#105

So, I'm in Phoenix right now. Actually, I'm on my way to Burbank and we aren't even going to de-plane. I'm sitting here and can get internet access. Crazy. Later.

#103

Jerry Falwell aparently died today. Earlier this morning actually. And while I didn't know him personally, I have read many a hatefull things about him today. Rejoicing and Dancing. Singing and spitting. Seriously people, he made some pretty outragious claims but some of the comments I have seen are really creepy. Most of these are from self-proclaimed good people who frequently blame Christians and religion for all the ills of the world. Its just about crazy. Anyway, I'm headed down to LR tonight. I have a meeting to go to and it should be a good time. The speaker has done some pretty impresive things with the buisness I am trying to get going. So, there should be some reaffirmation and encouragement. Oh, and we are going to get some awsome sweet BBQ. I forget the name of the place but it pretty much rocks my face. I ate there once for Man Night a couple of months ago and it was really good. So, in conclusion I beleive there will be rainbows out shortly. The rain is starting to stop. No really, we just a good bit of rain here this afternoon.

#102

Mark - I know you think my numbering is off, but it is not. I posted twice under a couple of number and other numbers got skipped. When I come in to the blogger site it tells me how many posts I have made. Because I can not count, that is the number I go by. Could be wrong, but I do not think it is. Oh well. At least its getting me to post again.

Today is Monday. Some people are down on Mondays because they signify the statr of a new work week for most of us. All the work stuff that we didn't finish last week is still there waiting for us. Whatever I did not finish on Friday afternoon is sitting there patiently for me to come in and devour my soul. The weekend is barely enough time to relax(haha) and get things done. So, I am getting out of my job. Not this week, but soon. I have a side business that I am trying to build here in Searcy but so far to no avail. Mostly due to my lack of commitment. The thing with commitment is that I can say anything and I can think anything and I can want anything, but until I write it down it does not really have a good chance of happening. I am going to build this buisness and I am going to get out of my job. I am not going to be a wage slave and I am going to help people find purpose in their lives.
Our parents taught us a way of life since we were children. Study hard, get good grades. Why? Well, getting good grades means you have learned important things. Like what? For starters, Algebra is very important. Having the ability to calculate the area of a triangle will surely save peoples lives some day. Really? Save lives you think? Hmmm, ok I guess so.Oh yeah, and good grades will get you into a good college. Wow, a good college, that sounds fantastic. What will happen there?Oh, in college you will learn more things.

Meh, this is the problem I have with writing things out online. I get bored with them. I would love to carry the conversation out to the end. It involves the participants discussing the value of a good traditional education and how far it will actually get us in life. Except for all the things they don't teach us about life. The US Department of Labor is perdicting that by the time I am ready to retire(more then 50 years from now) I will have to work a 20 hour work week inorder to keep living. In a matter of days I will go from making a living that cares for my wife and me down to one-half or one-third of what we were getting by on. Currently, I have little confidence that the government will be in a position to help us out by then.
Can you imagine sitting at a desk for 50 years answering phones, giving computer assistance? How long will it be before the new guy comes in and takes my place. Right now I am young and cheap-ish, but for how long. Every year there are newer, more up to date, cheaper, and better looking(this one is probably not true) tech guys out there trying to steal my job. So far my company has not been able to find them.

#101

CLEAR.....thwump......beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.CLEAR......thwump.....beeeeeeeeep.
Doctor, give it up. Its gone.
NO, I'M NOT LOSING ANOTHER ONE. YOU WON'T DIE ON ME DARN IT.

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FWUAAAAH -
Doctor, its alive, you did it. WOOHOOO.
WELL, THATS WHAT I DO.

#100

First I would like to congratulate myself on 100 posts. Woot. Now onto the show.

Day 3 - March 11
The wakeup call came early. 3:15 so we could be ready when our taxi got there at 4:00 so we could make it to the airport for our 6:30ish flight. Wow, what a whorl-wind adventure it has been and we haven't even made it to France yet. We get up and get everything in order. Make it down stairs and the taxi is their waiting for us. We load up and tell him we have to stop off at a bank/ATM to get the money we need to pay him. He drove us away from the airport and toward the ATM. When we got there they were not going to let The Princess use her card. I then tried mine and also got shot down. Well, all we have is Euros so now we are in a delima. Luckily our taxi guy was real great and called the hotel to ask what the exchange rate was and how much in Euros it would be for the ride. The guy calls back and tells him and we are on our way to the Heathrow airport to fly to Paris. I did a little math in my head to make sure it at least sounded about right and we were set. We entered the airport, check-ed on the kiosk and waited for a person to show up to take our bags. Not so stresfull this time, because there was no one there to take anyones bags so we all just waited in queue until people showed up and then we headed deeper into the airport where we found a bastion of American Style Sanity: Starbucks. Again, all the numbers look the same as in America, you just have to multiply it by 2.5 to see if it is really worth it. We ended up with regular coffe and begals. The flight loaded up and we were off. No extra events to hold us down. Oh yeah, to add this real quick, I saw about 20 guys in our 24 hrs here that reminded me of Mr. Bean, they are everywhere over here. hehehe. When we landed in Paris they made an announcment reminding everyone that there was DEFINITLY NO SMOKING in the airport. The rules had recently changed and the made sure everyone knew that there was no smoking. Our arrival in Paris was relativly un-eventful-We landed, we got our luggage, we walked down to the RER B(the train into Paris) and got our tickets to head on out. Well, the tickets don't like Americans and when you say you want 2 tickets the machines all think you want a 2-way ticket. So, after The Princess entered the train terminal I couldn't run the ticket through to get in. I had to go back to the desk and get them to exchange my left over 1-way ticket for another one that would work for me. Hurray. Now we are on our way. As we were nearing Paris, two men entered our train car. The first was a nice looking man who carried an accordian and started to play. Shortly after, another man comes running in with a full bass and starts strumming along. It was actually very good and I wanted to film it for YouTube or something, but I also had just spent a ridicullous amount of money to get here and was being stingy with what we had left. So, we did not tip them or video tape them. I felt a little guilty for this, but not for to long. In Gard d'Nor(the North Train Station) we figured out the direction we needed to take to make it to Gard l'Est(East Train Station) and headed out. The first sight we got to see inside the city limits of Paris was a Sex Booth place with Private booths for 1euro=1video. Well, there you go I guess. From there(the train station not the sex shop) we headed south and east and made our way just fine. Our trip was a little slow, but we were carring several bags and had not really had a nights sleep for several days. Once we arrived there the office for buying tickets was closed. Closed on Sundays read a sign. Well, what now. We sat for minute to gain our composure and then went to the local ticket box. He told us we had to go around and outside to find the other ticket spot and we were able to find it eventually. Now that we had tickets we wanted to take a quick look at the area we were in and just walk around a little bit. So, we asked about lockers for our luggage. Oh yes, the lady says, they are at Gare d'Nor. So, back up the hill to the train station we started at to drop of our luggage so we can enjoy the 3 hours we have before our train leaves. Back at the North Train Station, a girl is standing there looking dishevled and she just keeps saying Speak English. So, I say yeah sure to wich she holds up a sign that basicly says, I am from hungaria my mother is here for two months, blah blah blah, give me money. I told her no(again, we did not have a lot to spare) and start to walk she follows, please please. I answer no sorry. At this she says I'm pregnant. Well, that is probly not good for your child, but I'm sorry no. She turns away. During our trip I see this girl atleast 5 more times and she is doing the same thing the whole time. You might think the is cruel of me, but you will soon learn why I didn't give money to any of the beggers there. Then we headed down to this little river in that district and it was really really nice. All the Frenchies out walking around for a Sunday stroll. Kids everywhere very relaxing and nice. I have some pictures that I will post of this, there was a little tent city down by the river. So, back to the North Train station to pickup our stuff and then on to the East Train station to catch our ride. We get on and there is plenty of room and it is a very nice train for riding 4 hours in. Very nice. After a while the ticket guys come by. Everyone else seems to have a single ticket for everyone in their group, not us, we only have one ticket for the both of us. It does have both of our names on it so I am only a little worried. When the guy gets to us he asks us if we live in France. No. So he explains that we were suppose to Validate the ticket in Paris and that usually it is a 10euro fine for each person. Just like the taxi, this guy is really nice and he doesn't charge us. Now we are finally in Strausbourg. Except we don't have anyway to contact our friends there because the phones don't take money. Thats right, the phones in France don't take money you have to have a special calling card to use for it. Well, we didn't know that at the time so we wandered around like crazies trying to figure things out. Finally got a card, made the call and our friend came to pick us up. While we waited we headed over to a McDonalds. I only mention this because they have these nifty little ham&cheese stars for the kiddies. The word for ham is jambon and the word for cheese is fromage, so natuarlly the stars are called Jambon et Cheese. Of course? A short car ride and we are home, where we eat a fantastic dinner and spend quite a good amount of time catching up on things. One of the things I learned in this conversation is that France is Socialist. Part of what this means is that the homeless people get paid more then minimum wage for being homless. This is why we no longer felt that twinge of guilt for not giving them our money. This is also why all the homeless people have tents. Tents everywhere, on the sidewalk in the park, all over the place. Crazy tents.

Well, we have successfully made it to France and are in Strausbourg about to go to sleep so I am going to divert from the rest of the story and work on taxes. I'll be back shortly to continue this ramble of our adventures.

#99

Day 2 - March 10
Now that we are at Gatwick we have a little bit of a delima. So far we have been flying on NWA and everything has been good, but from here on out we are actually going to fly Air France. This is because from Gatwick they are the only people who fly to Strausbourg, which is on the French/German boarder and our hopefull destination for our stay in France. Anyway, the delima is the fact that we have landed at the North Terminal and need to go through customs to get our bags and then proceed to the South Terminal and check them back in for the Air France flight. No big deal. I have flown into/out of several foreign countries before for work(bahamas and panama) and there is no way they have better customs then England does. So, we start walking down the hallway toward customs so we can get a move on and maybe find some lunch. We round the corner and there are about 2,000 people in this gigantic line for customs. It actually filled the entire roped line in the main room, up a large ramp down a hall the length of the first room, down another hall and around a corner where we finally found the end of it. 2.5 hours not looking so long anymore. So, we waited. The people in front of us were really nice. At one point, The Princess had to get out of line to go to the bathroom and I was holding our place, but then it hit me that I had to go as well, and this was not going to wait. Luckily they were very understanding as I shuffled down the hallway to the bathroom, Julie came back and everything worked out well. Finally after about 2hours we get up to the desk and get our passports stamped. Hurridly we rush into a larger room with about 10 different luggage dispensers and peoples luggage everywhere. I scour the room, but any signs that our flight had been here were gone about 90 minutes ago. So, we start to hunting for our baggage. The Princess was actually able to find them pretty quickly while I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Now, on a mission we are trying despratly to make it over to the Southern terminal in the 4 minutes before the plane takes off to try and stop it somehow so we can make it on. Unfortuantlly, when we arrived at the Southern Terminal no one there had ever heard of Air France and had no clue where it was. So we wandered around for a minute and finally came across some one who said, follow that sign around the corner. Around the corner we go and we find a single check in location with no personell and it is odviously shut down for the day. I look around for a second and ask someone from another airline who I should talk to. They point me to customer service desk. This is the point where we find out that our tickets are now null&void and that we can not exchange/refund/modify/anything them and will have to purchase new tickets. Huzzah. It only takes us about an hour to finally find the next flight to Strausbourgh. Sunday night at 7:30. Hmmm. We work with the rep for a couple more mintues and finally come up with a plan that will have us on a flight to Paris at 6:00 in the morning. From Paris we can get train tickets or something to get us to Strausbourg.
One more catch. The flight to Paris is not leaving from this airport, but is actually leaving from Heathrow which is about 45 minutes away by bus. Fantastic. So, we kick over to bus over to Heathrow and then have to find a hotel, dinner, and a taxi for the next morning. The thing to remember through all this is that we only have Euros because the plan was to end up in France where everything is in Euros. So, here we are in England looking at 2 plane tickets,2 bus tickets, 2 dinners, a hotel room and a taxi, all in pounds. Luckily, The Princess had one of her cards with her and they were nice enough not to shut it off. I on the other hand had been quickly cut off by the Credit Overlords before even making it onto the flight to Gatwick. Another thing to remember when you are travelling overseas. When in England everything appears to be the same price, example: A hotel room 90, a plane ticket 105, a bus ticket 19, a decent dinner for 2 30. The kicker comes when you realize you have to convert each pound into 2.5 dollars. So, your hotel becomes 200, plane becomes 250 and so on. Yep, that was one expensive night in England. When we finally made it to our hotel we just crashed and slept for 3 hours at which point we went to walk around trying to find something to eat. The only thing was a british pub that was not serving the full menu so we ended back at the hotel for an very expensive, not very good dinner.

#98

So, it has been a while. About a month I guess since my last real update. Well, work is still about the same. Life here in the booming metropolis of Searcy is pretty good. I guess the big news is we spent last week in France. Yeah, France, the one on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. For reals, that one. So, I have decided to work on recording our little intercontinental adventure here for those who read this. I am thinking that I will split up the posts so 1post = 1day. This may cause some problems to start with, but should line itself up after the two days/posts or so. Anyway, here goes nothing and if you do not want to read about France, then stop reading here for a couple of posts and come back when I start talking about a new buisness oportunity that might just get you out of debt and home from you job in 2-5 years.

France Day 1 - March 9
We have a tendency to wait till the last moment on things. Because of this we waited until this morning to finish packing and cleaning the house. I still had to go by the office and print off some tickets/itteneraries and pick up some batteries, but beside that we were set. While I was printing everything off at work, I realized I had the departure time wrong in my head and we actually needed to leave our house about 30 minutes earlier then I thought. Not a problem, just had to hurry things up. On the way to the airport The Princess played with the Learn French program on my computer and reviewed some words and whatnot. It was an enjoyable ride over to Memphis and we actually arrived at the correct time we needed to be there. We entered the airport, walked up to the check-in screen, got everything done and then waited for someone to take our bags. We waited, and waited. Then we waited some more. I ended up taking about 45 minutes for them to finally take our bags. You might think a couple things at this point 1.I am exaggerating, which I can guarantee you I am not because I looked at my watch several times because I couldn't beleive how long it was taking. 2. What a big line it must have been, and again you would be wrong. There was actually very little of a line. Because it was an international flight we had arrived 2 hours early, with what I thought was plenty of time to spare. We would soon find out, 2 hours is never enough time when going over seas. Both of the lines on either side of use kept getting called up and their baggage taken. Several times people would walk up, do the computer check-in and have their bags taken before they even finished. The whole time I am standing there, very menicing, in awe that I have been waiting for 20 minutes with no help. The the real kicker came down. When someone finally decided that our line was good enough to be assisted, they decided to start at the back of the line, so everyone behind us(who arrived well after we had already checked-in) went in front of us, said they were sorry to us and went on their merry way. Again, this would be come a regular event in our grand adventure. After we got through security(only a couple of minutes) we had less then an hour till our flight left, so that meant they were going to board in about 20 minutes. We hurry down to the food court for lunch(haven't eaten for 6 hours) and grab a burger and fries. Because we ordered the Large fries so we could split them everyone around us ordered and left well before we got ours. Then we went to the gate, ate, and boarded our plane. No more drama. We landed in Minn./St.Paul and walked around for 4 hours while we waited for our next flight. Ate at a restaurant that didn't have nachos and then got on our plan to Gatwick, England. The flight was alright, we had the two seats togther on one side so we could fall asleep and not get all weird on people. Also, each seat had its own video screen so you could select from a plutera of movies/games/music/maps to watch. I ended up watching Stranger then Fiction, Deja Vu, Rocky Balboa. These were actually three pretty good movies. We then arrive in Gatwick and deboard the plane with 2.5 hours to reach our next flight.

#97

So, yesterday was my birthday. Huray, I am 26 now. Good Gravy that is old. Ok, maybe not really, but that is way close to 30 and THAT is way old. Anyway, thanks for the birthday wishes from those sent them and for those who didn't, well you are a jerk, ha, so take that. This is kind of random, but I received an email from JetBlue today. As some of you may now, last week the airline company had a rough time with the weather up northeast and there were some serious delay/cancelation issues. Well, today I received an email from them about their unprofesional buisness practices last week. This is pretty neat, but what is great is that I didn't even have a flight with them last week. I got on one of their mailing lists a while back for some free stuff and they just wanted me(and everyone else they have email address for) that they are sorry and have institued a Customer Bill of Rights. I had heard some talk about this on the political side, forcing the airlines to create one of these but JetBlue went ahead a actually did something about it. If I didn't have to fly Delta for work then I would give JetBlue a try and see how different it really is. Well, it is late and I have work in the morning, just like the rest of you. Maybe.

#96

Ok, so I have been up to a lot of nothing really. Preparing for our trip to France in March, having a birthday party, sleeping, eating, you know the usual. So, I have two purposes for this post tonight. #1 - Netflix #2 - Tagged. Well, with Netflix they have started allowing online viewing of movies. It only works in IE so that is a bummer, but the rest of it is pretty good. You log into your account, select the Watch Now tab and then click the Watch Now button under the movie. They don't have all their movies setup right now, but it is my understanding that they are hoping to have all of their customers setup for online watching by July and the movies available are a very limited selection right now, but they are updating them on some sort of schedule I would imagine. It takes about 30-40 seconds to start the movie, but then it is seamless all the way to the end. The detail suffers a little, but most of the time I can't even tell. I also watch LOST, Prison Break, Heros, Jerhico online and all of them have really big trouble with keeping up and time is wasted waiting for the next secition to be prepared but this has not been a problem with any of the movies I have seen online. Also, you get 1 viewing hour per $1 you spend on your monthly rentals. So, you still get however many DVDs AND an hour/dollar you spend. It works out pretty good.
#2 - So, Mark Adams tagged me for this thing where you have to list 6 strange things about you. Well, here goes nothing.
1. I suffer from a very minor case of Trichotillomania.
2. I suffer from Male Answer Syndrome. This means I take two things you said and I make up a third logical thing and pass it off as truth. Some might call this lying, but I usually tell people I have no idea what I am talking about afterward.
3. I love to eat corn dogs. I mean it is an unnatural love for the sweet sweet corndog.
4. I also love BBQ. Actually, I just enjoy eating in general. More then I should, I love to eat food and good food is even better.
5. I like cartoons. I get up early on Saturday morning to watch them because there are no other cartoons on the rest of the week(no cable) and that is the only time.
6. I struggled to fill out this whole list. Does that count as strange? How about my paralizing fear of heights. Yeah, that can work for number six. Like, when we went to the Grand Canyon, the close I got to the edge the lower I had to squat until I was flat out on the rock just to peak over the side.

#95

I know it has been more then a little while since I have posted. I have meant to really I have, but I have been haveing some conflicts at work. Maybe I will write about them later. I just wanted to short post that I now have instant viewing available with my Netflix. Basicly, I can watch up to 15hours(dependent on plan) of movie,tv, whatever they carry on my computer every month. This amount is going to go down, because I just shifted my plan to a lower amount. This does not effect my two at a time DVD check-out at all. Anyway, back to the grind.

#94

So, I have a couple of shows I like to watch. LOST, HEROS, Prison Break, JHERICO. Basicly the heavy hitter for each network. The great thing about that is they are all available online. This week Prison Break and HEROS started back up so tonight I also caught up. Apparently, I missed an episode of HEROS in the fall. This explains why I have not understood half the posts I have seen about what is going on. Well, I got both of those episodes out of the way and am good to go now. Not much else going on. I am keeping up with the bible reading. We are in Exodus now and it is pretty interesting. Sometimes I get bored because it is the same stories told a million times, but sometimes I really enjoy the history of it all and wrapping my mind around the sheer awsomness of it all. Random-I took one of those online meme things about bible knowledge and I got a 100%. Of course the questions were like What was Jesus' mother's name a)Sue b)Mary c)Chuck E. Cheese D)The Hamburgler. Other side of my brain just kicked in. Tomorrow night there is a concert at the campus here in town. Robert Randolph and the Family Band. We hit up his website and they sound pretty good. Unfortunatly tickets are $15 a shot and we are flat broke at the end of the month. I am working on a budget, but it is a slow process of forcing ourselves to conciously live within our means, instead of doing what we can while we have dollars in the bank. Later.

#93

I am watching PotC:DMC or Pirates of the Carabiean:Dead Man's Chest. It is much better the second time around. I enjoy netflix and I am really looking forward to when they hook me up with the movie on-line deal. I think everyone is getting switched off of DVD's and onto online viewing by July or something like that. I still haven't seen Heros or Prison Break from this week. But I do have tomorrow night and friday night. Not much else going on. We went to a bible study tonghit. We are going to watch these videos by this guy Rob Bell. He is a post-post modern something or other. We watched one of his videos tonight and he talked about a guy with a megaphone standing on a corner going on about hell and damnation. He talked about how God is Love and Love is what Jesus is about. The most important comand being Love God and the second is love your neighbor. So, Loving your neighbor is loving God. He goes on from there and it was pretty interesting. It was just me,my wife, and Jim(the guy who's house we were at) so we talked about a lot of different things and it was a good time. Well, later.

#92

Ok, so I am failing at posting everyday.But that is ok because I don't really do anything exciting on a daily basis. Unless you consider successfully eating a meal without getting any food on yourself. But even then, I wouldn't post every day. So, tonight I am watching abc/cbs/nbc on my computer. Trying to catch up on shows because they all start up this week. Well I just stumbled across this show on cbs. It is called The Papdits. Think Borat on tv and with a wife, two kids and a mother in law he wants to die. Oh and they are from India. This show is crazy. Nothing over the top, but they say things that are a little off. It is a little funny. Well, night.

#91

So far this year I have been keeping very good record of our finances. See, our landlord likes to get his check on the first of the month. At the lastest the fifth. After that there are fines and he reports us to the credit bureau, blah blah blah. We are such good tennats that I think he would actually let us go longer then five days if we talked to him about it, but hopefully we won't have to. Well, the past two months he has been waiting until 15th or the 20th to deposit the check. This causes a problem because I have been doing all my bills online and the checks don't process the same, so I miscalculate thing. But not this month. I am using Microsoft Money 07 to keep track of things. So far it has been working out well. Anyway, that is what I am working on tonight.

#90

Nothing of any real importance to say. We got none of the cold snowy weather that the rest of the mid-america is dealing with. That is nice because we still have electricity. This is not so nice because I still have to go to work. The customer I worked with last week called today and I had to walk them through some things that could ahve saved them tonds of time yesterday if they had just sent me an email. Oh well. I really have nothing to put here. Blah blah blah.

#89

I am home now. It is nice to sit on my couch and stuff. I have been playing basketball in the city league here and until last week we had not won a single game. During the four weeks we did not play over christmas, two guys quit, we got two new guys and last tuesday when we played we had a substitue or something so half of the guys we had there were new. Well, apparently it was a winning combination, because it was our first win. I was not able to make it to thursdays game because I was in california. This morning I saw Joshua Lundin at church. He made a funny face at me and then went the other direction. My two logical options are 1. He caught a wiff of something funny and thought it might be his pants 2. He had no idea who I was and only barely recognized me. That is ok. I understand how it is. Jerk. :) Anyway. It is time for bed. I need to catch up on some sleep still. I spent the afternoon working on our finances instead of sleeping so I figure I will do that now. Night.

#88

I just read a very interesting article about wireless powersupplies. Very informative on a subject that has been studied since we have had a control of electricity.

#87

Well, apparently I have a hard time posting everyday when I am travelling. Luckily, Sacramento airport has free wi-fi with access to the internat. This is very nice at it has given me something to do from 8:30 until around 11:0 when my flight leaves. Actually this could be the single best cross country flight to ever occur in the history of man. Usually the red eye out of California is a completly full flight. Tonight it is almost full. As a matter of fact, when I arrived at the airport only four seats were available. The super crazy thing is that all four of them were emergency exit seats and three of them were together. So I took the whole row, potentially, to myself. I will have a row of emergency exit seats on a full flight. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Also, on my second flight. Emergency row again. This is sooo gona be a sweet set of flights. There is a funny thing about California. Aparently they don't like to sell me gas here. See there is an gas station here on site at the airport but both times I have been here the network has been down and they will not take credit cards. How am I suppose to expense things onto an expense account if I can not use a credit card. Silly California, Credit Cards are for the rest of the States. I also have some more picks of adventures.


The first picture is where I had dinner last night. IN AND OUT BURGER baby. That is a sweet sweet delicious amazing delectible meal of fantasticness. I love it. MMMmmm. The second pick is Diablo Mountain. It is a mountain that dominates the skyline of the delta, which is where I have been this past week. Apparently the "island" I was working on didn't exist until the 1930's at which point they built some levy's and told the water you can only go so far and then all the dirt dried out a little. So now the whole island sits about 15 feet below river level just waiting for the levys to blow and drown the whole thing. Kinda like the dutch, excpet I think they had dykes not levys. Later

#86

So, California is a nice place. Apparently I am south of Sacramento this time. Last time I was north of Sacramento. Its different. The people I am working with seem alright. I am working with the marina and with our reseller, so things are going smoothly. Here are some pictures that I have taken so far. That first pick is how the airport handles unclaimed luggage. The second pick is my dodge durango, or as I like to think of it my own personal eclipse maker. The third shot is a pick of my hotel room. Fourth is a shot one of the many vineyards out this way. So, that is all I have right now. I will write more later.

#85

I am writing now because I may not have much time later tonight and tomorrow I expect to not have Internet access for most of the day I think both Atlanta and Sacramento have WiFi at the airport but you have to pay for it, so I might just download that demo for the Left Behind game. It has four hours of play before you get the cutoff. Oh well, we will see how far I can get in that time I guess. Although my layover is less then an hour so I will be hauling but to get to my second flight. Oh well. I have a good amount of peace today. I was able to handle the ridiculus customers and their issues/questions/imaginations very well today. I am a little less positive about the new hire situation. It may be that there is some disagreement about who to hire for the open spot, but that will get filled eventually and so on and so forth. I have a basketball game tonight and I just hope that we don't make fools of ourselves to much. I really expect to get slaughtered. Personally I can only hope to keep myself from dying of wind exhaustion. I was starting to get some steam there before the four week break of eating and sleeping and not running everyday like I wanted. Maybe next week I can get that going. Oh well, once basketball is over I am all over picking up TaeKwonDo or some other form of martial arts here in town. That will be sweet.

#84

Yowza McBowza. I missed my post yesterday. I think maybe I won't make myself post one on both days of the weekend. I mean, if I do then great. I will make it a goal, but we will see what happens. So, what is there to know about our lives. Well, Thursday night we made it down to LR and were able to deposit my paycheck. Apparently when we moved they cut my paycheck inorder to compensate for the office rent and so on. This is not a big deal to me because I had originally suggested this, but they never brought it back up and I had no idea this was happening until I was home for christmas. They told me my paycheck was going backup to my original amount and completely caught me off guard. Again, this doesn't bother me because our company was tight in the budget at the time and now we are not tight, but I can easily see how someone could walk out the door if they found out that for four months they had been making about 10% less each month. They are taking a look at their finances now and I should find out about a real raise sometime this month or next.
On a sad note the woman who owns the house we are staying in died on Dec. 27. It looks like one of her children will inherit the house and they will either keep it or sell it. If they sell it then our landlord will probably buy it. We do have a 24 month contract so legally we don't have to worry about getting kicked out or anything. We talked shortly about making a bid on the house, but I am a little weary of that because then we would have to become Arkansas residence and that could throw some kinks in things. So, I doubt it will happen, beside we don't really have the funds to handle it right now.
Part of why I didn't post yesterday was the fact that we went down to LR again with Sean and Joe. We went and saw The Prestige which is a movie about magics. I LOVED IT. I thought it was amazing. The whole movie is out an out of sync time line and ends out super crazy crazy sweet. Then we ended up at T.G.I.Friday's and we split one of those 3 course meal deal and had plenty of goodness. THen we headed off to BaN for some coffee and book reading. We didn't end up back home until after 12 and into bed and asleep around 1. It was a good time.
That about does it for this weekend. I am headed off to California this week for work so I will post how that goes and that is that. Later.

#83

So, my paycheck finally arrived. Well, I use the term arrived very very loosely. At 5:05 when I called UPS they told me that they would get intouch with the local hub and then the hub would call me. So I wanted. At 5:37 I received a call from said hub and after a brief discussion, in which I was very polite, they told me they would get a hold of the driver and find out what had happened. At 6:10 when I called they told me that the driver had delivered it to my front door.
me - Front door?
ups - Yes he placed it inside the screen door.
me - What screen door?
ups - You don't have a screen door.
me - No I do not have a screen door.
ups - Hmmm.
me - Ask him if it was the Board of Realators building.
ups - Oh, he may have delivered it to another house on the block.
me - Wow, thanks.
So, apparently the driver decided that my address, which is clearly on the envelope and clearly on the building, was a suggestion. I had to truck on down the street in the rain asking people if they got my paycheck. Finally found it. The driver had dropped it off three hours earlier. Thanks UPS, thank you very much.

#82

So, here I am. Waiting at work. What am I waiting on? My paycheck. See, my rent is due tomorrow at the latest, I have an electric bill that needs to get paid, a water bill, a phone bill and UPS decides that I work at a residence. Oh wait, this is a freaking OFFICE BUILDING. Good Gravy I just want them to show up so this day can be over. It has been a stresful new year so far. Our customers have been ridiculus this week. Oh, and next week is just that much better. I fly to Sacramento on Tuesday to begin three fabulous days of installation and training. I enjoy the trips, but not all the time. I have very little idea about what I am getting myself into most of the time. I just show up and go from there. Very hap-hazard. I was hoping to get out of here at 5 today so we could go to LR and catch a movie or something, deposit my check, pay my bills and so on, but no. I am just stressed out. meh, eventually it will show up. I hope.

#81

Ah, it is time for the daily obligitory post. So, today was pretty rough in the office. One of my underlings has decided to quite. Now, this is nothing new, but what is new is that instead of accepting his resignation as of Jan. 12th we are taking it as of Dec. 31. So, we are short a guy unil we get a new guy hired. Luckily they have been interviewing a couple of people and are making some good headway in that area with several potentials showing themselves. This makes it hard for a little while, but the potentials seem to be very good. I had several training sessions today. It was crazy. I need to keep track of these things a little bit better. I was able to work with several customers to make them happy again, but I am one man. Ok, enough of the drama. For Christmas we got a digital camera. While in Nashville, at my brothers wedding, I may have left the CD and several cabels in the hotel. I am going to call the dealer sometime this week and see if I can't get an additional cd package. In our living room we are putting up a ceiling light. It looks nice and will definitly add alot of light to the room. Maybe I will get a picture of it. Hmmmm, not much else to say. I have kept up with daily bible reading so far(wohoo), daily blog posts, and I am constantly working on a budget to get us out of debt as much as possible by the time The Princess is out of school. Who knows what we will be up to then, so the more we can get rid of now the better. Oh, and her school loans. Yeah, that is gonna be realy pretty. Fortunatly she got a scholarship and it makes it almost the same price as going to a state school. Later

#80

So, this morning is full of catching up at work. Nothing really going on. I kind of want to write a little synopsis of Christmas and so on, but I probably won't. There is this group, the ACLJ(American Center of Law and Justice), that has a radio show that I catch sometimes. On Friday they were talking about the Military Chaplins and how currently they are not allowed to use the name of Jesus when praying. Well, on Friday it sounded like Congress was going to pass a bill that would allow them to use the name of Jesus again. Sounds ridiculus, there are several kinds of chaplins in the military, there are Catholic, Protostant, Jewish, Muslim, and so on. How can you tell a person, anyone, that they are no longer allowed to pray to their god. Also, during this whole time the Jewish and Muslim chaplins were not getting any of the fire about their prayers. Anyway, it looks like that is all taken care of now. The other item they were talking about was the kidnap/abortion clause. From what I understand, it is legal to transport a minor over state lines, without the gaurdians permission, in order to give the child an abortion. Hmm, taking a minor over state lines, well know that sounds an awful lot like part of the definition of kidnapping. Oh, I see, if you are kidnapping someone to give them an abortion then it is ok. Also, take into account that my 18 year old brother who graduates from highschool in the spring, can not take peptobismol with him to school without being sent home. I just do not understand the left side of things sometimes. Later.

#79

Ok,so it is the 2007 and he we are. Somethings have changed, some things haven't. Well, instead of a year in review, which would have been appropriate yesterday I think I am going to try a year in pre-view. I have several goals for the next year. These items might even be called resolutions. So, without further ado......
THINGS THAT MIGHT HAPPEN IN 2007, or MAYBE NOT
1. I am really looking forward to writing a thoughtful post everyday. Sometimes it will be politics, sometimes it will be what is going on in my life, and so on. This should up my posting from 78per year to around 356per year.
2. Start taking TaeKwonDo lessons. I have some friends doing this in VA and I wanted to start but didn't have the time or money. This last week, the accounting gave me my first of two raises. This one gets me back up to the amount I was making before the move.
3. Go to France. This may seem like a large ticket item, but really we already have tickets and are starting plans so it is not as impossible as it may at first seem.
4. Be Active. This involves getting off my less skinny butt and going out and doing things. Right now this can be covered by the city basketball league. This might also be taken care of by learning to play the guitar or working on creating a video game or a hundred other things beside being depressed and self-loathing.
5. Create a budget. We want to try using Microsoft money or maybe QuickBooks. We have copies of both lying around. I think we will probably use the MSMonies though because it was designed for use by families. That is probably what I will be doing tonight.
6. Be a better husband. This involves a lot of things. I think the whole being active will help out with this. Also, because The Princess is a student we get free counseling so we have an oportunity to work out things not just between ourselves but baggage that we may have brought into our relationship from our parents(which is like most people).
7. Continue to work on my blog and make it presentable again. After I switched over to Blogger Beta, or whatever, I lost all my format stuff and so far I have been less then persistant in continuing to update it.
8. Read my bible through in a year. I have a group that I am in on LiveJournal that goes through the bible in a year and they talk about what they have read everyday, so I am hoping to work through that and actually have some intellegent conversation about the scripture. Over the past three years I have become very un-educated when it comes to the scripture and I am really looking forward to fixing that.
9. Work on my netflix queue. Updating and keeping track of the movies I watch in and out of my queue.

Ok, that is all I got for now. I have a couple more hours to work with before I go to bed. Later.