Sight through the eyes of a wolf

Occupy Laziness!

2011-11-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

Here we go I have spent a couple years letting things fall behind and not rant rave or "blog" about things. Have I lost my opinion on things? No way in hell! I haven't had much time, and without being able to vent this has become a powder keg that cannot be contained any longer.

I posted this picture on facebook today, and captioned it with the words "This speaks volumes." One of my friends replied "It does?"
And that was enough for me to start writing a massive response. (Which I'll post at the end just for shits and giggles.) I decided not to go with the long winded reply and respond with a quick summary of what I wanted to say. Unfortunately this has left me with the need to unleash the rant you read now.

Occupy Everywhere!! People gather around all of the major cities in a large scale protest that 1% of Americas wealthiest people are controlling everything that effects 99% of the rest of us. Make you voice heard by occupying the land around their buildings and let them know who we are!

Bullshit! That is what I have to say about the Occupy Everywhere campaign. It is just straight up bullshit! Here is my take on everything I have seen over the "Occupy Everywhere" campaign and the people that I have seen involved with it.

So far I have seen a lot of younger people involved. People that are anywhere from 22 - 28 years old are the majority of the people that are camping out for weeks at a time, asking people to bring them more blankets, water, and condoms.

Some of you might remember previous rants that I have written about the "Snowflake" generation. These are the kids that are the "Precious Snowflakes" that can do no wrong no matter how horrific they are being. They have grown up and there are certain things they are accustomed to:

1) When you play sports you will get a trophy even if you come in last place.
2) Failure is not an option... mostly because they are not allowed to fail no matter how bad they do.
3) Fairness is required. Everyone is allowed everything they want, that is fair.
4) You express yourself no matter how disrespectful it is to others, because no one wants to stifle your creativity.
5) You are a precious snowflake and you are unique, special and perfect, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, if your feelings are hurt they are in the wrong.

This is a generation who has had to put less effort into everything they do because of Political Correctness. Parents, teachers, people everywhere have been trying to spare their feelings, keep them from feeling left out of anything, and flushing everything that establishes a strong work ethic down the toilet.

This is a generation who has never had to fight to get what they want because they couldn't have something. No child left behind, has ensured that many children although not competent enough to write a 5 page paper with clear, well constructed, sentences are graduating from school.

These kids are getting out of college under the expectation that they will have a job waiting for them, and it will be one that will cater to their strengths and pay them well. (I can't tell you how many people have started working for the company I am at and have tried to spend their days downloading music, watching Netflix, and chatting on Facebook while putting in the minimum effort to the job they were hired to perform.) I can tell you that many people would be stunned to find how much porn people store on company computers (the place I work at now has less that others... but that's not to say that I haven't found a lot of it).

So here we are with a generation of people that are crowding around financial buildings for weeks at a time complaining over the fact that the people who work in these buildings are making money hand over fist while we are losing money left and right. The idea is not the worst idea, but the motive is entirely wrong! If they were gathering to protest how Wall Street trades against futures that are not predictable; and how to generate more money for themselves over inflate the estimation which costs people everything they have invested, then they would have something there. This movement would make sense.

That is not what this is about however. This is about how 1% of the people who have money are the richest people in the country. The 99% of the people are not rich, and that is "not fair". These people are also the same people who get out of college, can't find a job in the specialized field that they have chosen, and decide "There are no jobs, I will get government assistance until I can find a job that meets my talents." These are the same people who will not take a minimum wage job because they feel that with a college degree in the history of basket weaving with a minor in vampire romance novels for tweens makes them better than the title of lead fry cook at the *insert fast food restaurant name here* for $7.25 and hour.

Yeah the job isn't glamorous, you won't get to be a millionaire by working there, but hell its a job until you find something else. Yes it sucks, yes the hours are long, and no the pay is not great, but at the end of the week when you get paid you can bank what you have and be proud that you EARNED the money you have.

I got out of college in 2000... I accepted a job for nearly 40k a year when I got out doing what I love to do in computers, and then the market crashed when the dot com bubble burst (future trading didn't work then, doesn't work now) and all the jobs dried up. The job I had I lost and there were people 10 - 15 years older than me with more experience fighting for the same jobs that I was trying to get. Instead of crying and saying "I want the government to give me money because I can't get a job doing what I want" I put my application in at places that I knew would hire me so I could still make my car payments while looking for something else. I went from earning a great salary to earning minimum wage. I took every opportunity I could to show off my talents and skills, and to get promoted and earn more, I took every job that I could find that would put more in my pocket at the end of the week and cover my bills. It took me 4 years of hard work before I got another network job, and then once I got it I did everything I could to become the most well known tech at that company. And when I moved on I did the same at the next job, and the next one and the one after that until I finally felt I was in a better position. I kept up with the people I used to work with and I still do to this day. We help each other out when we can and based on that we help each other become successful in a legitimate method. This is the ethic that I feel has died. There are so few people these days who understand that things are not just given to them. Fairness doesn't exist in the work force, there will always be rich people, there will always be poor people. Those that never give up and keep pushing to do what it takes to survive will be the ones who prevail in the end. Those that give up and sit around waiting for others to just give them things will rely on politicans to find new ways to give them money, and piss off people like me. Will they ever be successful? No. Will they ever do better in their lives? Not likely. Will their children grow up to be exactly like them? Mostly yes... then you find the one "odd duck" in the family that looks at the scenario and says "isn't this wrong?" And they move on... but those are the few and far between.

People need to wake up and realize that things are never going to be just given to them. Work is required to survive. If you want to be rich there are 2 ways to do it:

1) Honestly - Work hard and save every penny you have. Don't spend it on anything frivolous. I don't know anyone who has made it rich by spending their money on booze, weed, or videogames/movies (I am not rich now and may never be, but know what beer I like, and I don't worry about not having a movie to watch).
2) Dishonestly - Work hard and stab everyone in the back that poses to be a threat to your success. Lie, cheat, and steal your way to success. You'll be wealthy and everyone will know your name... just ask Bernie Madoff. Of course in the end you will most likely die alone or in jail... but you'll have made it to the top if only for a moment.

That's all I'll say for now... and as promised here is the rant that I abandoned earlier when on Facebook. It repeats some of what I said here, and adds some story to my thoughts on how the work ethic of our culture is nearly dead.
-Ryan

It does to me, honestly I look at the "Occupy Everywhere" idea as something that in theory could be a powerful way to show that Wall Street is screwing with everyone by not learning about why trading on "Futures" is the wrong idea and only leads to quick money gains, and massive money loss with extremely slow recovery.
Instead the majority of the people in the "Occupy Everywhere" campaign are people that are hanging out for weeks, doing very little.
Unfortunately I really find myself despising some of the current generation because there are so many that have the perspective "I won't work in a place that pays min wage, while looking for something else because it means I'll get less from my government benefits" (I personally know a few people doing this, no going to school, not working, collecting off the dole, and everytime they get close to expiration of their benefits they file for an extension and they argue until they get another 3 months of benefits... and it makes me sick. I've stopped talking to a few people I considered friends because they are doing this and they laugh about it.)
However generations before us, had a different idea of things. Work was work, money was money, no matter how little it was and how fast it vanished, people took any job they could find, no matter how menial just so they could buy food for their family and put clothes on their back. My great grandfather, although he died a penniless bum on the street was an ice-carrier. It paid nearly nothing, and he had to lug 30lb chunks of ice to peoples houses for the ice boxes.
Another friend his grandfather worked as an umbrella repairman in the 40's money was so tight he would go door to door and ask if anyone had any umbrellas that needed to be mended, he worked for pennies but it was a much stronger ethic, you never saw people organizing and sitting in the middle of the cities because some people made more money than others. Instead, people did what they could when they heard of a job that made more money they tried for it.

So to me, this isn't a cartoon about a man who saw war talking to a kid that has done nothing. Its just a strong statement reflecting how peoples ethics have changed. There have always been rich people, there have always been poor people... but the lack of drive to fight to get what you want has never been less than it is now.

Fairest of All – A Tale of the Wicked Queen

2009-09-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

To be fair I must first say that I have always enjoyed reading the Fairy Tales as told through various generations. In recent years we have seen various books emerge re-telling these well known tales through the eyes of a different character.

The story of Snow White dates back as far as the 16^th century. While it has many variations, I have come to appreciate the ones which stem from the version depicted by the Brothers Grimm; included in this blood line we find Disney’s 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Serena Valentino, the writer behind such beautifully wicked graphic novels as Nightmares and Fairy Tales, and the Goth Comic Gloomcookie, revisits the kingdom of the Widower King, his daughter Snow White. She lures us in not by retelling the same story we have all read, or in most cases seen, but by telling us the events that lead up to the Queen’s treacherous attempt to murder her step-daughter.

Daughter of a Mirror maker, abused by her father, she could not believe that she was chosen to be courted by the widower king. The tale of the queen is not what one would expect. The tale draws us in on the date of the queens wedding, Snow White is still just a child, and the new Queen is quite overwhelmed by the responsibility that she has now acquired. The Queen’s past is revealed to be torrid and while she resents her father, she vows to give Snow White everything she never had in a family and more.

Serena has obviously done her homework before writing this tale. In an endearing moment the Queen is telling Snow White a story about dragons. Those who are unfamiliar with the other versions of Snow White wouldn’t know that in other countries there are no references to dwarfs, instead they are dragons. She has also done a lot to bring back the wickedness of the Grimm tale, in which the Queen is Snow Whites actual mother and not her step mother. While she was unable to change the Queen from being a step-mother, she has brought so much compassion along with the character that you can see that she treats Snow as though she were her natural daughter.

After having finished the book I must admit that I could see the story as though it were an animated film. Through Serena’s beautifully chosen words and the way she develops not only the main characters but the secondary characters as well the book draws in the passion of the original 1937 film. Read a chapter and close your eyes and you can practically see it as it would have been animated to coincide with the movie.

Ms. Valentino I applaud you as this book is nothing short of amazing. I would recommend it to anyone that is a fan of the classic fairy tales.

Who I will NOT be Voting For

2008-08-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is probably the most heated topic that I will take up simply because I honestly hate discussing politics. The subject it stymied with far too many influences of subjects that can be misconstrued in an effort to swing the appeal of the candidate in the direction of one group or another. The problem is that many of the candidates have speech writers that will twist the words that they use to make them very generic and yet seem as though they are a positive statement to the crowd they are trying to reach. If the words aren’t generic then the candidate is instantly caught flip-flopping (see John Kerry for a good example of this).
Over the years the words “Blame Bush” have become synonymous with everything that is spiraling downward in the USA. Of course those that are currently crying “I blame Bush” used to say “I blame Bush and Congress” and now that the congress has been “Democratic” (there is no democracy in our current government everyone is in it for themselves and in my humble opinion they should all fined 500K for every year they have held office for misrepresentation to the public) they feel that Congress is doing a bang up job, and that its obviously the president that is this countries puppet master… as Bobcat Goldthwait once said, “Blaming the president for the problems of the country is like blaming Ronald McDonald whenever I get bad hamburger.”

Ok now that I have gotten that out, let me tell you who I will not be voting for:

Barack Obama

I will not be voting for this fool for the following reasons:

1) He is a flip-flopper.
a) The Wrong Button Excuse:
1a) In 1997 he voted against the election reform bill and then claimed he pushed the wrong button.
2a) In 2000 he voted for a ban on human cloning and then claimed he pushed the wrong button.
3a) In 2000 he voted for a gambling measure that was opposed by church groups, and then claimed he pushed the wrong button.
4a) In 2002 he voted to defund a social service office in Chicago and then claimed he pushed the wrong button.

b) Caught Lying to the Public:
1b) Claimed to be anti-war before becoming a Senator, and yet once he was admitted to the Senate he voted to extend the war more than 5 times.
2b) Claimed in a speech given before a Jewish Audience that his Uncle helped “Liberate Auschwitz”, which is amazing considering Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets not the Americans or the Kenyans.
3b) Claimed the church he was part of (which he has since denounced and abandoned) never propagated Anti-American or Anti-White speeches. Upon reading his autobiography he apparently did hear both of these kinds of speeches at his church, he finally admitted to this once put under journalistic pressure.

2) He lacks both Judgment and Character
a) Pledged to dismantle our national defense system, including development of future defense technologies.
b) Has said that he believes that sex-ed is appropriate for kindergarteners to learn.
c) Pledged to sit down with state sponsors of terrorism without preconditions in his first year as president.
d) Refuses to have anything to do with our countries flag including wearing a pin of the flag, or standing before it hand over heart during the pledge of allegiance (He usually puts his hands behind his back, and looks to the ground during this time).
e) He is promoting open boarders and no capital punishment.
f) While he claims he is in favor of racial equality, he also is in favor of the Congress forming a “Black Caucus”.
g) While is said he is for pulling out the troops in Iraq (and later in his televised campaign promotions says that he wants to dictate troop levels), he has also threatened to “Bomb Pakistan” without government authorization. If you were unaware, Pakistan is one of our allies.

3) The company he keeps:
a) Tony Rezko – A convicted criminal, indicted on charges of wire fraud, money laundering, bribery, attempted extortion, mail fraud and corrupt solicitation.
b) Bill Ayers – Convicted terrorist and a murderer.
c) Alexi Giannoulias – Obama helped Alexi become the Illinois State Treasurer, Alexi took mortgages and gave the funding to Michael Giorango (a noted crime boss) who in turn purchased a Casino with the funding.
d) Jim Johnson & Penny Pritzker – Two people that somehow made out huge on all the of the subprime mortgage losses that have occurred in the last couple years. Johnson being a former CEO of Fannie Mae (and made out huge with Country Wide Loans) and Pritzker being a former Co-Owner of Superior Bank FSB ( a bank that made loans to people with less than superior credit). When Superior folded, Auditors Ernst & Young covered the FDIC loss of 40 Million, while Pritzker and her family made off with 2 Billion in the bank’s assets.

As you can see based on just the few facts that I have posted here, Obama is definitely not someone we as intelligent citizens should be putting our faith behind. I cannot see any kind of bright future behind someone that wants to disarm the country, host sit downs with terrorists and anti-American dictators, and will most likely steer us into a position of destruction.

Of course now you are thinking oh so he’s not going to vote Obama, so that means that he must be voting for McCain… WRONG.

John McCain

I will not be voting for this old man because:

1) McCain is pro open borders
a) He has voted in favor not only of completely opening the borders of the country but to instantly process and allow 15million illegal immigrants immediately become citizens. (I am not against foreigners becoming citizens of the USA, after all trace every persons heritage in this country and you will find that less than 1% have no foreign blood, I simply don’t believe that someone entering the country for the first time that is 70 years old should be able to walk into the nearest city hall and be able to receive Social Security without ever having paid a penny into it.)
b) He voted against the statement that would have made English the official language of the USA. (Yes, I want to learn Spanish, I currently live in Florida and it would help me to have a basic understanding of it, but I should learn it because I want to learn it, I don’t believe that Americans should be forced to learn it because a politician wants a larger stem of voters that choose not to learn to speak English.)

2) He is out of touch with the younger generations
a) At 73 years old how could this man possibly have anything in common with those of us that are coming into our own at 30? I mean sure he was our age once but that was back in 1965 and as far as I can tell there is a slight… slight… change in the times since then. He is known for being quick to act on anger and impulse, how many people 18 – 30 do you think he force into battle should someone insult him?
b) The policies that he is suggesting will not affect those that are his age, they will not effect the Baby Boomers for very long either, considering the first wave of Boomers are on their way into retirement now, and it is now our legacy to support them through retirement he will be long gone from this mortal coil once we see the effect of having to support our parents and the foreigners that decide to live off the American dole. (As it currently stands we have already been told as a generation that once the majority of the Baby Boomers are on Social Security there will be no SS for our generation… guess what that means, if we don’t pack away all of our money now there will be no such word as retirement.. we will work ourselves into the grave, and at the rate that businesses are dropping the pay of their workers in relation to the rising costs of everything ,we will all be working 2 full time jobs just to make ends meet without having a penny to save). His plan is to raise the retirement age and cut back on Social Security (as I mentioned, we won’t get to retire, and there will be no money left).

3) He is unable to remain loyal to his constituents
a) Has sided with “liberals” on most ideas although he remains that he is a “Republican”.
b) He seems too unsure of himself and when he lacks direction he turns to the Kennedy’s , Lieberman’s, and the Feingold’s not as a last resort but as his first.

4) Is collecting disability even though he certainly doesn’t need it (He is currently collecting $58,000 a year in disability. There are many people, myself included, that don’t make that much and we work more than 40 – 50 hours a week (he doesn’t even work half of that). I just can’t trust someone that will collect on this when the man has millions in the bank already.

5) He is in favor of prayer in Public Schools. (I am always in favor of separation of church and state). He is also a supporter of “Intelligent Design” which for those of you who don’t know is being in favor of teaching Creationism in public schools as opposed to teaching evolution.

Well my list of McCain is not as poignant as Obama’s but I can tell you that I have no desire to vote for either of these people. It is impossible to think that as Americans we cannot come up with a better group of people to push for Presidency. The worst part about it is that we are not the ones deciding who should run, we are simply told “Here are your choices”, and those choices come from rich elitists that decide upon a couple of puppets that will do exactly what they say. So we get a small group of people that are completely worthless when it comes to the election and suddenly we now (as Lewis Black put it) have a choice between two bowls of shit whose only difference is the smell.

Well this is it folks… there is no more… I won’t be voting for either of these people this year. In fact if I decide to use my write in I’ll vote for my dad to be president.

Jim Fulton

Why I WILL vote for him to be president:

1) The man has strong convictions and he sticks with them. I stand behind the fact that when he has made a decision he will stick with it and he doesn’t flip-flop to appease those that his decision does not effect.

2) I can safely assure you that hasn’t taken even a penny from a single big oil investor. He also has no ties whatsoever with anyone in the Middle East!

3) He puts in over 40 hours a week at his job. He rarely takes time off, unless he has something special planned for his family you will usually find him doing something for one of his many jobs.

4) He is up to date on the plights of the younger generation, he has heard not only myself, but my sister and brother bitch consistently about how difficult it is to get on your feet these days. He knows that we are not the only ones out there struggling to survive, and he listens when we have something to say.

5) He can be intimidating. He doesn’t have the McCain angry scowl, but he does have what I call “the collective calm” that appears when someone is doing something he doesn’t quite approve of, he’ll let you go and make an ass of yourself without really responding. He pays close attention to what you are doing, and (for the most part unless you are really doing something god awful) he will let you go about your business, and once you have finished making an ass of yourself, it is at that point when you are all worn out from stupidity that he prepares to strike.

6) He will keep trades with foreign countries peaceful, while he buys many things that are made and produced right here in America, he’ll be the first to allow Japan to ship all of it used Honda’s Accura’s, Toyota’s, and Nissan’s into the country (as long as he gets first pick of the lot) to sell at reasonable pricing.

7) He’ll not only lock the boarders down, but those that have been deported will suddenly fall under the “Fulton Household Living Rule” which includes you are allowed to stay in the house until you have moved out or been kicked out, after which you are only allowed to return for visitation, you will be closely watched, and any sign that shows that you may be trying to move back in you are kicked for good. (Not that he would permanently kick his kids out of his life, but I am living proof that he will be damned before I’m allowed to move back in now that I’m out hahah).

8) Those that are on death row will not be allowed to grow old and die. You think Texas has been quick to pull the trigger on death row inmates, that’s nothing. If you are convicted of a serious crime that warrants death as the punishment… you might as well kiss your ass goodbye once my dad is president. Our prisons won’t even need a “row” for death row. Hell they may only need one or two cells.

9) Hugh Heffner’s birthday will be celebrated right along with Martin Luther King’s. Martin Luther King helped bring equality to the black community, and Hugh Heffner helped bring Playboy Bunnies to the world. These men have done some amazing things for our lives.
10) The national deficit will finally get balanced. Cash only everything! If there is no such thing as credit then you won’t have to worry about accruing a deficit. If you don’t have the money to pay for it… guess what? YOU CAN’T BUY IT! Ta-da! Crisis averted and the USA once more becomes a hell of a lot stronger as it no longer owes itself money.

So, on this Election Day skip over those that are in it for themselves, and their domestic and foreign friends. Vote my dad for President!

18+13

2008-07-31T08:53:00.001-07:00

Yeah here it is, my 18 + 13 birthday*. Looks like I am getting a little wiser. Today I am at work (we’ll see how long that lasts, I have a meeting at 2pm to attend, and I’m probably going to take off shortly afterwards). Being that things have been all over the place in terms of getting my life reorganized (trying to get a new job, and getting back to some kind of mental comfort zone… comfort is achieved when I feel that I don’t have to stress over little things.) I am looking at this year as being a pivotal point and I am going to have to make some very important decisions.

Thanks to everyone that is sending me happy birthday comments, and I’ll be talking with all of you soon!

*I am reminded by my friend Keith that once you pass 29 you change the counting structure to cover the age that you feel plus the age that you act I feel 18 and I act 13… therefore I am going to get to be 18 for the next 17 years, and by then I’m sure I’ll find another factor to add into the equation.

The Beginning....

2008-07-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Beginning….

My world is built around me in a cosmos of circuits, cables, power supplies and monitors. This is where I have been for many years. A geek? Yeah… most would probably call me that. The funny thing is that there are a lot of people that don’t even know where that name comes from… they just remember people in school who seemed to understand electronics and proved that they could be quite good at complex things being called “Geek”. The term actually comes from long before computers were readily available to anyone (roughly 1876, and it was referring to a carnival “freak” who would open the side show attractions usually by catching a live chicken in front of the audience, biting its head off, and swallowing it… no I’m not that kind of geek.)

Anyway, here I am after 4 years in Florida, trying to figure things out. My mind is somewhat mushed. How do you look at your life and try to compile all you have done into a few pages just to impress someone that more than likely doesn’t know the first thing about what you understand?

Let me simplify…

July 9^th 2008 there was a meeting. I was told a week earlier that I had to attend. No matter what I had to be there even if it meant that I would have to call the company and have them put me on speakerphone just so I could be in attendance… that wasn’t necessary.

At 9:30am I entered the conference room as I had many times before, only to see that the room had been arranged as though this meeting was going to be a presentation of sorts. Within 10 minutes the management meeting began. The president of the company stood before us, leaning against the wall that we were facing and the first words out of his mouth, “Welcome to the meeting… How should I begin? I guess I should say this is where I make my money….”

As you can imagine the meeting was not what we wanted to experience. Our location was being shut down in 60 days. We were told that the company had been doing well in late 2006, for the first time in years it was in the black and it was finally starting to profit. Then the company decided that it wanted to have its own accounts. They didn’t want to be a company that maintains other companies accounts… they wanted to see their profits increase as any company would, so they took out a loan and bought up a number of accounts that they would now own.

Over the next year the company would screw up these accounts so badly that they would ask us to bail them out. The screwed up the billing, they screwed up the sales, they screwed up the installation, and they made a lot of people angry. How did we bail them out? They would dump the billing calls onto our operators and ask them to make phone calls to the customers and ask them to make a payment over the phone… or inform them that the company made a mistake and did not bill them for 4 months and now those months have accrued and we want the money. They also turned some people into an answering service to respond to those that people that were calling up screaming about an alarm system that was supposed to be installed and the techs ripped up their ceilings and walls, never finished the job and haven’t been back in days. Or the occasional call we would get from an apartment owner that would ask who the hell we think we are installing an alarm system in an apartment that was being rented, without asking the owner of the apartment if they wanted or would allow an alarm system to be installed? So yeah, they weren’t the ones that took the brunt and most harsh attacks from these people, we did… and then once we diffused them we would send the complacent person on to the main office to handle someone that is now more calm and ready to listen or talk. They thanked us for it too… did they compensate us? Hell no… but we did get a “thanks”.

Now here we are half way through 2008 and we have just been told that because of the mistakes that they made, our facility is being closed. The company decided that they would remove the core business and to keep their investors happy they would focus on nothing but the accounts they bought.

Apparently some people just don’t learn.

Why is it a mistake to do what they are doing? Look at the company Sunbeam. Most people have heard of it but there are many people that could never tell you what they do. Sunbeam was a company that began making home appliances in 1910. The company survived through the depression, and continued right through over the years until the 1990’s when it began to see some serious decline in its business. In 1996 the company hired a man name Albert Dunlap to become the companies CEO. Over the next year he became known as “Chainsaw Al”. The nickname came from his management style… in the first year he fired most of the management and hired all new management. He sold or closed 2/3 of the 18 plants that Sunbeam owned, and he fired 6000 employees. He ruthlessly went through the company as a chainsaw would cut through lumber. His rules of running a successful business were:

Get the right management team
Know your business
Pinch Pennies
Get a real strategy

These concepts were all well and good except for the fact that he was unsure how to rebuild what he destroyed properly? A company that had been around longer than he had been alive was not going to come back fresh when you kill new technologies, terminate your core competencies, and then spend money that hasn’t come in yet. To cover for his efforts of ripping apart the company by the seams he bought up 3 brands to add to the Sunbeam name, Coleman Camping Gear, First Alert Smoke Alarms, & Mr. Coffee Signature brands.

It would 2 years later than the Sunbeam board of directors would fire Dunlap. It took 2 years for the board to see that his actions would sink the company. It would be in 2001 that because of Dunlaps actions the company would file for bankruptcy protections, and it wouldn’t be until 2002 that Sunbeam would come out of bankruptcy only to have to change its tarnished name to American Household Inc.

Anyone that knows business strategy would know that you don’t kill the core of your business and expect to come out clean.

What could have been learned by Chainsaw Al’s mistakes?

Cutting costs isn’t impossible, anyone can do it, but there are better ways than to hack & slash jobs
Both New & Old Employees matter
Motivation is extremely important
Keep those around that know your business & product
Trade relations are extremely important
Don’t believe what you read from management books!

So here we are in 2008, the president of the company I work for is closing the facility that handles the majority of its business. They are selling off all of the liquid assets and doing god knows what with its hard assets. To be honest, because there is no board of directors to take the reigns back and make this company powerful again, I give the home office a year or less before it collapses.

But Ryan, why would you have such a grim outlook on the future of the remaining portion of the company? Honestly based upon what I have seen in the last 4 years I have come to discover that when your head office is lead by a ship of fools then running aground is inevitable. Need proof? Here are a few things that I found out about the company that give me such strong beliefs....

1) The CEO of the company does not live in the same state as the home office (He flys to the office every week stays in a hotel, rents a car, and then flies home a few days later.)
2) The person in charge of Telephony in the home office spent over $300,000 on a telephone system for our location that DOES NOT work with the most vital component of the business. He bought it because of its popularity, and it seems to be preprogrammed for Hotels but not for security monitoring. The system still does not work and cannot be returned... he still has his job.
3) They still have billing problems with their customers.
4) They are still having people go door to door to sell alarm systems... this means more irate customers and no front line to diffuse their anger.
5)They have no core business to pick them up and a major debt that they can't possibly repay any time soon.

So here I am… back to the beginning….

After giving 4 years to a company and pushing to do everything I can to improve it… and if you saw the condition of everything when I first started you will know that everything has improved.

Now I am in a unique position… I still have a couple weeks in which I will get a paycheck, I have revamped my resume and I have been distributing it in every direction. I have even been setting up interviews (I gotta say I am sick of hearing from recruiters though…. They are paid to get me in the door, the only issue is they don’t always know how to work it out so I get the benefits or the salary I need to survive).

I am also in a unique position because my lease on my apartment is up this coming month. So I have to figure out what I am going to do. If I fight hard enough I will find a job in the area and I get to keep the apartment that I really like. It’s in a great area, the price is right, and I have no problems with any part of it. The only thing that seems to be killing me is the fact that I am really getting sick of Florida. Yeah it’s a pretty place, it’s nice to visit, but I gotta say it can really get on your nerves after a while.

I feel a little better in the respect that I have been hearing back from various companies now that are interested in having me interview. It means that I have enough knowledge and skill to represent myself in a professional way, and that they see that I am not some inexperienced kid that hasn’t cut his teeth yet and is trying to make a name for himself.

The strangest thing is that when I was first told that the facility was going to be closed within a couple days I got sick. Suddenly got this violent strain of some kind of virus which I believe was strep throat. The symptoms were all there and it felt like things did when I was a kid (and I got strep all the time as a kid). So I finally recover after a week… I go through everything including losing my voice for 5 days. Now that I am supposed to be better I don’t know why the sickness hasn’t quite stopped. It’s been a couple weeks and I still haven’t fully recovered yet. I know I haven’t….. I’m doing everything I can but I still have this sickly sweet smell that fills my sinuses so I can smell it when I breathe… it happens every time I get sick and until I recoup 100% it doesn’t go away. Then again neither does the dizzy spells, or the coughing fits, or the feeling that sudden desire to worship the porcelain god…. While I haven’t gotten that far the feeling sits on me for hours at a time before I go to bed.

Yeah life can be a funny thing… its said that it is the only game that no one wins. It is the only thing that anyone can’t accurately explain. Life is like a business, a select few control it, there are some that are rich, many that are not, and some that just choose not to do anything and yet they are still around. It’s one of those few things that will give you the illusion of being ahead of the game momentarily before dragging you behind the 8 ball without so much as a moment’s notice. Don’t believe me? Ever spent a number of months saving every penny you could just so you could afford something special? Perhaps you may have sacrificed a number of things that normally bring you happiness just so you could have one thing that was truly special. So you saved, and you scrimped and you managed to put enough money aside so that on the next paycheck you could afford what you have been waiting for… suddenly your car has a major problem , or you get a ticket, or god forbid someone in your family is suddenly on their death bed and you need to fly home to see them… (I use these examples because in the last 4 years I have had all of them happen to me, not that it doesn’t happen every day or that I am some kind of unique case because I know I’m not.. but these are all examples of how one minute you are ahead and the next minute you are caught in the undertow of life).

Well… you’ve made it… my long winded schpeel is over. Am I a better person for it, no, not really. Do I feel as though I have accomplished something? Well aside from giving me a chance to spill a variety of topics onto electronic paper I don’t think I’ve changed anything. My mind is just as much a mush as it was when I started… I’ve applied for a few more jobs and I’ve heard back from a few more places… asking me when I will be in the area for an interview… damn recruiters…

I think if given the right amount of time I could figure things out…

Precious Snowflake Syndrome

2008-06-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

The tail end of a generation. We have had a lot of labels, most of us are familiar with the moniker "Generation X". I can say that I include myself in the tail end of that generation. It is the one that came directly after the "Baby Boomer" generation. The few years after I began growing up there was another generation... it is one that has no defined moniker... it is a "morphing" generation that we have heard referred to as "The TV generation", "The MTV generation", "The Pepsi generation", "Generation next", and a dozen other names that are there to tie in a current pop culture trend to the kids that are growing up from the early 80's.
It was within this new generation that things began to change. The 80's, the age in which style was disgusting, yuppies were making millions on the people that were spending as frivolously as possible, and perspective was something that no one could seem to find. The issue was that in this time when drugs were rampant in the highest paying jobs, children were accessories, and kids were being given names that were supposed to be styled and tailored for success: "Taylor", "Dakota", "Tyler", and a thousand other non-conformist names were designed to make these kids instant celebrities.
These kids were raised to act like their parents were acting. They were not raised on Lego's they were raised to be demanding and influential, and because of which now we are getting the ultimate backwash. The "influential" kids began acting as adults far too soon, never being reprimanded when they did wrong, and threatening to take adults to court if they didn't get their way.
I can remember being 13 years old in the early 90's and hearing about kids that were taking their parents to court for various reasons. These thoughts all came flooding back when I read on June 18th that a 12 year old girl in Ottawa Canada took her father to court for grounding her. He had decided that there were some online chat sites that he did not feel it was appropriate for her to be accessing. He put a block on those internet sites preventing her from accessing them from home. Later he apparently found that she had accessed those sites from a friends house and posted pictures of herself online that he considered to be somewhat risque. For disobeying him the punishment he imposed was to ground her for 3 days, she was also prevented from going on a school field trip, and he took away her internet access.
She in turn took him to court, and SUCCESSFULLY sued him. Judge Suzanne Tessier decided that the punishment was too severe and she ruled in favor of the child.
On June 19 Bill S-209 was approved by the Canadian senate and it headed to the house of commons. What is Bill S-209 you might ask? It is the "anti-spanking" bill. Yes, you read correctly, the Senate has passed a bill which may very well become Canadian law which will prevent any person of authority including parents from spanking their children.

Over the years I have watch things head in this direction, and I have done very little about it. In fact I looked with disdain at people that would allow their children to get away with things. When I grew up I remember being spanked when I would do something I wasn't supposed to do and it kept me on a straight and narrow path. I remember spending many afternoons being told that I was not allowed to leave my room... these days that is no longer a punishment.
Why was it a punishment when I was a kid? That's easy, I didn't have anything in my room other than books a few generic toys and an old turntable. When I was being punished I didn't have any of the entertainment items that we see littering children's rooms these days. If you were in your room for 2 - 3 hours it was boring, you didn't have video games and your own television, you certainly didn't have your own phone, but now a-days things are different. Parents put all of the entertainment in the children's room and they have no way of effectively telling the child "NO!"
I remember having a neighbor who was at the beginning of the next generation. I remember his mother reprimanding him. She even reprimanded me once.... it was the easiest punishment I have ever experienced. I don't really remember what I did, I probably swore and she told me that I was going to be punished and that I would remain in "Time Out" until I was sorry. She put me in the corner of a room and told me to stand there until I felt sorry. I think I must have freaked her out because I was so used to remaining in my room for 2 hours or more that I just stood there, and I didn't move. He son would stand there for 20 seconds - 1 minute and then say "I feel sorry" and she would tell him that he could go. I must have been standing there for almost 10 minutes and she got worried that I hadn't "felt sorry yet". I didn't understand that she wanted me to tell her when I felt sorry. When you are in your own room with nothing to do for 3 hours then you know what it is like to feel sorry. When you are standing in a corner for 10 minutes when you have a friend that is waiting in the same room for you to play then its not exactly a learning or growth experience.
Having experienced the stupidity of the "time out" I realized why my friend had no fear in acting out whenever he wanted because he would only have to say "I'm sorry" after 30 seconds of standing in a corner and all was back to normal. Now when I am out in public and I see a child telling his/her parents off I realize that these are the children of the "time out generation". These kids would have no idea what to do if they had someone bigger than them grab them by one arm and open hand smack them repeatedly on the ass before being put alone in a room without entertainment or outside communication. The kid would most likely start planning to contact their lawyer as soon as they got their cell phone back.
Back in 2002 I did have one experience that I will not soon forget. I was working at a place that I will refer to as the "Blue and Yellow hell" and I had been in the middle of one of the worst weeks. The Christmas rush was over and now people were in "return and repurchase mode". This is when they return the gifts they were given, they get a gift certificate, and then they wait a day and repurchase their gift as an "open box" item thus getting the gift back and keeping the difference of the gift certificate. There was a man that was in the store and he was upset over the fact that all the cheapest computers were sold out and they would most likely not be replaced for a few months. He began swearing up a storm. I told him that since there were children in the store if he did not stop the foul language I would have him removed from the store. He then "dared me to fucking do so", I had 3 of the biggest guys in the store aid me in escorting him from the building along with the assistance of an officer that was in building at the time.
I felt justified in my actions and proceeded to go through the rest of the day as I normally would. It was the next day that I had to do the same thing. This time it wasn't a full grown adult that I tossed from the store but a child and his mother. I was working on trying to keep the department running smooth when I suddenly heard, "NO! I FUCKING WANT THIS GAME! FUCK YOU! I WANT IT!" I quickly made my way to the isle where I saw a little kid that couldn't have been more than 7 years old clutching an XBOX game in his hands and the mother who was looking completely disinterested in her child as he continued to drop the f-bomb over and over again at her. I approached first trying to be passive by asking if there is anything I can help her with, and the lady said "No I'm just browsing". The child on the other hand continued to scream. I allowed this to go on for about 20 more seconds before I approached the woman again and this time I said "Ma'am I am going to have to ask you to control your child. This is a family store, and your child is screaming obsenaties at the top of his lungs. If you cannot control your child I will be required to have your removed from the store." She looked at me as though I had 9 heads and said something to the effect of "He is his own person and I will not stunt his personal growth". It was then that I had the 3 biggest guys in the store assist me with the help of another officer that was in the store in removing the woman and her precious snowflake. Being that the store was in tax free NH and there were a lot of out of stater's that would drive there we had a lot of officers that would frequent it to make sure that things were ok.

I believe that now is the time to shut down on the "precious snowflake" perspective. We need to take away the notion that children need to express themselves however they like. We need to take away the idea that children are smart enough to know what is good for them and that they will learn the most from their own mistakes. If we don't teach them that what they have done is a mistake then how are they going to make that decision? We now have a generation of children that are greedy, immoral, and lacking the basic ethics that we were taught when we were kids. Just because your parents may have assisted in screwing up your life doesn't mean you have to pass those ideals on to then next wave of miscreants. As a society we need to reform the way we view children, we need to teach them that they can't have everything they ever wanted just because they exist, we need to tell them that they need to know what it is to truly earn a reward. There is no such thing as entitlement and if they think that we are going to just give them everything they want simply because they say "I want it!" they are wrong!

Eventually I will have children, it will be a huge change in my life, but the one thing that I will not do is put them in a position of power especially since I have been fighting to get even the slightest bit of control my whole life, and when I fight and succeed it puts me in a position where I feel as though I have truly accomplished something and that I have earned what I receive.

I'll leave this blog with a quote from the late great George Carlin. This was his take on children from his standup special "You're all Diseased":
" Something else I'm getting tired of in this country is all this stupid bullshit I have to listen to about children. That's all you hear about anymore, children: "Help the children, save the children, protect the children." You know what I say? Fuck the children!

They're getting entirely too much attention. And I know what some of you are thinking: " Jesus, he's not going to attack children, is he?" Yes he is! He's going to attack children. And remember, this is Mr. Conductor talking; I know what I'm talking about.

And I also know that all you boring single dads and working moms, who think you're such fucking heroes, aren't gonna like this, but somebody's gotta tell you for your own good: your children are overrated and overvalued, and you've turned them into little cult objects. You have a child fetish, and it's not healthy. And don't give me all that weak shit, "Well, I love my children." Fuck you! Everybody loves their children; it doesn't make you special.... John Wayne Gacy loved his children. Yes, he did. He kept them right out in the yard near the garage! That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is this constant, mindless yammering in the media, this neurotic fixation that suggests that somehow everything--everything--has to revolve around the lives of children. It's completely out of balance.

Listen, there are a couple of things about kids you have to remember. First of all, they're not all cute. In fact, if you look at 'em real close, most of them are rather unpleasant looking. And a lot of them don't smell too good either. The little ones in particular seem to have a kind of urine and
sour-milk combination that I don't care for at all. Stay with me on this folks, the sooner you face it the better off your going to be.

Second, premise: not all children are smart and clever. Got that? Kids are like any other group of people: a few winners, a whole lot of losers! This country is filled with loser kids who simply...aren't...going anywhere! And there's nothing you can do about it, folks. Nothing! You can't save them all. You can't do it. You gotta let 'em go; you gotta cut 'em loose; you gotta stop over-protecting them, because your making 'em too soft." - George Carlin

The End of an Era

2008-06-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up the usual way as I normally would. Started my regular routine, and grabbed a book that I have been reading called "My boring ass life" by Kevin Smith. Essentially the book is a diary of his life during the time that he was preparing and eventually working on the film Clerks 2.
He began to talk about another movie that he was in called Catch and Release, and how it was appropriate for him to be part of the movie because it was very much in line with the style of his movie "Jersey Girl". It was at this time that I started thinking about Jersey Girl and how it was not as bad as many people have deemed it to be, the saving grace of the film being that he got some people to act for him that made the movie what it was... one of those people being George Carlin.
I began thinking about how Carlin had done some amazing things over the years and how his brand of humor has been one truly reflecting the best points as well as the most asinine ideals that we maintain as a culture.
In fact it was only about 3 weeks ago that I dug out his book "Brain Droppings" and I presented it to my girlfriend to read. She knew about Carlin, but from what I know never really followed a whole lot of his work. I told her that since she and I think along the same level, she would probably really get a kick out his book, and his perspective.
This morning I also had one other thought.... this is odd for me to understand because I have had this thought many times before over other well known celebrities... the thought was "Man, things are gonna really suck when Carlin goes, the world is going to lose an amazing person, a brilliant mind, and what could be conceived to be a modern day philosopher." It was roughly 40 minutes later that I learned that George Carlin died last night at roughly 6pm PDT, (9 pm EST).
While 71 seems like he lived a long life, the average lifespan these days is about 78 - 79 which means to me that he died younger than he should have.
His life was exceptional in the idea that he was one of the few people that experienced things from multiple perspectives but did not allow the worst of things to take him down. Over the years he was an admitted drug and drink addict. It took a number of years for him to work his way past that but once he did he remained clean and sober. He could speak clearly on the subjects that many people haven't experienced first hand and offer a clear perspective of what things are like in layman's terms. He also did this successfully by being descriptively funny. He liked to point out things that people knew existed, but make sure that it came about in a way that it really made them think about what others were actually saying.
Over the years his observations became less playfully observant and more of an attack. His material became more abrasive and brash as it dug into issues that no one wanted to have thrown at them. Even up to the point where after 9/11/01 Carlin prepared for his latest HBO special and ultimately had about 25 minutes of it cut out because the execs thought that he went after the 9/11 subject too abruptly at a time when people might take serious offense to his opinion.
Carlin wasn't what one would call a man of few words, for words were his weapon of choice and he wielded them as only a master could. If you haven't had the chance I would highly recommend finding as many of his albums as possible and seeing the progression of his comedy. Also read his books, he wrote 3 best sellers which can now be bought in one paperback collection. While he may no longer be with us, his obscure thoughts and poignant observations will always remain strong.

It is with a sense of loss that I write this, a final farewell to one of Americas most amazing minds, it was truly a pleasure to bare witness to the brilliance that was Mr. Carlin. While there may be many others that follow in his footsteps there will never be another one quite like him.

-Ryan Fulton

Jason Fulton December 27, 1972 ~ June 9, 2008

2008-06-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

This blog is written in memoriam of my cousin.
To those of you who live in New England you probably heard last week in the news about a man in Lempster NH who was reported as to have jumped off of a the Brattleboro bridge in Vermont. The reason it made such news is because the man in Lempster was reported as being the man that jumped… he shared the same name as an optometrist in Claremont New Hampshire one town over. The name the two man share being Jason Fulton, both age 35.

Jason Fulton of Claremont is my cousin.

I write this as my way of coping with the situation. I don't exactly know how I should respond. I can say that my mind and my heart have both been screaming in anguish since I was told. They both are screaming for very different reasons. My heart screams because he was a very caring person. We shared many experiences together. He was the first grandchild on my father's side of my family, he was the first of the grand children to get married, he was the first to have a child. He was also technically the most successful of us all in getting his degree in Optometry. He was also well on his way to having his own practice.

I have so many reasons to look up to him and so many reasons to believe that he was a great person. When I would go to Loon Mountain as a kid he was the one that I spent most of my time with because he was only slightly older than me and I could easily identify with him. Loon Mountain was the one place other than my grandmother's house that I associate with Jason. As kids we would go on the occasional hike in the mountains, we would race to the top of "The big rock" behind the timeshare home. We would spend time in the arcade or at the pool just hanging out and having fun.

Every moment I think of my heart screams louder realizing that there will never be another time in which we will get together, and while I have never had the chance to meet his wife or his daughter (because of my time in Florida) he will never get to be the one to introduce me to them.
It screams for every moment that we have shared, and every moment that we will never share again. God damn it Jason I miss you…

My mind is screaming in pain because it can't fathom why he could ever do such a thing. How the hell could you do this? Someone of your intellect and your beliefs and you go and destroy the worlds of everyone that cares for you! You selfish jerk how the hell can you abandon your family, your daughter, your unborn son! The fact that you felt that the world was coming down on you and that everything was going wrong.. yeah I can understand that, I'm in the same spot… everything that I have been trying to accomplish has been tough, it certainly hasn't been a walk in the park, and while things are coming down around me and I look at what appears to be a dead end at every corner I still push forward. We all do! Life isn't easy for any of us and it's even harder for those of us that refuse to back down, so what the hell?! Take the easy way out? YOU SELFISH PRICK! My mind can't comprehend how you can do this because it makes no sense, you were the provider! You were the one that was taking care of your family! You helped them accrue the debt that you were working at paying off and then you just abandon them??! Leave them in a position in which they are now buried under the weight of the world that you were building for them only to rip out the main support beams before it was finished!

You also robbed your sister of her happiness! She just got married two days before you decided to do this! THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING? You got a wedding, you got a honeymoon, you got to have the happiness that you so longed for all of your life, and the moment your sister finally gets the same kind of happiness you steal it from her! You just swoop in and destroy it! You thought this was the easy solution, you thought this was the way that everything would be alright… everyone you left behind that was counting on you will have the hardest times of their lives! You never thought of that! You never thought of what the consequences were to those that you leave behind and for that you hurt us in a way that you can't imagine. I love you Jason, but there is no way I can respect this choice… I've never had reason to be angry with you before but I can't let this go… and my anger may never die because you took the easy way out and made such a cold hearted self absorbed choice.

I don't know what to do… I don't know what to think… my mind is pissed at him and my heart is crying for him, and those emotions are so conflicting that my body is locked. My mind won't let me cry for him, and my heart won't let me curse the choices he has made. I don't know what to do…. I feel more statuesque as I think it over my emotions are almost encased in granite.

Because of this my dreams are getting more painful. While my dad had tried to tell me that it's just a dream and that I shouldn't allow it to affect me but also don't tend to second guess what I see. I haven't dreamt of my grandfather in many years. The last dream I had of him was shortly after his death. In that dream he was relaxed. He looked younger than I ever knew him, he looked like he did in pictures that I had seen of him growing up, long before I was born, long before my father was born. This new dream was different. In this dream he was the man I remember when I did something that he wasn't happy with. He was a very strong man, someone that had a presence that people didn't challenge. When I made mistakes and he corrected me it instilled fear and later respect. In this dream he was angry with me. He was correcting me again… reminding me that Jason... no matter what he has done... is still family. You don't EVER turn your back to, or your heart away from, family. I keep wondering if this was because my mind was getting too aggressive over the way I felt and something needed to keep me from shutting down. Either way he didn't like the fact that I was more pissed at Jason than sad. The fact that I haven't cried (and I still haven't) over the loss of his life, over the situation that his wife is now going to be in, and the torment that my Aunt and Uncle are now experiencing is the source of why he is angry at me. I have a feeling that this is going to take a long time for me to resolve… it's not like anything else I have ever experienced, it's not supposed to be like this….

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." – A Tombstone in Ireland

Computer Killer

2008-04-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

Geek, Nerd, Techno-geek, Computer-freak, yeah I've been called just about everything that you can think of when it comes to computers. I've spent years studying them, building them and ripping them apart only to rebuild them and make them better. At the same time I am also someone who most people turn to when their computer is on the fritz. I can understand how a computer can be one of the most frustrating things to deal with, and recently I have had an experience that I had never had previously on any computer. Fortunately & unfortunately it happened on my home computer. I say fortunately because I would rather this happen to my system and experience the problem first hand than to have it happen to a friend and have no idea how or what they might have done to cause the issue.
A couple weeks ago I had an issue with my computer, I was logging into the computer remotely so I could access my programs from work (I told you that I was a geek when it came to computers). I noticed that my recycle bin was showing that it had trash in it. Now I am usually one of those people that when I delete a file, if I don't delete the file directly, I immediately empty the recycle bin. So for me to see files in the recycle bin is kind of unusual, so I thought maybe I got distracted and forgot to empty it. I decided to open the bin and see what it is that I forgot to delete. When I opened the bin it was empty. The icon showed it being full and the bin was empty. Now this isn't all that surprising. Windows is know for having strange quirks and seeing a malfunctioning icon is nothing new for me. I've seen that a dozen or so times and there is usually a really quick fix for this issue. Delete a file and empty the bin will take care of it 98% of the time.
So I created a quick junk file, a simple txt file that I planned to immediately delete. So I trashed it as soon as I made it and followed my usual procedure of emptying the recycle bin. I got the usual "Are you sure you want to delete the items in the bin" and I clicked yes only to get a response "Error: Not all files could be deleted." I opened the recycle bin and the junk file was gone and there was nothing in the bin, but the icon still showed a full recycle bin.
Well that seemed annoying, so I decided to do what any good tech would do and "restart the computer". A few minutes later the computer is back up and running... and the recycle bin is still full. I check the bin and it shows nothing. So I decide to do the next trick and try to empty the empty recycle bin.... this time the message says "Are you sure you want to delete Windows?"
Ok so this is an interesting question, do I want to delete windows? Well considering the frustration that it has caused me over the years I went for the immediate response of "yes". I clicked on Yes knowing that there wasn't going to be any way that this system would allow me to physically remove windows. And I immediately got an error that says that it couldn't delete windows, files were in use etc. With some comfort of knowing that the computer was smart enough not to delete the operating system while it was running I knew things couldn't be too bad.
After about a day of research I found out that this is a bug that randomly occurs in windows and that Microsoft is well aware of it but has no intention of ever trying to find a fix for it.
I tried a number of options to correct the problem, searching through forum after forum of other people having the same problem and what they did to try to resolve the issue. After about 2 days the problem was solved.... but not before I discovered another issue. One of the things that I thought about doing to resolve the issue is to use Microsofts "Restore System" function. This can be quite the life saver. If you have never used it, here is how it works: Windows saves a snapshot of your computer (usually on a daily basis) it saves a quick image of what the computer was running and what the registry looked like on a specific day. Now the idea is to look at just the programs that are installed and the registry. It does not look at files that are saved or emails that are downloaded. So when you use the restore it ignores everything except the program changes. So if you install a program that has an issue with your computer you can restore the computer to the way it was the day before without losing your email or any new things that you may have downloaded. It simply pretends that it never installed the software and removes all knowledge of the software from the registry and its installation folder. This can save you a lot of time if you have a problem with the computer. So where was my issue that I discovered before resolving my recycling bin problem?
All of my restore points were gone. This was an issue. I looked at the system and it was set to save restore points everyday, and there were no restore points to be found. This is could be a major issue. Without those restore points I can't restore the system to a previously working state. So here I am wondering what I am going to do if I can't get it working?
So I am now surfing through even more forums trying to find where this problem comes from, the only info that I could uncover on this problem is that windows does this if you are running low on hard drive space.
This is the part of the blog where you need to know that I was laughing about "lack of hard drive space". Anyone that knows me knows that I have more space on my computer than most people will have in the next 5 years. When people were talking about how they had 1 gig of hard drive space in 1996 I had 2 gigs. When people were telling everyone about how they had 10 gigs of hard drive space in 1999 I had a 40 gig drive. Here we are in 2008, and people are talking about how their computers are coming with 500 gig drives.... I have just over 2 Terabytes (2000 gigs). Yeah it seems like a lot but for what I am doing with my computer you'll realize that in the next 5 - 10 years I'll have a petabyte (1000 Terabytes) just to support the kind of animation that I want to be making, and backing up all of my previous work. Needless to say I have plenty of hard drive space so for my computer to be doing something that is usually only done when there is no hard drive space that means that there is a problem with windows.
So as I said, I managed to fix the recycling bin problem, and I didn't want to panic over the inability of restoring my system should a major issue occur. So I took this time to start backing up my system. I spent the next 4 days backing up as much of my system as I could onto my external hard drive.
After I had backed up most of the hard drive I noticed one other strange occurrence my image files wouldn't open using windows picture viewer. They would open fine using my image editing software (Photoshop) but the problem with that was it takes nearly 1 minute to get Photoshop started and if someone sends me a picture that I want to look at quickly I want to just use the windows software because it will open the image in a matter of seconds and then I can close it. A day later, the recycling bin error returned.
Well, with all of this happening I made the decision that I need to reinstall windows. I decided that windows had become corrupt and without being able to restore to a good state, it seemed only logical that I wipe out my hard drive, reinstall my software, and have a fully functional version of everything running.
The weekend hit and I spent 2 days reformatting and reinstalling, I had most of it taken care of by the end of Saturday and on early Sunday morning I realize exactly how bad my situation had become. The wipe of the hard drive was a good thing, a fresh install of windows is something I usually do once a year but this was something that I had done only about 6 months earlier.
So if the reinstall was a good thing why was my situation bad? I realized that it was bad as soon as I plugged in my backup drive. The computer identified it immediately and I was able to browse the files. Everything that was on the drive seemed to be there. The only problem is that everything that I had backed up from the previous install of windows had become corrupt. Apparently the corruption of windows was passed onto all of the files that I had been storing on the same drive as windows. It wrote all of the files in an undecipherable format that only the corrupted version of windows could read.
I spent the next 3 days attempting to recover my files only to find that they were gone. Hundreds of pictures gone... audio files that I was editing for my next film....gone.... months worth of work all history because windows destroyed the files. Nothing could decipher the corruption and what made it worse is that the corruption was tying itself to my hard drive. It wouldn't allow me to delete any of the files, so it was eating up hundreds of gigs of space and preventing me from being able to delete the files.
So I spent 2 more days copying the good files that I still had access to which had never been on the corrupt drive. And finally I had to run another program that would forcibly and permanently wipe out the drive.
So here I am a couple weeks later, still trying to see what was recoverable. I'm glad that I make multiple copies of my important files, but I kick myself for not having been able to catch this issue earlier.
There is a lot that I can never recover, but if anything I hope this serves as a warning to all that a simple backup is not always the only answer. From this point forward if I ever notice corruption in windows and I still have network access I will be transferring the files to another working computer first to make sure that the files are truly backed up before I wipe it out.

Wonder-Con

2008-03-07T07:02:00.002-08:00

A week ago I went out to San Francisco because my film was running in the San Francisco International Children's Festival at Wonder-Con. I have to admit that I had some interesting expectations for this festival but it was so much more than I could have anticipated.
What I didn't know was that the gamers conference was being held a few days before Wonder-con and the two fests overlapped on Friday. It was quite the experience.
Thursday night - I arrived in San Francisco at about 8:15pm after flying from Florida to Atlanta and when we were held up in Atlanta for about 30 minutes. So I arrived a little later than I expected I would. While I was headed there I struck up a conversation with the guy that was sitting next to me from the Atlanta leg of the flight. He told me about how the company he was working for was sending him to Atlanta a few times a year, and this was the first of many trips. We also talked for a while about the film industry and how I was on my way out to a festival. So over a couple hours we got to know each other and had a lot to talk about. As we landed he told me that he lived pretty close to the hotel I was staying at and since his girlfriend was picking him up at the airport he offered to drop me off. I was really appreciative and offered him a couple of my extra tickets to Wonder-con.
Well so far the trip was going good, the hotel was right in the middle of the city, really close to the Moscone where the Con was happening. Everything we could possibly need was right there. So after checking into the The Maxwell Hotel and getting into the room (it was on the 12th floor, and the view of the city was pretty nice) I took a stroll down Geary st to a local pizza / sub shop and got dinner. As I was walking out the door of the shop I knew I could get in a lot of trouble if I wasn't careful.
A girl walking by the shop immediately stopped and began acting far more friendly than most people do. She acted as though she knew me from somewhere else and even said "I remember you, we met earlier" and I told her that she was mistaken. So after about 5 minutes of her trying to get me to either buy her dinner or "walk her home" as she was kind enough to put it, she realized that I wasn't about to be taken and tried to find someone else that she "recognized". So I high tailed it back to the hotel dinner and money still in my possession.
Friday was interesting as it was the first day of the Festival and the Con, Ari and both knew that we should check in that day but we didn't have much intention of hanging around there since our films wouldn't run until Saturday. We explored San Fran for a couple hours, and then headed out to the Moscone where we met up with some guys that Ari knew would be at the game conference. So after we met up and had lunch, we went to the Moscone South and got our passes to get into the Con.

Friday @ The Con -
We had some difficulty getting the passes, it seems that one of the guys that was working for the Festival had picked up all of the passes and we didn't have his phone number to find him. After talking with the registration people one of the ladies took pity on us and made a couple professional passes for us to get in and find out where we were supposed to be for the film fest.
As we explored the lower level of the main floor we found a bunch of the booths where a lot of various companies were that we were familiar with. While I needed to check out the View Askew booth (and buy up a bunch of the stuff that they usually only sell on the website) Ari needed to check out the SLG Publishing booth (they were right next to each other so that made things easy). We each picked up a bunch of things that we wanted and decided that anything we would acquire at this con we should do on the first day so we don't bog ourselves down on the days that were more important.
After doing some more exploration of the main floor we came across an area where there were various people signing comic books and a I noticed a familiar face... I can't say that I had ever met him before but I remembered seeing him a number of times in various documentaries about Star Wars. As I got closer I realized that I was standing before Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca in all of the Star Wars movies. Now those that know about my past know that all through out high school and college I was a star wars geek. Before the movies were re-released I was still coveting a prized collection of about 20 figures and when people had questions (or wanted to make me look like even more of a geek in front of other people by trying to stump me) they would ask anything they could think of about Star Wars. Fortunately for me I have been in many various industries that have gotten me accustomed to having the opportunity to meet celebrities. I learned many years ago not to freak out or go all "fan-boy" on anyone of pop culture status. So when I approached Mr. Mayhew I simply shook his hand and told him that I appreciate his work. I watched a number of other people freak out and while he was courteous with them I could see that he was used to this kind of a reaction and knew it was best to be polite and eventually they would either stop of move on to the next celebrity that they could freak out over. So while they got a smile and a hand shake, he actually talked with me for a while. When I told him that I was running a film in the children's festival he even took out his copy of the Wonder Con book to try and look up my film so he could see what it was about. I think it was probably one of the most positive experiences that I have had in quite a while getting to meet someone that I grew up watching on many different occasions in what was once my favorite movie series of all time.
Afterwards I got a call from the director of the film festival and he wanted to tell me that there was a booth for the fest on the floor and he told me where the films were playing. So Ari and I decided to find the booth and put some of our promotional materials out. We also decided that it might behoove us to work the booth for a couple hours in between the showing of our films on Saturday.
We made our way to the area where the films were being shown and then we realized how much time had gone by so after becoming slightly familiar with where we would be spending the next day we made our way back to the hotel to meet up with a friend.
After having a drink and just relaxing at the bar & grill adjacent to the hotel with our friend we got a call from Jenny and Dan, two other directors that we met at the Los Angeles Film Fest. We gave them directions to the hotel and agreed to meet up for dinner and drinks at 7 which gave them a couple hours to get settled and find their way to the hotel.
So Dan and Jenny met up with us and we went to a place called the Sushi boat which was across from the hotel, to follow it up by going to Lefty O'Douls Pub down the road. After a few hours of drinking and laughing and just having fun we decided to call it a night at about 1am. Being that I was still functioning on east coast time it was about 4am for me and while I would try to "sleep in" the next day I would still wake up at 5:30... and then struggle to stay in bed until 8.

Saturday @ Wonder-con
Saturday would be just as busy as Friday. Getting up at 8 so we could get to a cafe down the road in the morning and meet up with another animator that we had been in touch with since watching his film at various festivals. We didn't get much time to hang out as he had to get to work, but it was cool having the opportunity to meet up for a few minutes.
After breakfast we headed straight to the Moscone and got to the booth to make sure that our promotional materials were in check. We talked with a couple people about the films and told a few people with kids to check it out. 10 minutes later I was in the auditorium watching the films during the block in which my film was playing. My film was the last to show and I was getting slightly discouraged as the two films prior to mine were both documentaries that lasted 10 minutes long each. I could see the kids getting restless and parents started leading them out of the theater before the second one ended. Suddenly with about 3 minutes remaining for the film before mine would end I noticed that what was a 2/3 full theater was now 1/4 full. A lot of people had left and it was looking pretty sparse. I didn't know what to think at this point and I figured that this would be tough because the place was mostly empty.
As my film started the place was just about as barren as I would see it....... and then it happened. As soon as the slash screen for my little picture company cleared off of the screen, and the first couple seconds of the film began I noticed that just about every kid that left the theater was still near the door outside, and all of the kids that were waiting for the next show were also there and they all seemed to spot that a cartoon was playing. Suddenly the theater filled in quicker than I could have ever imagined. I could hear them laughing, and while I have been told by hundreds of adults that that they like my film about "bears" the kids were saying "Look! Dogs!"... the kids get it! That was the greatest feeling to hear them talking about it. This is the whole reason to do what I do. Hearing the reactions of the kids, the kids that I made this film for, made the whole trip worth it.
After wards we had the Q&A and when I got up to talk with about the film the kids were still in the crowd and one of them was saying, "I want to ask a question" to his mother, but didn't know what to ask. Then Ari came to the rescue by whispering "Ask him how long it took to make." After that question came a flood of other questions from the kids "How many dogs do you have?", "Do they really act like that?" etc. It was the most interaction that I have had in a Q&A ever, it was great.
Afterwards, we went back to the booth to continue promoting the film fest. When we got there, almost all of the cards that we had put down were gone. I came with over 250 post cards promoting the film and I was nearly out. After and hour or two of promoting the fest I decided to explore the Con a little more. I managed to get around and see a lot of different people dressed as various characters. It was interesting to see how many people were dressed up in Star Wars costumes, one guy even had a working life size R2-D2 he even gave a seminar on how to make your own.
As I continued to wander around I saw a number of other celebrities that were around David Duchovney and Jillian Anderson were there to promote the new X-Files movie, Jon Favreau was there talking about Iron Man. I made my way back to the booth and Ari and I met up with Jenny and Dan again, we decided to get lunch and then headed back to the convention, and as we were walking back we met up with Serena Valentino the author of "Nighmares & Fairy Tales" and "Gloom Cookie". She was really nice to talk with, and it was cool to just hang out with her for a little while. After getting together with her we ran back to the theater for Ari's showing of his film. The showing ran a little long as they decided to put 3 films in that were 22 minutes each, and then they put Ari's film in last. After the film ran the Q&A went really well, a lot of people asked about his film and what he is working on next. Once we finished with the Q&A we met up with Dan (the director of the fest) and he told us to head over to the Thirsty Bear for an after party. We hung out there for a few hours talking with a number of other directors and just had a good time. It would be around 1am when we would get in, and being that Ari's flight out would be at 6:30 we would have to leave the hotel by 4am to go to the Airport. My flight wasn't until 7:50.

Sunday - The airport
We made it out of the Hotel at 4am and had to call a cab because none of the other transports were running at that time on Sunday. Apparently they run that early most days with Sunday being the exception. We got to the airport with plenty of time to check in on the flight. Ari got to his gate and we grabbed a drink and relaxed while waiting for him to be able to board. His flight was soon ready and he was on his way back to Minnesota. I headed to my terminal and waited. Making some calls to people back home knowing that it was now 10 - 11am there it was safe to know I wouldn't be waking anyone up. As the time got closer, my gate changed to a few gates down, so I moved there, and found that things were not going to have an easy flight out. The readout on the flight plan started showing Memphis then Atlanta. As it turned out the winds in San Fran were much higher than they would normally be, so they said they needed to lighten the plane to make it easier to transport. So instead of cutting the number of passengers they decided it would be better to reduce the amount of fuel and then land some where else to refuel and continue. At 7:30 we were on board the plane preparing to go to Memphis and then on to Atlanta.... at 8:30 they were telling us that we were still to heavy and that we would be now landing in Kansas City. By 9:30 they were telling us that we were still too heavy and that we were still landing in Kansas City.... by 11am they told us that we were still too heavy and that we would be landing in Denver Colorado. After sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours (with a child 2 rows behind me that was screaming her lungs out) we finally took off, before we took off I called Delta and rearranged my connecting flight. Because I knew that I would never make it to Atlanta on time to catch my regular flight. We landed in Denver and then after refueling about 1 hour later we were able to take off again (the kid continued to scream the entire flight... 6 hours of flying 4 hours total on the tarmac... 10 hours of non stop screaming, I was happy to get off that flight). We arrived in Atlanta around 7:30 eastern time, I ran to my next gate which was almost done boarding and expecting to leave at 7:45pm. 20 people from my flight showed up on my heels and they each tried to change their tickets from the previous flight. I handed them my ticket and they told me that I had a ticket waiting for me (good thing I knew to call ahead). There were about 4 seats on the flight and I got one. I was back in Florida 2 1/2 hours later. I got back to my apartment at midnight, and passed out right away.

While I wasn't happy to be waking up for my Monday morning meeting at work, I can say that this trip was definitely worth every minute. In fact I have already put in for my time off for Comic-Con. I don't know what to expect out of Comic-Con but I can say that Wonder-Con brought in roughly 20,000 - 25,000 people on that weekend... Comic-Con is expected to average 120,000+ people.... this is going to be great!

Perspective

2008-01-30T13:56:00.000-08:00

Its been months since I sat to write in any of my blogs. Its not that I haven't had anything to say its that I have been in need of a change. I needed to recompile my thoughts because I realize that a lot of my blogs are becoming more about me ranting about things that I find to be obnoxious, disturbing, frustrating, or just just plain wrong. There are too many blogs out there with people who are spending their time whining about anything and everything.... so this is going to be a different type of blog.
I want to write today about something other than the frustrations of the things that hit me on a daily basis. Today I want to talk about success. Yes, success... everyone defines technically the same, but the real question of sucess is based upon degree. For example. I've been working out for months now. I decided one day that I wanted to change my life and that I knew that if I didn't I would be headed in a bad direction. It wasn't long after I got into my position as network admin that I knew I would need to have have something to break up the monotony of my job. I didn't want to be that guy that took the job and sat in his office all day long and didn't do anything. Fortuneately I am not that guy... while I may be in my office all the time I am never without enough to keep me busy. Once I got out of work I would find myself going home and doing the same thing sitting in front of a computer and trying to get things accomplished, whether it be finding different forms of entertainment to get my creativity flowing or trying to control the ideas that I have for my current film project and get them put into a form that I can be constructive with the direction of the film.
So to break these activities up I signed up for a gym. I figure if I could work for 8 hours then work out for an hour for at least 4 days a week it would give me a positive change.
Well the change has been positive for the most part.... positive in the form of losing almost 30lbs. So this change has been a success for me. Am I at my goal yet now that I have gotten my alternating routine in place? Not even close. But the little changes that I have had happen are the first step of success. When I started I was able to drop 5lbs a week without even thinking about it. It happened that way for a few weeks and then it slowed down. This was expected as the body tends to adapt to the changes you make, and therefore you need to keep changing to prevent it from getting comfortable with what you are doing and plateauing. So for a while there were a number of weeks where I would drop only 1 lb others when I might only drop 1/2 lb. Its not a great feeling to see that no matter how hard I worked out my body compensated for some of it and made it more difficult to reach the same peak I reached the week prior.
I thought about how most people would respond to these results. I remember seeing people in the same position that I am in saying things like "I have to get strickter, I ONLY lost 1 lb this week."..... "I can't belive I ONLY lost a 1/2 lb this week, I worked so hard and it didn't pay off."....."I'm not getting the results I want and I am working out so hard, I ONLY lost....".
I decided when I began this process that there would be no "I ONLY'S" in my vocabulary. As long as I didn't gain weight then I would celebrate the week as victory.... and I have! No matter how minor the change I talk myself up as though it was the biggest loss in the world, and I plan to keep doing so because it means that the next week will be different.
So how has it worked? Great! I know that can honestly say that I started this regiment during one of the hardest times of the year and I am one of the only people that can say that I ate really well during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years and during each of those weeks I still lost weight. I had actually told myself that if I gained during any of those weeks I wouldn't beat myself up about it, I would simply go back to everything I was doing. I didn't exactly stay perfect during any of those weeks but I made sure that I would continue to hit the gym and push as hard as I can and stick to the path that I began a while back.
So even minor things can be a success....

My film that I finished last March has been touring around the world as most who know me have heard. It has been in over 20 film festivals and I have been able to attend only a small number of those fests, but the ones that I have been to have been a lot of fun! I haven't been able to apply for all of the festivals that I would have liked to be part of but I am happy to have been able to get into those that I was accepted to. The best part is that with all of the fests that I have applied for I managed to get accepted to about half of them. I have also gotten my fair share of rejections. The thing that I have a hard time looking past is that there are those who look at my film and they compare it quality wise to films that have 5 - 6 people helping them, or budgeted films and shoot it down. I even had one company write to me and say, "We received many good films, and we're sorry but but yours will not be shown at the festival: Reason: The story is poor even by short standards, and the ending makes no sense." I kept this response and I look at it everytime I get accepted into another festival. While I was awestruck when I got it, I have to say that I was laughing the second time I read it and I realized that the person that wrote it was not in my target audience.
I have to admit that last week I wanted to write back to this festival and let them know that I appreciate their input and they have helped me tremendously but not in the way they expected, oh, and if they want to give my film a second chance, they can watch it at ComicCon this year in San Diego. Sometimes the best revenge is just to do well with what you have, and what I have is a film that one of the largest Comic Book / Entertainment / Movie Conventions in the world wants to show.
I suppose life can be pretty funny sometimes.... it all depends on your perspective.

My Precious....

2007-10-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

It's come back to me. I am exstatic, I have to say that yesterday was a day of hell, but this morning I awoke and decided to try and make my day better by going for a swim. I don't know what changed but the ring was there... in the pocket of my swimsuit. I swear it wasn't there yesterday, I went swimming yesterday too, and I know it wasn't there, the suit was even hung upside down where anything in the pockets would have fallen to the ground, but this morning I put the suit on, and the ring was sitting in the pocket.
After over 24 hours of hell trying to find it, I am completely relieved by the unexpected nature of its return. This morning I put it back on and I have vowed that it will not leave my finger until I am safely back to my apartment. So I am happy, I have my ring back.....

......my precious.

Lord of the Ring

2007-10-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

It's gone. That's the only way to put it. I have been in Modesto for 3 days now, I arrived last Saturday, and here it is Monday and now it's gone. What am I referring to you might ask? My college class ring. My ring is gone. After the flight here it was uncomfortable as the pressure (physical pressure from pressurizing and depressurizing the airplane) of flight causes the human body to react strange after a long flight. I had 3 flights on Saturday, I spent damn near 10 hours in the air, and when all was said and done it caused my body to react like I had been eating from a salt lick all day... my fingers swelled making my ring finger uncomfortable. So I took the ring off. Unable to get it back on I put it aside. I have spent all day searching, I have ripped everything apart, retraced my steps a dozen or so times and in the last 36 hours my ring is no longer in my possession. Its strange, I haven't been without that ring for even a full day in just about 8 years and now its gone.
I don't know what to think, my mother has the receipt for it, and she has all the info so I can reorder it from Jostens, but the cost is going to be great. I can't believe that it is gone.
I don't know what to do.... what a way to start the trip....

The First Week of October

2007-09-13T08:07:00.001-07:00

It looks as though my little animated film is gaining some ground, I have been accepted into 2 films festivals that I was unsure that I would get into. The California International Animated Film Fest, and the Los Angeles International Children's Film Fest. To be honest I was hoping to get into the LA Children's Fest for a long time. I even skipped out on going to SIGGRAPH this year just in case I had a chance to get into the LA fest. Well I am on my way! September 28th I am headed out to Modesto California, and I will be staying there until the 4th of October while I attend the California Intl Animation Fest, and then I am driving from Modesto to Los Angeles where I plan to do some couch surfing while I attend the LA Children's Fest, before heading back to Fort Lauderdale on the 7th.
I have also been really excited to find out where my standing in the Digifest.net festival is, it appears that my campaign to get people to watch the film has been working. I have been hearing back from many people checking out the film and telling me what they think about it, I wasn't exactly expecting my film campaign to go viral but I am hearing from more people than I ever expected. It has also given me great inspiration to push even harder to get my next film rolling. So now I am in the process of setting up the scripts for the two that I have in mind, the biggest thing that will help me determine which one will get my total focus first is going to be where things stand financially. If I talk with a couple select people about my live action idea, and they show the interest that I hope they will have and are willing to help back me on it, then I will be doing everything I can to push that forward, if I am going to be put in a spot where I have very little financial support on the film then I will resort to going back to working on just my next animated film. This is because I already have a couple computers that I can use to model and render with, I won't need to acquire any fancy equipment like I would with a live action film, at the most I will simply have to upgrade one of my computers a bit to handle some of the render times, but it should be considerably easier than it was to work with all the fur that I used in the first film.
Well this Friday is the last day to check out "The Hard Life of A Dog" at the online film fest at Digifestival.net The more people I have check it out the better my chances are to move on to the next round. I hope people keep spreading the word for these last couple days and that the number of votes continues to go up, unfortunately they don't give anyone the opportunity to view the voting, and I think that is a good idea and a bad idea, its good in the respect that it keeps people from just going to see who is voting for one film and just going to watch that one. But it is bad in the respect that it doesn't give an accurate depiction of where people stand, so I never know how accurate the audience vote is, especially if someone that checks the votes and knows that one film was better made than the others because of a major budget and a lot of people working on it, they might just put them up as being the winner of the audience vote even if someone else did get more votes overall. Who knows, I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and hoping that the sheer number of people that have been contacting me will tell me that I have been doing as well as I think this one is going.
Well two weeks from Saturday and I am going to Cali. Wish me luck!

Its like seeing a train wreck...

2007-09-10T12:08:00.000-07:00

Pudge Spears

First let me tell you, no I did not watch the MTV Video Music Awards. I gave up on MTV years ago. The channel has been absolute crap since the mid to late 90's, and it will never improve again. As soon as it was announced that Britney Spears would be trying to use that venue to stage her comeback I knew that this was going to be a massive implosion.
If you haven't heard yet, it was considered to be one of the worst performances ever seen, and many of the celebrities that showed up to the awards sat there with blank expressions and a deer caught in headlights look as she showed no enthusiasm, and completely bombed on her performance.
Now here is where hilarity comes in... she knows she did a horrible job. She knows she stunk up the stage worse than anyone would have imagined. She is still a mental case and she broke down crying backstage after the performance ended. Does she think that it is something she did that caused this horrible performance?.... Nope! She blames the whole thing on Sarah Silverman!
Silverman was the host of the Video Music Awards this year, and she did her usual out of control, over the top, and unmercifully politically incorrect style of humor, and her target became Britney. Apparently Britney over heard Silverman practicing her material and became so offended that she told MTV that Silverman was not allowed to talk about her kids. MTV said that they would make sure that she didn't, and well MTV learned a hard lesson today, don't make promises you can't keep. So before Silverman even got on stage, Britney did her "performance" and bombed in the worst way possible. She knew she was sucking so much that half way through the song she stopped lip-syncing to the song and started changing which part she was singing.
Well after Spear's bombed Silverman did to Britney the same thing that she did to Paris Hilton at the MTV Video Movie Awards.*
Well apparently Britney's kids became open season as Silverman (who had been told by MTV execs that, "You are not allowed to talk about Britney's kids") decided to go into her full routine and tear Spears and her kids apart. I have always had respect for Silverman because she is an obscure comic, yeah her jokes are very hit and miss, and her style is extremely selective, but she doesn't seem to care what anyone thinks. The greatest thing about it all is that if you want to see both the god awfulness that was an out of shape Spears check your stomach at the door, and get your eye bleach ready and just click here. Then keep watching to see Sarah Silverman ruin her... or if you just want to skip Sloppy Spears and just go straight to Silverman calling her kids "two of the cutest mistakes you will ever see" click here.

Well I think after this performance, we will soon be hearing about how Spears is back in rehab after a massive relapse into the drug world. She wasn't even off the stage from her "comeback" a days before she had another picture of her cooter appearing on the Internet as she flashed everyone while getting out of the car she was in yet again.... I swear a few more performances like this and she is going to be moving up on my celebrity death list. Soon enough if she doesn't end up back in rehab, she will end up on suicide watch.

*At the movie awards she ripped hardcore on Paris Hilton starting by getting major applause by saying "In a couple days Paris Hilton will be going to jail." and everyone went nuts... except Paris who was in the audience and she was trying to remain composed. She then made another crack about how the guards were going to paint the jail cell bars to look like cock's and Silverman feared that Paris would chip her teeth on them.

Red Sox Defense

2007-08-31T11:57:00.000-07:00

I just read an article by ESPN's Jim Caple telling Red Sox fans to shut up. (Read it here) He also wrote a blog on his page that reads "The Devil wears Red Sox" which is a take off of his book "The Devil wears Pinstripes". Now after reading what this guy had to say I felt it my responsibility as a fan to give a little return feedback.

I consider myself to be a big fan of the Red Sox, I'm not what you would call an Uber-fan, unfortunately since I have moved to Florida I haven't been to a Sox game as I haven't had time or money to attend even one. I also don't have the finances to pay for the "Ultimate Baseball Package" through my cable provider so I can't watch all the games on TV. I do however go to the website and use the "GameDay" browser to watch the simulation of each pitch and read the play-by-play. I truly, enjoy the game, it is one that I can get into, I have been a fan of baseball my whole life and I have always been a fan of my home team.

So much like everyone else that was cheering for the Sox in 2004, I was glued to my set to see every game, and nothing could tear me away from the play offs or the series. To watch them win was the greatest experience that any fan of the team could ever have. Since that day we hold that win close to our hearts and like any true sports fan we hope to see it happen again.

The problem that I find is that there are people like Caple who are now saying "Shut up" or "This is getting annoying" and they still want to consider themselves true fans. This guy now speaks of the Sox as a team that he is proud to watch, but it is almost as though he wishes that the win would have made the team disappear. Its as though the rivalry of the Red Sox and the Yankees would die after the Red Sox won one series and then we could go back to being a mournful group of fans with our catch phrase of "wait till next year".

He even says that calling ourselves "Red Sox Nation" is getting worn out. How pathetic is that? Every time the Sox play whether it be at home or away the seats are bombed with many Sox fans eager to watch their team play. And then you have this ass clown that is saying "I'm a Sox fan, and I think you should celebrate like the White Sox do, quietly." Unfortunately this guy is the worst kind of Sox fan, he isn't a die hard fan, he isn't a band wagoner, he is a self loather, the kind of fan that doesn't like other fans because he thinks that their actions reflect poorly on him. Well let me be the first to say if our fans want to stand in the crowd waving signs and drawing attention to themselves then so be it! I would prefer to see the fans in the crowd having the time of their lives. Passion is one thing about a game that makes it what it is, the Red Sox fans have always been passionate, and while there are many of them that have bailed out when the team does bad, the true fans are the ones that will remain in the crowd watching until the final pitch is thrown and cheering for their team even if they are losing horribly.

He rips on us for still calling ourselves Red Sox Nation, obviously he has never been to a game outside of Fenway because half the crowd is cheering on the Sox, you can't go anywhere that the team is playing without finding a massive onslaught of Sox fans showing up to cheer them on. That is why we are Red Sox Nation. There are Sox fans everywhere because they care about the team. He may call himself a fan, but if he keeps posting things like this, he should hand in his nations citizenship and go root for a team that will stay nice and quiet the way he likes. People in the public eye that will bash the fans of the same team he roots for should quit whining because by bashing the fans you are effectively betraying the team.

So Jim Caple, Shut up, you're embarrassing yourself.

Box Office Flops

2007-08-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

I would have loved to be in the think tank where someone spawned the notion, "Ok theres a guy that is famous, maybe an athlete, or a rap star, and he really wants to become part of this all white country club, and they won't let him in. So he gets bunch of his friends to come over and they all try to get in.... we'll call it..."Who's your Caddy?"" I would have simply stood up, and calmly walked over to the person that made the suggestion and smacked him upside the head.

I honestly don't know what is going through the heads of some of these people when they decide that they want to spent hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on movies that are obviously so tightly focused on one general market that they couldn't possibly make their money back in the theater sales, and if you are going to focus on one market why would you choose a "minority" market? I don't mean it to sound insulting to anyone in particular but if you are going to make a movie like this, why would anyone put it out in the theater especially in the summer when movies like Transformers, Super Bad, I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry, are obviously showing signs that they will dominate the market.

But no... Who's your caddy was released, and it remained in the market a whole whopping week before it crashed and burned. Now keep in mind I am not saying that because it is a comedy movie focused on the black community that it is a bad movie, there are lots of movies that come out with the same target audience, but if the movie doesn't look like it is going to be an award winning comedy they don't spend the majority of their funds showing off the same trailer over and over again every 20 minutes on tv... they may show it a couple times to get interest, but let it go.

I picked that movie to rip on only because it was the most recent movie that this has happened to... I have seen my fair share of bombs in the theater and I keep hoping that hollywood will learn. But since they won't I figure I will help enlighten those of you that have not noticed how short the lifespan of a failure really can be...

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo - Cost: $65 Million. Made in the theater: $22 Million. Out of the theater after 3 weeks. Surprisingly they let it sit in the theater for that long. Falling far short from the original comedy, this was just painstakingly awful to watch. I refused to see it in the theater, and saw it when someone at my school decided to play it one night while I was working on one of my projects. Glad I didn't contribute even a penny to the 22 Million it made.

Stealth: Cost: $130 Million. Made in the theater: $30 Million. Jamie Foxx is doing really well for himself after the success of Ray. Now he decides that he doesn't really need as much fame that badly as he sets fire to his career with this stinker. Now he is back to working on television again.

Alone in the Dark: Cost: $20 Million Made in Theater: $2 Million. After having seen only one film from the director of this movie, here is a rule of thumb, if you see the name "Uwe Boll" attached to the director's tag then avoid the movie like the plague! He is a hack that has butchered a lot of the games that I liked playing as a child, and he ruined them by trying to make them "better". Needless to say he has never put out a single good movie. Every one he has touch has failed.

Date Movie: Cost $20 Million. Made in theater: $48 Million. This movie was one that people flocked to because it had a trailer that made it seem like it had potential as one of the better spoof movies. Thank god I was smart enough to know that spoof movies have been a horrendous failure ever since the Wayans brothers bailed on Scary Movie 3. Just because you make money on the movie, doesn't mean it is any good.

Soul Plane: $17 Million. Made in theater: $14 Million. After Nashawn Wade (Kevin Hart) gets stuck in an airline toilet. The plane suffers a minor disaster and has his dog sucked through a jet engine, he then sues the airline. After getting a large settlement of $100,000,000 he decides to start his own airline, called NWA (Nashawn Wade Airlines). The airline specifically caters to African Americans and hip hop culture. The terminal at the airport is called the Malcolm X terminal, the plane is "pimped-out" with low-rider hydraulics, a dance club, and the safety video is a spoof of the Destiny's Child song Survivor. With a description like that don't you just want to run right out and watch it? I didn't think so...

I can keep going with this, but its just too easy to find so many crappy movies, and yet I still can't fathom why they keep pushing this garbage out, why not save some of the money and put it towards better movies? I guess if you don't squander a bunch of money you just don't get the same budget as last year.

Tonight!

2007-08-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

Last night at 3:15am the moon turned blood red. I haven't seen a sight like that since a fateful day in 2004 that Red Sox fans around the world know as the day the the curse was reversed.
Ok it was a few years back, and yeah every Sox fan will most likely talk about it as though it was the only world series that has ever mattered...ever. But I thought it was interesting to see that things happened that night under a lunar eclipse... and then today while the eclipse has already happened, it just seems like an odd coincidence that the Sox and the Yankees are playing again on the same day as the next lunar eclipse since the one in 2004.

Speaking of sports, what the hell is it with these people that are always in the spotlight doing such stupid things? I'm sure there were things that happened in the past, yea we all know the story of the "Chicago Black Sox" in 1919. But seriously beyond that there may have only been a hand full of athletes that would go out and do things that would cause them to have a tarnished image in the public. But now-a-days its so commonplace to have someone that is just outright stupid, repeatedly doing dumb things, and then getting a slap on the wrist for it because of their celebrity. In the last 5 years alone we have probably doubled the number of celebrities that should be sterilized just to prevent them from breeding.

I don't know about you but when I was a kid I never heard about Orel Hershiser, Nolan Ryan, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzski, Bobby Orr, or Cam "Sea Bass" Neely beating the piss out of anyone, or threatening to kill anyone, or getting arrested for drug use. These were people that I thought of as sports heroes.. the ones that kept me interested in the sport. And now on a daily basis we hear about more dumbass "professional" athletes that are getting arrested for being absolute jackasses, and then get get away with it! They are told "you better not do that again, or we might have to suspend you from being able to play." Until they ultimately screw up to the point where someone finally says, "Hey wait, maybe Michael Vick isn't someone I want to be associated with... he could hurt my career" and they fire his ass. But with every person that sees the light there is always some other dumbshit sitting in the darkness that says, "Hey Michael Vick is free for trade! I could use him on the team! Hire that man... and give him a raise!"

Yeah there is no such thing as class in sports any longer. Its time we set some new rules and make some changes. If you are a celebrity and you screw up... the punishment is the exact same as everyone else, no special treatment. And if it means you don't get to "play" because you are in jail, and they fire you for it... welcome to the real world, they do that at regular jobs too.

No more, no more

2007-08-28T07:33:00.000-07:00

Well here I am doing what I do best which is completely slacking off on updating this blog. I realized its been damn near a month since I posted anything on this and now I feel obligated to add something.
Let me start first by saying that I have been damn near killing myself lately with work. I came to the realization that when I got transferred into the IT department that I was going to be spending a good portion of time working on trying to get things organized and running smooth at the company. For the longest time there has been problems with IT, the problems don't stem from the guy that does the IT work here, they stem from the fact that this company much like many of the others that I have worked for is completely flawed.
In the last 10 years I've held about 6 different jobs and eventually each one of them moves me into either the IT area of the company or promotes me to become a trainer. The downside which I am finding to be a huge repeated issue is that they all want to move me into these positions without giving me any kind of compensation. Thinking "hey we got this guy that loves to fix computers and can do it damn near blindfolded, why not just give him the work, and see how long he will do it for pretty much nothing." Well I have come to realize that I don't need to be this guy anymore. You see the problem that I am having is that I have more debt hanging over my head than I know what to do with and I really need to pay some of it off.
Last week I had a confrontation with the Director of the facility I work at... now I call him the director but according to him he really has no say in how anything works, everyone turns to him for support and ideas and to make decisions, and while he can spend $200,000 to hire a company to staff the facility with the dumbest people in the US (now don't get me wrong, I've worked for a staffing agency before, not everyone that has come in here is a moron, but there are more idiots than not that come from this agency.)And while he can drop that much, plus give them a fair salary (which I have recently found is the same that I am making now after being here for 3 years), but he can't "authorize" giving me a raise, or give me a position title. Here is a quick example of what has been happening in the last month.

For those of you that know me, you know that on my last trip to NH I had to get a new car. My old one was on it's last legs and it wasn't going to make it back to Florida.
So I get my new car and I make it back to Florida. When I get back I find that they want to keep me in the position of working on computers as I have done miracles with their systems, keeping them running smooth and handling issues as fast as possible. They were thrilled to have me come back and jump right back into working on the machines. Well at this time I also went to full time status, and that was good. Until I got my first pay check and realized that I was not making enough to survive. Now that I had a car payment, my school loan had been called in so I have to pay that, and I have to pay all of my other living expenses on top of it all... and I was coming up about $350 short. So unable to pay my bills is one of my biggest fears because I hate asking for money, I hate not being able to support myself fully. So I began working more hours, I figured out that if I worked a couple more hours everyday the overtime would compensate for what I needed. So I began working extra every week, there is always lots of work to do, and by doing this I found that my stress was reduced because I was able to finish more work everyday and I didn't feel as though I was overwhelmed when I arrived the next day.

Well this worked for 1 month... and last week this is the conversation that I had.

[Boss] I can't have you working overtime any longer. You have to approve all overtime through me first, and right now I don't see you needing to be here later than 5pm.

[Me] I have a lot of work that I am trying to keep under control, by staying a little later I am able to keep things running as they should.

[Boss] I'm trying to pull for you here, but I can't justify the overtime. I have people all over me asking why you need this extra time.

[Me] I need it because I am the only one working at this position here.

[Boss] Well I appreciate the effort you are putting in here, I hear nothing but good things about all the work you are doing, but unless you have an emergency then you can't have overtime.

[Me] I'm going to level with you, I have a lot of work, I need to get it all done, I haven't been given my title yet, and I need the extra time.

[Boss] I can't make any promises, I have been trying to get the title open but I don't have the authority to make that decision. You need to speak with the head of IT at the home office (which is not in Florida), and you need to get him to make a decision as to where he is going to put Chris (the current one with the desktop support title, and is too busy programming which is what the guys in the home office keep assigning him to do, and the reason they asked me to jump in to begin with). If he makes Chris a programmer, then the job of desktop support will be open. Now this is not to say that you will get the title, I know you have been doing the job for 3 months but I have to open the job up to anyone that wants to apply for it, and if there is someone more qualified then we might have to give them the position. But hang in there, the fact that you have done this job for so long may give you an advantage.

[Me] I understand, but I don't make enough right now to survive. I can barely pay my rent, and I have 2 other huge bills that have just started coming in I need the extra time as well because I need to make ends meet.

[Boss] Thats not my problem, I'm not your bank. I'm offended that you would use the overtime as an excuse to try to raise your pay, you should be using it only for emergency work.

.... ok so the rest of this conversation kind of went downhill for a while, until he finally listened to me and said that he will approve OT if I really need it and I ask for it. He also realized that I am underpaid, and that once the title comes in he will help me make sure I make enough to sustain myself.

This was good... until yesterday.

Last night, I had 2 computers that were not working properly. The users have to fax in messages to the companies that they have been taking the messages for, now 2 of the 4 computers refuse to fax. So when they approached me with the issue I sent a message to my boss that said "I have 2 computers that need to be ghosted (a type of reformatting that automatically sets up all the software and programs needed to perform their job, it takes 2 hours to run a ghost, instead of a day to install everything manually) and I need a couple hours to take care of it. He replied "I don't think this qualifies as an emergency. Can't you do it when you come in, in the morning?" And again the problems continue...

Yesterday I realized that he was trying to do what he does best, out right look me in the face and do nothing. He is a nice guy usually and outside of work I can talk with him quite easily. But it was this last thing that broke me... he wants me to wait for a position and then fight for it. He also wants me to talk with the head of IT to get the position open... for someone that is a "director" he really doesn't like making decisions, and he honestly believes that I should push to open a position he has already told me that I may not get if he finds someone else more qualified.

So the resume got revamped yesterday... and fuck them I took the title that I rightfully deserve and put it down as my position here. If they don't get on the ball here and get me a pay raise that meets my needs, then they are going to lose me fast, and I will be sure to hand off my notice to him directly so I can tell him that he doesn't have to worry about opening the position or my overtime, because I won't be coming back.

To conform or not...

2007-08-06T09:23:00.001-07:00

In my last blog I was talking about how I went to Brewzzi for my 16+14 Birthday (thanks to Keith for the correction, as I still get carded for R rated movies, I couldn't possibly be older than 18, and since I still do stupid things from time to time, I must be around 16).
Now this blog is going to seem kind of stupid, but it is one that I have to read and question the idea of whether or not conformity is a good thing or not. As I mentioned in the previous blog, Alex had ordered chicken parmesan at the restaurant. Now as most of you know chicken parmesan is one of my favorite dishes.. hell it became the second most popular thing to make at good ol' NHC just after chicken sate. So when you think chicken parmesan what do you think of? Here is my idea of what consists of a good recipe for chicken parmesan:

1) chicken (preferably breaded)
2) Linguini or angel hair pasta
3) parmesan cheese
4) marinara sauce

This being the most basic recipe (as I tend to add a lot of different spices, and sometimes add some other types of cheese variants with the parmesan) is a pretty standard design. There are other minor additive that can be added to enhance the flavor but to make a good parmesan this is the basic formula.

Well let me tell you that night at Brewzzi things weren't exactly as Alex and I expected. She ordered parmesan (as she has in the past from there) and the waitress asked her "Would you like the sandwich, or the entre?" A pretty straight forward question that she quickly answered "The entre". Knowing that we would be going some place nice, and also knowing that she has never finished an entire meal at any of the restaurants we have gone to in the past, she didn't eat that day and spent the entire day working on her demo reel.
With that said it should be abundantly clear that she was starving, as it was now 8pm by the time we were seated and 8:30 by the time we got to order. So when the food arrived around 9:00 or so we were completely surprised to see that her "chicken parmesan" arrived the following way:

1)Breaded chicken, that was over cooked and dry
2)Penne pasta
3)Bolognese Sauce
4)A melted swiss cheddar cheese combination on the pasta.

Ok, for those of you unfamiliar with the problems let me give you a quick break down...

1) While the chicken was breaded and cooked, it should be moist and tender, if it is tough to cut, and dry straight through the thickest part of the center, this is a problem. It means that it was cooked too long, and possibly left under a heat lamp for a long period of time, it also means that the chicken may have been frozen at one time as when you freeze chicken the moisture inside freezes and when it is thawed the moisture leaves, this is especially bad when working with actual chicken, chicken patties can withstand the freezer as they are made to be moist when they go in the freezer to ensure that not all the liquid will leave when they thaw.

2)Penne Pasta... well there isn't anything exceptionally wrong with this, except when you are expecting angel hair or linguine, or any other kind of pasta that you can twirl with a fork, then penne is not going to cut it. Its like ordering mac and cheese and getting ravoli instead, it just doesn't compare when you have your heart set on something.

3)Bolognese sauce, The basics of bolognese is that it is a meat based sauce with very little tomato in it, in fact the little that is used is usually a tomato paste not a tomato sauce. Bolognese sauce is not a bad sauce, in fact it is very tasty with penne pasta, but being that we didn't expect penne it was just another unexpected additive. Also when ordering chicken parmesan I generally think of the chicken as the meat, why would you order chicken parmesan with a meat sauce? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? I mean its like ordering a hamburger and putting a piece of chicken on top of it, the two flavors while tasty on their own just aren't great together because if you expect to taste chicken, you don't want to be tasting hamburger, and vice versa. The combination may be good on pizza, but thats a whole different animal, and we are talking about traditional Italian chicken parm.

4)As I mentioned mixing different types of cheeses in can be good, but you don't go over kill. While it can be traditional to add a lot of different types of cheese with penne pasta, even adding enough to the point so that the pasta is sticky with the cheese is normal, that is not the way to make chicken parm!

So when the waitress returns we ask her about the penne, and ask her about the bolognese sauce. She said "Oh! I'm sorry, I should have asked if you wanted linguine and marinara sauce or not. I forgot to ask and this is how we serve it if no one mentions that they want it changed." She was at least nice enough to run to the back and get a small bowl of linguine and some marinara, but that doesn't fix the fact that the chicken was over cooked and dry. Personally I think that someone else ordered the chicken parm and then decided they didn't want it, and instead of throwing it away they let it sit under a heat lamp and handed it off to us. But this was the first time out of 7 or 8 times that we have been to Brewzzi that we had a bad meal.

So the real question is, should they go around calling what they were serving chicken parm? Or should they conform and give the people what they would expect? Honestly I think if they labeled that one Brewzzi parm, and made a separate dish called Chicken parm it would clear up the problem and they could offer another meal on the menu that people who enjoy their obscure version could order.

Either way, I know that if we ever order it from there again we will make sure to drill the wait staff on everything to ensure that there isn't a twist up like this one again.

The other side of the generation gap...

2007-08-03T06:43:00.001-07:00

Its happened... its over... I am still in shock. I will never see the 20's again, as a few days ago I crossed over into my 30's. The idea behind it is just twisted, that a number can make you feel different about your life and perspective.
While the majority of the day was uneventful, meaning that I spent most of my day at work, and I got out on time (rushing to get out at 5pm for the first time in a couple weeks). I spent a couple hours hanging out with my friend Marc, and after that I spent time with Alex, we went out to dinner at a place called Brewzzi.
Now I really like Brewzzi the food is generally very good, but tonight while my meal was good, they really screwed up Alex's. Which I will probably discuss in the next blog.
After dinner Alex had to get back home, she wasn't feeling well, and she has been very nervous lately about not having her demo reel completed yet for SIGGRAPH which she is leaving for this Sunday.
Well I guess there isn't a whole lot more to put in this blog, as time passes, it only makes you wonder what lies in store for you down the road. Here's to the start of the 30's and to hoping that the 40's don't come around as fast.

Floridiots

2007-07-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

January 2005 was the month that I moved away from good ol' New Hampshire and moved to what I now refer to as "Gods Waiting Room" also known as Florida. Yeah this is not exactly the most sane decision I have made, but it was essential to move on with my life. Here I am 2 and a half years later and I can tell you that I can see why Fark has a headline tag specifically dedicated to Florida.
For a few years I would read the website Fark and get a good laugh from it because the headlines are all based upon how mass media is trying to pass junk off as News. The site added a headline tag specifically for Florida because of how many stupid things happen in this state.
Seriously there are so many dumb things that go on here that it makes you wonder what it is that causes all of the problems that are happening here. So, in the last 2 years I have begun to amass a list of what causes all the moronic activity. Even with the observations that I have made, I can tell you that I think I am only scratching the idiotic surface of the stupidity vein that runs clear through Florida.

10)General Stupidity - This is coming in at number 10 because I am an optimist and I would like to be one of those the believe that there aren't that many people that are born to be stupid. So, yeah there are some that are going to be dumb, it happens in every town / city / suburb, there will always be a group of people that were just born without the ability to learn from their mistakes or from the errors of those around them.

9) Cultural Differences - Talk about melting pot. Florida attracts people from all walks of life, not just because of the amusement attractions like you find in Orlando, but because of its location. Lots of water, warm weather, and the fact that is one of the easiest ways to get into the USA. While I get emails from friends and family that say "Things were simpler in the 60's and people that wanted to become American's would learn to speak English", Florida is the land of disagreement. There are people that actually get annoyed at the fact that I don't speak Spanish. It's amusing to me because I have made a number of friends that all speak Spanish, and so I have made an effort to try and learn a little bit. While I am not very good at it, hell I can't even string simple sentences together yet, I can understand some of the basics. But as a society in general we cater to the minority and instead of requiring change, we are trying to force the environment to change... I believe this was the Angus Bethume theory, and while it worked in the movie Angus, it doesn't quite work so well in reality.

8) Lifestyle Differences - In Boca Raton, an area called "Millionaires Row" is located on a waterway near the ocean. Everything around it is very ritzy, but less than 2 miles away is when you start to get into the "lower class" areas. Another 2 miles from that you have a damn good chance that you will be mugged if you look like you don't belong. The ghetto area here are not racially different they are based upon country. You have Brazillian ghetto, Dominican ghetto, Mexican ghetto, Puerto Rican ghetto, and each of them act as though they are in their home countries. Their flags are everywhere, and they don't like it if you don't speak their language. My first apartment was in the Brazillian ghetto area, it seemed nice at first, and after a little while I was accepted as someone that wasn't going to cause problems, but I can tell you that trust was something that is not easy to earn in that area, especially considering there is no way I could ever pass off as being anything other than Irish/Scottish. There were days when I would go out to my car and see kids sitting on it waiting to go to school. I use to use my auto start to get rid of them because telling them to move would have put me higher on the list of cars getting keyed or broken into.

7) Family Surroundings - Lots of people have very family oriented lives here. That can be good and bad at the same time. There are lots of people here that are on welfare, they work for a couple months get fired and then jump on welfare. They are doing the same thing that their parents did. Why work when you can get free money. Why spend the money on things that are necessary when you can use it to buy 28" rims and a truck suspension for your 1982 Chevy Impala. I have to say that while I am all for family life and instilling moral values in children, there should be a government program that says that if you are on welfare, or if you are not actively trying to work, then you are not allowed to have children. If we are going to impose societal laws that tell people how they should act, what they should wear, and what they should do, then they should be told that if they are going to leach off of those that work they cannot have children and train them to do more of the same. There is a lot of this going on around this country, but it still adds to the outcome of stupidity here.

6) Education - Boca Raton has over 20 middle schools, and more than 15 high schools. I have never been to their middle schools or high schools but they are obviously not teaching the kids properly. When you drive past these schools and see the bars on the windows on all the schools it only makes you wonder what kind of education these kids are getting. Boca isn't Boston or New York or Newark it shouldn't have to bar up the windows on almost all of their grade schools.

5) Weather - Weather is erratic in Florida, between Hurricanes, intense heat, and flash flooding, the weather makes everyone crazy. There are no season changes and there for it is the same all year long. Hurricanes cause rioting (Hurricane Wilma forced a curfew into effect, and the cops were swarming everywhere), the slightest hint of rain causes people to fear a flash flood so their driving gets worse, a couple drops of rain, and people will hit there emergency lights and jam their brakes. I also think that the heat has a tendency to boil the brains of the people down here. Lots of people that bitch about air conditioning when the temp is 105 outside with 80% humidity, means that there is something wrong with them.

4) Age - Ok this is a big reason for stupidity. It would seem that most people get smarter as they get older, but the problem is that you have people that are sick of the winters and they decide that they should move on. So imagine my surprise when I was trying to find a decent place to live and the places that were all within my price range were 50+ communities. HA! So in a time when we are so concerned by discrimination, there are dozens of communities that anyone younger than 50 years old is told "you are not allowed to live here because you are too young". Ok so the least expensive places to live are the ones that are only renting to those that have made their money and have decided to retire. The other thing is every day I see teenagers being ticketed or standing outside of a wrecked car because mommy and daddy bought their precious little dumbass either an SUV, a Mercedes, or a juiced up rice rocket that they sup up with NOS, and promptly crash it. Yeah they have this everywhere, but keep in mind there are new kids that have seen "The Fast and the Furious" all the time and they spend all of their money making their cars faster, and you have to keep in mind these are the kids that think that they know everything. Hey I remember being 18, I remember thinking that I was far more intelligent than my parents and everyone around me. Well do some really stupid things and get caught, it might be the only way to give you the intelligence to realize that you are not as smart as you think. Wisdom usually comes with age, but then so does Alzheimer's. So you have a state loaded with the elderly that always drive under the speed limit, and kids that always drive over the speed limit... yah this is a combination that is going to fly really well.

3) Religion - There is a road in Boca called Yamato. There are buildings that are tied to every major religion you can think of. I swear that it is out of control to see that every 50 yards there is another sign for a different religious organization. Also Boca is known to be a place that the New York Jewish snowbirds love to travel to. So it comes to no surprise to me that my current apartment is located within 3 miles of 6 different Temples, a Jewish cemetery, and 2 Jewish schools. Religion can drive anyone crazy because they follow it so intently. I have to say that I am absolutely sick of seeing the Jesus fish on the back of peoples cars. I am tired of people pushing their religion on everyone else. It was only 2 months ago I had someone knock on my door and ring my doorbell repeatedly at 6:30 in the morning. It was a couple of Mormons. I have to admit the intelligence of the guy knocking on my door was definitely up there, and I can only say this because he was banging on my door and when I finally answered and he told me why he was knocking made sure that I knew he wasn't alone.... he had a little girl with him. She couldn't have been more than 7 years old. By putting her there, it put me in the position that I would rely on my better nature, and not swear up a storm at him in front of her for waking me up. It also put him in a better position to keep me from slamming the door in his face, but it didn't stop me from leaning in close to him and telling him that I worked late the night before, I have no interest in his religion, and if he didn't leave immediately I would call the cops to report a creepy old man dragging a little girl around with him. Needless to say he never showed up at my place again. I really have no remorse for those that waste their time trying to convince other people to change their minds about which deity they choose to worship in the privacy of their minds.

2) Beliefs - Very different from religion. People have some crazy ass beliefs, and they can cause all kinds of problems. Some people believe that just because they spend all their time in one area with a bunch of their friends they "own" that area, and everyone else should stay away. Some people believe that if you wear a specific color its because you support or believe in something else, gangs usually cause these problems. There are a lot of people that spend their time bitching about the state of the country. They believe that their candidate would be a better person to have in power... yeah like anyone that is in power isn't going to abuse it for their own personal interests. Seeing people cruise around with "Kerry/Edwards" stickers still on their car or "Is it 2008 yet?" on their car just goes to show you how people's beliefs can cause more problems. These are the same idiots that couldn't figure out how to vote for their candidate in the first place! The same idiots that said "Now that we have a democratic congress we are going to turn things around" and can't seem to get out of their own way fast enough, or make a decision that is going to make a difference. So beliefs are a good thing to have, but there are just too many people that waste their time trying to force these beliefs on others, and then get pissed when someone doesn't agree with them.

1) Adaptation (or lack thereof) - There are many people that have no idea how to adapt to a different climate. I can tell you that when I moved from NH I knew things would be different. I knew that should not expect snow, and that the summers would be loaded with rain, and that hurricanes are inevitable. So whenever they said "Hurricane watch in effect" I reacted the same way they said "Blizzard watch in effect" in NH, I filled my gas tank, got a couple bottles of water and made sure I had some canned food. So when hurricane Wilma hit and the power went out I didn't freak out like just about everyone else. There were people that were bitching about how they didn't get enough warning about a hurricane (as if the 7 that hit the area the year before weren't enough warning) and the flooding that had already occurred in Louisiana from the one only 2 weeks earlier couldn't have told them that hurricanes are dangerous and a pain in the ass. So people move here, and they expect everything to be perfect. Then you have people that move here from other countries. As I said there is such a mix of Latin American people, and they treat the area like their treat their home country. My old apartment had trash everywhere. Cockroaches, Palmetto bugs (big cockroaches), and a large mix of bugs because the people that lived there threw their trash everywhere. I asked a couple about it to find out why they were doing it, and after giving me a dirty look for not speaking Spanish they told me, "Who cares, everyone does this where we come from, its not illegal, let someone else take care of it." So instead of staying where they were from and trashing their home country they decide to move here and trash ours. So when I moved to my current apartment and I saw that it was clean, and that everyone around me were from areas similar to where I grew up it was not that much of a shock to see that there are no cockroaches or palmetto bugs in any of our apartments.

So yeah, every year I get asked the same question, "Why do you drive so far to register your car in New Hampshire?" and the answer is obvious... I don't want anyone to think I'm from Florida. I am not now and I never will be a Floridiot. I can only hope that the rest of the country doesn't become as bad as this has become, but I am not ignorant enough not to notice when things start changing for the worse in areas that were at one time nice.

Back on Track

2007-07-13T08:00:00.001-07:00

Today marks the official day that the Solara has outlasted the Concorde. You may remember from my last post that the Concorde was the ill fated car that I owned for a week. I have a feeling that for the rest of my life all cars that I will own from here on out will be compared to the Concorde in the following ways.. and yes even the Camry was a direct comparison:

1) Comfort - The Concorde was the first car that I had with leather seats, and it was one of the most comfortable rides that I have ever owned. I must admit that it impressed me right from the start with how a car of its sheer size could react as graceful as it handled on the road.

2) Size - If the car can't hold at least a basic repair kit, a set of golf clubs, at least 2 suitcases and a duffle bag, then chances are I will not be buying it. While I am not a man that is attracted to a sedan style car (I love the look of sports cars, but I am just too damn tall for the ones in my price range) I know how I travel, and I don't travel light.

3) Speed - Yeah I've mentioned in some of my previous blogs that when I started driving I was a lead foot. Far worse than I am now. While I hate most speed limits I hate slow drivers even worse, and if my car can't get up to speed fast enough to pass them when I have been sitting behind them for what I feel is far too long (depending on the day it could be 10 minutes, it could be 20 seconds) then I won't be driving that car either.

4) Sound - The car has to be quiet when it drives, but has to have a decent sound system. This is what I loved about the Concorde, it was so quiet but damn I didn't need to make any mods to the sound in order to enjoy it.

5) Finally Length of Ownership - While I can compare everything else before buying a car this is my final comparison. If I own it longer than the Concorde that is a good start... now its just keeping it as long as the Camry and thats even better. My dad is the only one I know that has a worse story about a car than I do... his Oldsmobile. He owned it for less time than I owned the Concorde, in fact he just signed the papers and was pulling out of the lot when some idiot swerved into him and totaled the car.

Well my Solara has lived up to all the specs that I could hope it does. I am happy for that. Now I just need to keep working my ass off until I make a higher pay grade. I'm sure the 10 hour days that I just started doing (because I am hourly and not salary) will begin to help, but they will also take their toll after a while. Now I just need to find out which days the company considers to be standard Holidays, and then give them a reason to put me on a salary pay. (I honestly hate salary, but I know that where I am right now I won't be able to survive on my hourly rate unless I sink in as many overtime hours as I can.

Now that I am getting back on track with work, I am also starting to consider my options for my next film. I have 2 ideas, and both of them can be done if I really work hard to put my effort into their completion. I think that this coming weekend I will be doing a lot of script writing so I can get everything down. On paper, then the story boarding will begin.

More to write later!

"The Wolf" Camry 1996 - 2007

2007-07-09T09:27:00.001-07:00

1500 miles. Sounds like a long ways, and I can tell you first hand that it is. To put it into perspective think about how often you change the oil in your car. Most people do it after 3000 miles. When they make the change it usually happens lets say around every 4 months or so. So 2 months worth of average driving is the equivalent of 1500 miles. Well that is what I have done twice in the last week. Yes, I have traveled over the equivalent of what most people drive in 4 months in roughly 1 week.
My car, my reliable, comfortable, travel weary Toyota Camry is no more. 07/05/07 was a day of mixed emotions for me last Thursday when I drove my Camry for the last time to the dealership in Epping NH. The car that I had obtained in October of 2000, after having my Chrysler Concorde obliterated by a careless driver after owning for a mere week. The car that saw me leave my folks place for the first time when I ventured out to see if I could survive on my own when I moved to Syracuse NY. The car that survived many snow storms, and kept me safe even when I forgot to check the tread level on her tires one Thanksgiving and ended up in a ditch driving back to Syracuse because the intensity of the snow that day and the treacherousness of the road underneath the snow was unexpected. The car that helped me move back to NH, and then finally to Florida where I expected that she would probably find retirement.
Well this trip I knew she was hurt. When I left from Florida, she was already 1,000 miles overdue for an oil change, and she had a check engine light that had been triggered about 7 months earlier which never wanted to shut off no matter how many times I had her checked out. She had a new catalytic converter put on about 6 months earlier and as it turned out Midas did a slapshod job which turns out to cause more harm than good. Her protective plates covering the gas tank were falling off, and the entire exhaust system needed to be replaced. I can only say that she had seen better days. The only time she sounded or acted like her old self was after I got her back to NH. Maybe it was the familiar environment, maybe it was the cooler weather, or maybe it was that she, like me, knew that Florida was not the place to stay. Whatever the reasons she just seemed to like NH better. I could tell right away when her alarm system started to function again. It was the damnedest thing, for nearly 1 year the alarm system could lock and unlock the door, but refused to make a sound, and would not disable the engine if the alarm was triggered. One day after getting back to NH I heard a sound that I hadn't heard in a long time, the "chirp chirp" that she made when I would push the unlock button. To put it bluntly I was shocked. I brought her to my mechanic and he gave her the once over, unfortunately the prognosis was grim. He said that the Cat-converter under the hood was leaking and that it would have to be replaced, and because of the crap-tacular job Midas did on my other Cat-converter it appeared that it too was damaged due to poor installation, and would have to be replaced along with the rest of the exhaust system. In my head it seemed like he was explaining this to me the same way that a doctor explains to a family that the relative that is in intensive care has little to no hope, and that if I hadn't thought of making arrangements then I should probably do so now.
So I took her back to my place, explained the situation to my folks and they said that I should go car shopping over the next 2 days.
To cut a long story short, the dealer at the Honda Barn in Stratham didn't know what the hell he was doing, I started looking at a Civic with a bunch of options that I wanted, an electric moon roof being the highlighted feature that I was explicit about having on the car. So after test driving one and realizing that I was too big for a Civic... by too big I mean that when sitting in the seat my head was less than 1 inch from grazing the roof. I hit a small bump and realized that had it been a bigger bump my head would have gone through the moon roof. So the Civic was out. I asked the dealer if there was anything else he could show me that had the features that I wanted, and so he took me to the other end of the lot and low and behold, he shows me ... another Civic. Apparently he didn't understand. I mentioned that I didn't think the Civic would work, and that I wanted to see a Sporty car that was a little bigger. Again he must not have heard me because he redirected me to the Civic he wanted to show me. He kept talking it up like it was the greatest thing in the world, he said it would have plenty of room for travel, and it would be a great value being that it was a Honda, and it was a 2005. So as we got to the Civic I noticed a few things.
#1) It was the same size as the last one that I test drove
#2) It had regular hubcaps instead of the Alloy Wheels that I was checking out on the first one.
#3) There was no moon roof or sun roof.
#4) It was the most generic Civic I had ever seen. No features that stood out at all!
So I reiterate to the dealer what I wanted in features, and what I was looking for in a car. He said he would see what he had. After returning he said that he didn't have much in the used options that would meet the specs that I was looking for, and that if I was interested he would give me a quote on the Civics. At this point I just wanted to leave and so I told him to give me the quote so I have a comparison to the other car that I was looking at (a 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse). So he wrote up the quote and said that if I wanted to buy the 05 Civic he would give me nearly 5K for my car in its current condition, and if I wanted to 04 Civic (with all the features that I wanted) he would only be able to give me 1K for my car. Well I was tired of him pushing the no frills Civic and said that I had a few other places to check out before I would decide.
So I finally got to the dealership where I bought my first 2 cars (the ill fated Concorde, and the Camry that I was now almost 2K miles over due for an oil change on, and should have been in intensive care). The only thing is, they were no longer there! They had only been in this dealership for about 7 years and now it was a shell of a building. Needless to say I was not thrilled, but I did manage to find a sign that said "we have moved". So I drive home jump on their website and find that they still have the same address I had just checked. So looked up their number and gave them a call and much to my relief they had kept the same phone number. They gave me the new address and I drove right over. It looks like they had only moved within the last week as everything was laying around everywhere. They had just started paving the parking lot, and all of their cars were in a giant cluster-f$@k in the back. So I went to the back of the building and started looking around. A dealer came out and began asking me about what I was looking for, and when I gave him my specs he said "Oh look, I'm sorry I was helping these other customers, and it appears they need more help, let me get other dealer to help you out." Which I belive translates into "So you don't plan on leasing a new car, or buying one that is going to be more than 15K, I have no interest in wasting my time with you so I'll pass you off on someone unsuspecting sap that could care less about the commission on this sale." So I walked away not seeing anything that I could keep within my price range that could even compare with what I was already driving. As I almost got to the end of the row, I suddenly saw a car that I didn't see in the lot earlier. I walked over expecting to see a 25K price sticker on it and I was surprised when it was much less. So I checked it out a little closer, and it looked like a nice car. So when the dealer came back to me he said, "Did you find something you have a question about?" and I replied, "Yes, I'm going to find someone that is interested in helping me." Feeling put off he said, "Well I guess I can go with you into the store and see if there is someone else willing to help, if you have any questions otherwise let me know maybe I can help you if no one else can." Well as it turns out the lady that sold me the first 2 cars was still working there, and I approached her and said "There is a car in your lot, this is what I can afford, here is what I have to trade, and I don't care how you make it work, I plan to drive away with this car before the end of the week."
I'll skip past the negotiations and the haggling, and to cut this already long story a little shorter, we worked it out. I signed the papers, and on Thursday I drove my Camry for the last time. I had already cleaned most of her out, and the last few things that I had to do was to remove the stereo and the amps. After taking everything out I made the final arrangements, signed the documents, and drove away in my new Solara. Its strange to think that an inanimate object can make you feel bad as you leave it behind, but as I drove off the Camry finally seemed relaxed, sort of at peace, almost as if it were saying, thanks for the good times, and thanks for not leaving me in Florida.

"The Wolf" Camry 1996 -2007 (the original Wolf)

Preparing for the worst

2007-06-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

...drive ever. Ok so here is the deal, I'm not from Florida originally. I've been living here for 3 years now and every year I make the same long trip back home. 1500 miles roughly, actually I think its slightly over that, but thats about the average. In '05 I made the trip, in June, by myself. I managed to get from Boca Raton Florida, to Baltimore Maryland in 1 day. I then drove the rest of the way on day number 2 arriving about 2pm. Needless to say it was a long journey but for the most part I didn't mind doing it because I was excited about taking such a long drive alone, sort of earning my wings if you will.
2006 came along and I had managed to convince my friend Alex and her mother to come with me on the trip. It meant that I didn't get to spend time with my friends because we had to cut the trip short, but in an effort to gain a little time I decided that I was going to upgrade my rank and pull off the entire trip in 1 day. I waited until Alex got out of work at 5pm, picked her up and drove her to her apartment. We then packed her and her mothers belongings into my car, and by about 7pm we were on the road. 26hours and only 3 stops later we were in NH. The beauty behind the idea of making the trip that way was that we would start late, I would be rested, and as we drove through the night they could sleep and I could drive without having to stop except when the car needed gas. So by the time they woke up around 8:30 we were already in North Carolina and approaching Virginia. Then because I had already proved that I could do the trip without stopping I decided the ride home would be a little more relaxed and we took the 2 day route going back.
Here I am 2007.... and I can't get anyone to take the trip with me. So I'm back to where I was 2 years ago and I am planning to drive it alone again. To be honest I am not as excited about it as I was when I did it in 05 because I have already done it a number of times, and when I head back to Florida, I'm gonna be still by myself.
So any of you people that are crazy, if you have nothing to do and would like to see the entire Eastern side of the United states and can get the weekend of the 30th / 1st off... let me know if you would like to take the drive. All ya gotta do is get to florida, everything else will be covered by me! The rest of the trip I will pay for even if we decide not to do the 26 hour drive straight through (I am planning on taking 2 days right now) and take our time the experience is paid for.
Well unless someone writes me back and says "I wanna go", then I'll be doing this one by myself. I'm sure it will leave me with plenty to talk about later.

Vandalizing another part of the web

2007-06-20T20:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, here I am on what is now officially my 3rd blog site... I haven't updated my first one in a couple years, and I've pretty much forgotten about it. My second site is my myspace site, and since I have nothing better to do with my time I am checking it constantly.
So here I am with my 3rd blogging site... wonderful. Functionless art is simply tolerated vandalism...I am a vandal.
Anyway, I wanted to get this started because I figure there would be a few people to check it out once in a while, that don't check out myspace. I started thinkin about things and how life has changed from when I began school 2 years ago, and then I started thinking about how everything has changed from when I started college in 1996.
I was naive, and I thought I knew a lot more than I did. I was a Star Wars nut (and at the time the movies hadn't been re-released, so it wasn't cool to be into Star Wars) and I had a roommate that loved basketball and smokin up. Well to make a long story short, the kid I was rooming with decided to smoke all of the tea leaves that the asian girls that I was hanging with gave me, and he would come in at 3am dribbling a basketball when I was asleep, so I decided that he had to go. He roomed with me for 2 weeks before I finally drove him out, and then I was on my own again. I met a few people on my floor and the next thing ya know the nightcrawlers were formed. 6 guys + No Cars = Late nights and create your own entertainment.
So in my infinite wisdom I decided that I would also do my best to drive some teachers slightly crazy. Professor Phil Funk, and Professor Karen Stone got the worst of my stupidity when they said "If you have another name that you prefer to be called, please let me know so I can make note of it." And just to get a reaction from my friends when they called "Ryan" I raised my hand and in the more serious way I could without hesitation I said "They call me Yoda". So for the next 4 years I was known as Yoda by both teachers.
Well the next 4 years were interesting... I think I will cut the writing of this blog short, and include a video that is sure to make Keith (blogger of the reverse-peephole) hit the floor laughing because we both watched this on tv one night before passing out, and damn near killed ourselves laughing.