I say? The match was everything it was hyped to be and more. In the end, my Red Devils prevailed. In doing so, they leap frogged Arsenal in the standings and set up an end of the season barn burner between us and Chelsea.

Figures to be a great ending to another great season!!!

LATERS BRAH!

2005-02-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!!

So after almost two years in the Chemtrail trenches, I have decided to delete my Chemtrails blog. Ahhhhhhh yes, it was hard, but needed to be done. I've posted my feelings in another post on this blog (Tuesday May 25th, 2004) The link is here if you need it. But just in case you wanted a window to the madness, here you go. DONT FORGET YOUR TINFOIL HAT EITHER!!!

So now I've got more ideas for another blog. I've always wanted to write a book and I think starting another blog specifically for that purpose would be cool. Then having people comment on it and help me edit it would be even cooler. I'll have to get some more stuff down before I start off on this endeavor.

Okay, so what is going in in this bizzaro world we live in? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, some good news here and here. So I was pretty much awash in emotion as the Iraqi election happened. Pretty insane some of the things we take for granted here. People risked their lives to go vote. I would say that's a determined set of people bent on realizing thier own hopes and dreams for thier country. Also a gigantic victory for Bush, who has been burdened with expectations of failure from Libs and Dems alike. Oh well, such is the climate in our country these days.

Another great hope is this movie I just learned about today. The documentary is called "Voices of Iraq" and is a pretty powerful story of the Iraqi nobody has seen up to this point. Check out the trailer Pretty incedible story - I know. Intersting how the editors had no idea how biased the media really were here. There are several examples cited in the movie which was stunning. You can also rent the movie at NetFlix if you want.

My new favorite home. Very cool people, lots of eager debate. Good for the soul I say.

Brutality in all it's glory. That's what the NHL lockout has become. Millionaires bickering with Billionaires. Who gets the shaft everytime? Ummmmmmmm, the players. Last chance is this week to salvage the season. Read all about it here. Like Is aid, stick a fork in the NHL it's over. I mean the NHL is over. Not coming back for probably another 2 years. By then, it won't matter. The fans will be long gone and they won't come back. So here's what I say to the owners. .

Nothin much else going on here, Ive got another brillant story I'll be posting tomorrow. Another one of those stories that will have you saying W T F? ? ?

LATE

oops, forgot, the pic of the day - right??

In honor of those who risked their lives to vote, this is for you FREE Iraqis and your incredible bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.

pretty amazing shit my friend. . . .

2005-01-19T13:05:00.000-08:00

WHATS THIS THING FOR ANYWAYS??

When I started my blog, it was basically as an outlet to get out all my deep thoughts and insights that seemed to allude me. You know how you always say shit to yourself like, "That is some deeeeeeeeeeeep shit man!" and you always want somehwere to put all this stuff down so you can reference later - right? I also always thought this would be a great place to expound on my life experiences. My college life (from what I remember) was about as textbook as you could get - right up to the last few years. Those last years have been somewhat "removed" from my memory. I know in January of 1997, I finally moved back to Minneapolis permanently. The two years prior to that are very, very, hazy. I honestly could not tell you one thing that happened during those two years that was good for me. It was depressing, horrific, confusing, and most of all, disasterous. Pretty heavy words, but all true.

ANYWAYS, lest I digress into that abyss. My point being, I would write about my good, funny, indifferent experiences in academia and my life during those times. So I could share them somewhere down the road with my children. I honestly remembered so many funny ass stories, I even had several I wanted to tell right off the bat. But as time drags on, and things take precedent in your life, they get shelved. Since the beginning of this blog (August 11th, 2003) that was my intent. To share some of my life lessons and some of the more crazy college stories I amassed.

So then I ran into this guy - or rather his blog. Dave Lawrence is his name, and this is his blog. Of course, you might want to read the first 16 entries, which are pretty amazing to say the least. The first 17 are here. It's definitely worth a read. This guy reminded me of myself at that age. Although I wasn't a bartender, I lived a well documented alcohol ladden life for a few years.

So what's the point? Well, here's one of those stories. . . .

First of all - I must preface all stories by laying the groundwork for your expectations. I attended North Dakota State University in Fargo, N.D. For all you geographically challenged - here's a map:

Fargo is the big red star BTW.

So on with the story. . .

One of the best stories during my freshman year happened after a long night of party hopping, women chasing and general mayheim. One of my best friends lived in another dorm. Since he had a corner room, we usually partied in his room since it was quieter and he really didn't have any neighbors. Yes, if you're wondering, NDSU has a dry campus policy. Anybody caught with beer in their room was "written up" for such infractions. If you amassed enough of these, you were kicked out. Something I found out the hard way (another story - sophmore year). Anyways, So it's me Babbs, and Remey. The night is long (we started drinking after dinner around 6pm) and it's around 2am. Babbs roommate, Casey, is pretty hammered and passes out, as usual, on his bed. He crashed around 1am. Since we were all still drinking, we were plotting some horrible practical joke to play on him. As fate would have it, the poor bastard snored SO FUCKING loud we could barely talk before he intterupted us with his log sawing imitation. After about 30 minutes of rolling him around on his bed and the such to try and shut him up, we come up with a brillant plan.
So we cover him up in his blankets, and start taking his belongings (clock radio, posters, end table, etc, etc.) down to the showers. This dorm had community showers, so it was a huge open tiled room with 10 shower heads lined up around the horn. So we take all this stuff and "mock up" his area of the room. The last thing is we took him, still alseep in his bed, snoring like a muthafalker down to the bathroom showers. To top it off, we took a super long extension cord so we could plug in his alarm clock. We set the alarm for around 6am.
We tried, man did we try to stay awake so we could be there to see his reaction. Unfortunately, we all feel asleep until we heard him banging on the door and shouting "Pretty funny motherfuckers!! Let me in and go get my shit!!" We were all laughing so hard, we were all crying. Babbs didn't want to open the door. But he started getting violent(threatening us, kicking the shit outa the door), so we relented and let him in. The look on his face was precious, and I wish I would've had a camera to catch it.
The funniest bit out of all is I guess some sorry sod came in and took a shower while he was sleeping. It was until after the guy turned the shower off did Casey finally wake up. He said it took him a few minutes to get his bearings. He thought he was dreaming he was in the showers, then when he fell outa bed and hit the tile floor, he knew he had been duped.
This set off a huge prank war that had many highlights. One of the better ones was when Casey (Babbs roommate) "accidently" pissed in his shoes the very next weekend while in a drunken stupor. After some prying, he told me he really wasn't all that drunk and did it on purpose. Too funny.

Anyways. . .that's all I got for right now.

Oooops! Forgot the picture of the day!

MY LIFETIME INSPIRATION

NONE MORE NEGATIVE - TYPE O NEGATIVE

out

2005-01-04T14:44:00.000-08:00

AND 2005....WERE OFF!

So another year comes and goes. Working on year two of this thingy. Still kinda new, try and un-load my thoughts from time to time. So let's recap the year just in case you missed it.

CNBC Year in Review

Info Please 2004 Review

The CNBC version is more news orientated, whereas the info please covers all the bases. Some of the more important things that changed my life are definitely the presidential election and the ongoing war in Iraq. Those are probably the two biggest. The one story that hasn't gotten more press is the hockey lockout. I guess Wayne Gretzky came out yesterday and said this could very well go on for another year or possibly TWO. Insane shit, just insane. So stick a fork in hockey. Here's a link if you want any of the sordid details so far:

BITCHES!

So it's been a few weeks since I've played hockey or soccer. My son came up for the new year and left yesterday. His plane left at 6:15am, so getting up at 4am did not do me anygood. I crashed HARDCORE last night. In bed, lights out by 9:30pm, what can I say?

So I gots Dido (ala trance version) streaming on my pc right now. So no soccer or hockey over the holidays and now I feel so fucking bloated it sucks. I put skateboarding on hold for a while too. Hopefully I can loose some of this flab in the next few weeks and get back being normal again.

The job hunt continues (as usual). I got a call from Qwest today asking me if I wanted an outside sales job going DOOR TO FRICKING DOOR selling their services. Ummmmmmmmmmmm no thank you. At least my phone is ringing though - therefore I can't complain - right? Hopefully some better things will start popping up. I also applied for a sales supervisor position at ERIKS. I was supposed to call Dave today, but forgot. But alas, that will go to the top of my list for tomorrow now. Aside from not finding a job yet, I have no complaints. I mean, what CAN I complain about? My life is good, comfortable - what more could I ask for? Nothing. Happiness is finally mine!

SO SMILE DAMMIT!!

So here's to hockey, R.I.P. old friend. Maybe someday you'll come back. . .

LATE

2004-12-27T08:28:00.000-08:00

A FEW LONG DAYS

Christmas came and went in a flash. My son is finally here, The Vikings lost (no big surprise there), Reggie White died too young at 43, and now the week ahead looks promising.

Sent out a few more resumes to a few companies. Hopefully something will break soon. I have my 2k bonus coming and I have decided to go back to work on the my wireless billing idea. I just have to pick a system that will work so I can do this on my own and still make enough to live on.

Oh yeah - Danny Way was picked Skater of the Year again. No big surprise there. He deserved it, no doubt.

That's about it. All is good in my world. Just in a holding pattern for some things. Wait and see for now I guess. . . . .

Oh yeah, picture of the day: the SOTY himself - DANNY WAY

and what would Christmas be without some sexy elves?

more laters. . .

OUT

2004-12-20T11:58:00.000-08:00

TOO LONG BETWEEN POSTS. . .

Last post: 11/2/04. With the upcoming new year, and all that has happened over the past month, I guess some catching up is in order - huh?

So. . . Bush won the election, The Liberals went mad, Hockey is STILL OOC (out of commission), and the Vikings are about to take the gaspipe and lose the NFC central to the Packers.

Hockey for me, has gone well, Christmas is fast approaching, Thanksgiving was wonderful, my son visiting went all too fast, and skateboarding took a backseat to soccer starting again. I did two interviews, one went great (Nextel) the other (Verizon) was a an unmitigated disaster. I didn't get either, but continue to send out resume's and the hunt continues. Day after day I WANT OUT of this shitty industry that is Wireless.

Oh yeah, had our Christmas party for ERIKS (www.eriksbikeshop.com) which was mildly entertaining. Since the ski area where the party was had shut down due to high winds, we were chalet ridden. So lots of trivia, free giveaways and prizes for salesperson of the year, most menchanic hours, most Cannondale sales, yyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwnnnnnn. I got a free t-shirt and some gloves. Lame. Oh well, better luck next year I guess.

So what else? My soccer team finally came to its senses and realized we are no longer 25 and need to find a good league that suits our "tweener, close to by not completely over 30 team" skill.

Hrrrrrrrrrrummmmmmmppppppppphhhhh. I have an AWESOME plot for a book. Dunno if I'm ever going to get around to it - but hey WTF? Right?

Revelations continue to come to me about the mother of my son. I know, old topic, big fucking deal - get over it. I have an entirely new observation which just adds to my frustration. In the end, I still believe she tried to trapped me (unsuccessful) and got preganat on purpose. Even worse? Since my son has been born, Karis has attempted to prevent me from trying to raise my own son. She has always believed any time my son spent time with me, it was bad for him because we had divergent views on parenting. How big do your balls have to be to believe something like that? Crazy, just crazy. To me, it seemed more like this was some master plan she had. Get pregnant, then I would marry her and we live happily ever after. She wanted to have a baby and she got that. Too bad I was about to allow her to manipulate me to get what she wanted. So the next step is try and cut me out of my son's life and minimize my involvement. After every turn she's tried to limit my involvement with my son. She still thinks it's best to have onluy parent raising our son. So sad, yet sooooooooo true.

Oh well, here's the pic errrrrrrrrr video of the day - in case you think I've forgotten!

Here's the video. From Feb of 2003 - still funny.
http://www.hardflip.com/movies/blitz2.mov

Here's the words that go with the Vid - if you're interested in that sort of thing.
http://www.hardflip.com/blitzkreig.asp

I'll try and update a little bit sooner from now on - ok?

LATERS