I'll sell you my tie

Some people will say so. Most of them aren’t broke so, do their opinions really matter? I mean, I can look at the bright side, I have my family, my health, my house, etc. Ok, well, the health is questionable (large amounts of stress does that to people), stress in the family, and the consistent fear of losing my house and everything.

Simply put, being broke is about one of the worst things that can happen to you. Not because of the lack of money, because it’s true, money doesn’t buy happiness. It’s the fear and anxiety surrounding the future. An unknown future.

For the last year I have been on unemployment, simultaneously looking for work and going to school. I’ve managed to get by, even with all of the income that is no longer coming in (we made roughly 50% less in 2009 than we did in 2008). I was proud of myself, putting us in a position where even with both of us losing jobs and taking substantial cuts in pay, we could still squeak by.

With summer nearing, I began seeing light at the end of the tunnel. I’m a semi-finalist of a major scholarship which would give me a livable stipend (starting at $25,000 a year). I’ve got realistic chances for great internships that would provide decent pay and a wealth of experience. It looked like all of my hard work may be beginning to pay off. All of the restless nights working on school work, studying and forcing myself to understand and apply the concepts, working hard on teams to complete projects and set up conferences. Then yesterday I found out my unemployment benefits are tapped out, a couple of weeks shy of a full year.

Fear, anxiety. How am I going to get by? How am I going to keep paying the bills, keep a roof over our heads, put food on the table. This is where broke is the worst. It isn’t that you aren’t being a man or a woman, doing everything you can to make things right. It’s the lack of any control, knowing you are powerless to fight back.

I’ve applied for my extension, and even though everything appears to be ok, but who knows. I have no power to make them do anything, and now all I can do is hope and wait that that check keeps coming. In the mean time I will keep doing what I do, yet deep down slightly unhinged by the fear.

It’s all good though. In a few weeks I plan to switch back to Roadrunner. With cutting out all of my phone companies mess, I can add HD DVR and a few more channels and still save money =)

And in case you were wondering what I’ve been up to lately, besides some exterior updates on my house and trying to pass the time being unemployed, I’ve been working on a pet project. After years of trying to do research on my family but coming up empty handed, I finally started finding some answers. I’m a budding little genealogist  :-) Well, on the real, I’m still an amateur, but the logical problem solving techniques that have helped me in math and science pay off well. Unfortunately I’m at a brick wall, one that has stopped many before me, but I’m determined to get through it. Anyways, this pet project is a Joomla powered site, putting forth all of the data regarding the background of my family up to the road block, including all supporting evidence. And wow, there is a lot of supporting evidence!

This voyage has been fairly involved, and will take me much longer to put together than I anticipated. But hopefully in the future, some little smuck with a computer and the good sense to use google will one day come across my site doing a google search on his family background. That way he won’t get mislead by some dubious persons who have leaked out bad ancestral regarding my family.

But maybe there is yet another government conspiracy that little have ever even considered. UTO’s. Unidentified Talking Objects. Namely, actors. For years, we have seen TV advertisements make the claim “Real people, not actors.” Interesting, but I thought actors were real people. Then all of a sudden, it appears they mockingly have blown their cover, knowing that the truth is so unbelievable that we will take it as a carefully scripted advertisement. I’m referring to “Hulu.com,” where they will rot out our brains then eat em. Yikes!

But I believe we are beginning to see them for who we are. Here’s my theory. In the late 1800′s, before motion pictures had arrived, a group of aliens came to the planet earth. They held the capability of shifting into any form necessary. They can here to eat. After sampling various animals, they decided that humans were the ultra delicacy. Specifically, human brains. That study was probably done by an infamous “human,” Jack the Ripper.

Unfortunately, human brains are not very tender in their standard form. In fact, the smarter the person, the hardest those brains become. So they decided to find a way to harvest them. Let us introduce, the Motion Picture. What a brilliant idea, the insignificant humans just stood let, letting their brains grow to mush. Yummy! At first, they didn’t see the need to add sound, most people were well in-tune with the classical music of the day, and the recipe worked. However, their minds adjusted over time, their an evolutionary process. So then they added speech! Oh my, if only we knew that the sultry sounds of Clark Gable or Frank Sinatra came from the amorphous lungs of a brain eating alien! And vampires thought they had it made!

As time progressed, they introduced us to color, then better color. TV’s got larger, the resolution went bigger. Then something unexpected happened. Humans stopped going to movie theatres. Theatres, once an all-you-can-eat buffet for the brain-slurping alien, became slim-pickens. They were starving, and they needed a plan fast! That’s where Hulu.com came into play.

Aliens had discovered years ago the power of TV – and later the Internet – to liquefy our mental mass. Yet tapping into this potential was problematic. Brains were best eaten during or shortly after a movie or TV show. And instead of being able to wait in one place, they had to move from house to house, wasting precious energy. Like burning 1,000 calories to eat 500, it is just not worth it.

In comes Hulu.com, their latest tactic to preserving their delicacy. By given us feeble humans the opportunity to watch our favorite TV shows whenever and wherever we wanted to, we opened the door to new tactics. Now, instead of going door-to-door, hoping to catch us at the right moment, they can come to our places of work, and satisfy their appetite. They can also track us using cookies, knowing where we are and when we watch, plotting our actions on a map, and concentrating their efforts in those areas. The best part about it, the can expose themselves for who they really are, and know one thinks it is the truth! Computer animation is capable of makings these images, so we believe that they are computer generated. What an amazing technique, exposing your true self under the guise of a purportedly “human” creation.

We are in a new era of a terror now, from this unknown predator. They are amongst us everyday, yet we cannot know who they are. Since first coming to Earth in the 1800′s, they have breeded and multiplied, with the occasional cross-species mating with human beings. We know these to have horrible effects: just look at Amy Winehouse, a 3/4 human breed.

And what can the government do to help us? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Why should they, these aliens have bank-rolled every single conflict since the war of 1812. They diverted our carriers before Pearl Harbor was bombarded by the Japanese. They warned us against the dangers of Vietnam, yet paid our way through. Now we are in the midst of a great recession. Where are they now? They are carefully breeding new ways of fulfilling their hunger, while secretly providing funds for TARP and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Recessions are good times for them – we go to the movies more often and watch more television – so they have an incentive to let this drag on. Yet they are careful not to “over-harvest” us, lessons learned from previous tactics used over the last 20,000 years.

So what we can do? There is little known what we can do beyond go on about our business. The government has given us hints before, warning about obesity and other health problems from sitting in front of the television all of the time. It is bad for your health. Just be careful of your habits, because you never know when you’re up for lunch next.

-Anonymous Source

I had a few companies check it out, and the range is $3,000-$5,000 to fix it. No thanks. So then I started looking at how much material it would require, and started realizing how little it actually cost. Well, of course, having $3,000 setting on my mind for a while, I figured I’d check and see how much it would cost to redo the whole backside of the house. Sadly, it cost about the same as the low estimate for just my chimney chase.

So here I am today, T minus two weeks away from beginning. I finally went and bought my materials today. The usual stuff, like 32 OSB sheathing boards, 79 James Hardie Fiber Cement Lap Siding boards, nails, caulk, etc. But then there was the not so usual, but definitely worth it stuff, like the 2 LoE/Argon double strength glass Energy Star windows, the LoE Energy Star patio door, and the 20 Owen’s Corning Foamular Panels, which adds another R-3 to my walls, insulates even where the studs are, and provides an additional moisture barrier.

Once this projects starts I’ll keep you posted with pictures and how-to’s.

Then you grow up. You have children, you change and mature. It’s not so much fun being the center of attention anymore. Sure, you like the attention, but you don’t have the selfish desire anymore. Take this year for example. Today I celebrated my 26th birthday. What did I do? We went for lunch at the Olive Garden, then went to an early Easter egg hunt at my daughter’s pre-school. Then we headed over to the grandparents for dinner and cake. What kind of cake does a real man eat? A pink one of course, the color my lil girl wanted to make my special birthday cake. Could I say no?

For the record, I don’t believe in the whole “real men wear pink.” It’s fairly lame actually, though some guys have the ability to pull it off. There is a difference between confidence and color preference. Maybe I’m biased against it, seeing it everyday with my daughter. But a real man can wear pink, put on make up, get nails painted, etc., if it means that much more time and enjoyment with their children. I wouldn’t give up my pink birthday cake for the world.

Backside of the VA Medical Center in Miami, FL.

Seems to undermine the purpose of the VA Healthcare System. Yet what else is new. A while back the whole Walter Reed Hospital thing blew up, so we knew what kind of crap out vets have to deal with when it comes to VA healthcare. Yet the latest incident is completely below the belt.

It came out that contaminated equipment at a Miami, FL, VA facility could put individuals who had colonoscopies (for this procedure they basically have a long tube with a camera on the end of it, and shove it into your colon. Sounds fun, eh?”) at risk for hepatitis and HIV. Apparently the tube used for the procedure was only rinsed after use, not disinfected. I’m too shocked for words. Even worse, can you imagine the look on the poor guy’s face when he comes back for the results – “Mr. Smith, I have good news, and I have bad news. Good news, no pollups, no cancer. The bad news. Well, uh, you see, we didn’t follow protocol exactly, and, uh, you may have contracted hepatitis or HIV.” I’m sure that’ll go over well.

I just can’t believe that a healthcare facility, especially a federally funded one charged with providing healthcare services to the men and women who have put their lives on the line for this country, could overlook such a simple fact, something that is basic protocol around the country. Anything like that, especially something INSIDE a person, has to be either sterilized or disgarded as bio waste. What next, they were also reusing needles?! Are you kidding me?!

The worse part is that there are other sites (Murfreesboro, TN, and Augusta, GA) suspected of putting patients at risk by using contaminated equipment. I have a bad feeling that may not be the end of it. How many other facilities have endangered their patients, our veterans, by blatant disregard for basic protocol and basic safety of their patients. Can we say malpractice?

I love the ending of the article on CNN though. I’m just going to quote:

The special care clinics opened Tuesday morning, and officials say response from patients has been good. “They are being proactive, and we are glad. We want them to get tested,” said Susan Warren, a spokeswoman for the Miami VA facility

Seriously. “They are being proactive.” No, they are scared out of their minds they have just contracted an incurable virus that they could spread to their loved ones. They want to know if they need to be scared or not. What the hell is she thinking when she says that!

Part of the problem though is how long it can take HIV to show up in the body. It could be years before any one of those vets could test positive. Then what is the VA going to say. “Oh, that is the price you pay for unprotected sex.” No, that is the price you pay for unprotected colonoscopies.

Dicey looking landing. Source -Airliners.net

I’ve never been scared to fly. In fact I love to fly. Give me the window seat please! Especially on that red eye to Phoenix just to fly to Sacramento, do you 7 hour layover, just to be in Portland at 7:30 AM. Ok, so the layover sucked. But I love to fly, and miss it. It’s in my DNA, and a part of the reason why I want to go into Aerospace Engineering.

Yet with the recent crashes, it gets me concerned. I’ve been shopping online for tickets for the family to fly out to London and see the in-laws. My daughter is excited with the prospect of finally being able to fly like daddy did during those transition projects. She’ll be upset when she realizes the real jet isn’t pink, but she’ll get over it.

Just a few months ago, the Airlines were bragging about how safe it was to fly, and about how it had been so long since there was a major accident. Then a video of a German airliner making one of a landing during strong crosswinds shows up. Then Captain Sully glides his Airbus into the Hudson after having a double bird strike at 3500 ft. Then a plane in upstate New York lands on a house, killing everyone except 2 of the 3 people in the house. Then a plane nosedives into a cemetery in Montana. Then the video of the FedEx MD-11 bouncing when trying to land, rolling to it’s left and bursting into flames. There have been others overseas as well. You can visit Plane Crash Info.com to view these and more.

Then the news comes out about the families on the Pilatus PC-12/45 Eagle that nosedived in Butte, Montana. God, that could have been my family and I! Three families gone just like that. Wow.

All this got me thinking on my dad. He refuses to fly. When he was in the Marines he “jumped out of too many perfectly good aircraft.” Yet what really set him away from flying was being the deputy-in-charge when a commercial jet crashed here in Charlotte. The smell was just noxious. After 3 trips to the cleaners, he finally had to throw the uniforms away, the smell of burning flesh permanent ingrained into the fibers. I won’t go into some of the gruesome details I was recounted too, even when I was young, but he made a good case why he refused to fly. Sure, they are supposedly safer, but when you get into an accident, you’re probably not walking away from it.

So of course I am thinking about these things while pricing out round-trip tickets. The grandparents definitely want to see their grand-baby again (they moved there a year ago), and everyone here is excited about the thought of visiting London and surroundings for 2 weeks. If everything works out we will go, but I guarantee that the risks will weigh heavily on my mind. I wonder if I can request Sully to be my pilot? Never mind, not enough water around here.

Little Miss Lohan is at it again

Wow. This girl can’t stay out of trouble, can she?! She’s either drunk driving, possessing cocaine and trying to run people down, club hopping with her legs wide open. Far too many pictures of her with Paris Hilton, and her with Paris and Britney during Britney’s dark days.

I feel kind of bad for the girl though. We all found out about the shitty family life. Her dad is a jerk. Can he go in on her behalf?

Kinda sad the see this girl, who we all loved when she was a kid – the remake of The Parent Trap was definitely a top movie when I was a kid – but as an adult we seriously begin to wonder.

So what brought this up? I saw on CNN that Ms. Lohan has a warrant out for her arrest, though they refuse to specify the exact reason. Only that it has something do with with her previous DUIs. Maybe she violated terms of her 3 year probation? I think it is time that Lindsay grow up and haul herself in. Even better, she shouldn’t bail herself out. She needs to learn that there are consequences for actions, and that throwing money at a problem does not make it go away.

I know she’s had some rehab time, but it doesn’t seem like it has worked (she got out of rehab a week before being busted driving under the influence and possession of coke). If she wants someone to straighten her out, she can always feel free to give me a call and I’ll make sure she gets a solid return to reality.