AUGUST DUDE, W T F!!!
I can't believe I haven't posted anything since August. It's flat out disappointing in what that is. Liek I've said before, I have no excuses, but here's what's keeping me from the longest running journal of my life recently. Hold on, this might take a while.
Work. Up until recently (as in "up until TODAY") has been nothing short of a fucking nightmare. I've een really burned out at work. I don't like being there, I don't like coding anymore, and I really started to feel like I work in a sweatshop or some huge industrial manufacturing plant on an assembly line. 1 site a day, 1 site a day - over and over and over and over. So fucking monotonous it was enough to make you sick. Add in the fact we're detroying our goals and what's the reward? Higher quota's, a push to get EVEN MORE sites out, and a TON of bullshit to go with it.
Glad I'm switching teams because I found out today they're bumping up our weekly goals by one more site. I could go on for days, but I think you get my point. Anyways, there's more important stuff to talk about anyways - fuck work and all the "company men" who drink the kool-aid and shit on their co-workers. Fuck you.
What else? I'm taking on too many side projects. I'm working for a freelance company and getting paid practically nothing to do some SEO work. It's frustrating because I really want to do other things and get my own site up and running, and then get the other two side projects (family members - MEH) off my plate so I can free up some time and concentrate on learning design. 2010 is going to be my big push to learn design so I need to figure something and figure it out FAST.
Alright, now it's out of my sytem, let's proceed. I gotta cover a few quick things, than I'll get to the run down like I always do, of previous years and in this case, the decade in review.
A few Kkey things which have happened since August? I almost have my site finished, but seem to have stalled out when I needed to write 15 pages of content. Hopefully the three days I took off in January will help to finally make it a reality.
I was playing hockey twice a week and felt like I was really at a peak (both physically and mentally). I was playing defense really well, I was pushing up into odd man situations, backchecking like a champ and really felt good when I was on the puck. I was beating guys and scoring both on Wednesday and Monday's (JMS). One fateful Wednesday night, I chased a puck into the corner (on the last shift of course - damn my luck) and got tied up with a guy, went down and slammed shoulder first into the boards. Of course I wasn't wearing shoulder pads. A trip to the ER, several x-rays later and the Doc thought I fractured my shoulder. I found it amusing since I was Twittering the whole affair while it happened on my iphone. The next day I went to TRIA and the "specialist" there told me not to worry, it wasn't broken. Give it ten days and you'll be fine is what he said. I took 6 weeks off instead. Now I don't chase pucks into the corner, and am back at square 1. Might be a while before I get back to where I was before the injury. Now I wear shoulder pads.
Anyways, Thanksgiving was a bust because Bren was sick, and then Christmas was a bust because Kenz was sick.
I dropped AT&T Wireless and went with Verizon Wireless. I had upgraded my iphone to the HTC Tilt 2 and hated it from day one. The slide out keyboard was nice, but Windows Mobile 6.5 sucks major balls. In order to get the best use out of the phone you needed to use a stylus. Yes, I said STYLUS. You know the thing people used in the 90's with their Palm Pilots. Here it is 2009 and these idiots are still using a stylus to get the most out of their phone? Oh yeah, and the internet was slower than dial-up. I mean, Safari on my iphone was BLAZING compared to the HTC Windows Explorer browser. The final straw was they had about 10 apps in thier online store and most cost money.
After I called their online team, they directed me to go to the store, return the phone and then get the iphone 3Gs, the phone I really wanted. I go in, and the lady tells me since they authorized the upgrade early, and I wasn't eligible until March, I can't get any discount. This means I have to pay and extra $100 for the 3Gs in addition to the $300 I already paid for the Tilt2. Fucking LAME. So I told them I would call the online people back and see what THEY could do for me. No luck. Dude told me I needed to return the phone, reverse the upgrade and then wait a few days (without a phone mind you since I already sold my iphone) and then call back and they'd see what they could do. It was the last straw. The next day, I went to the mall, returned the phone, then went upstairs to the Verizon booth and got the Motorola DROID.
As of right now, I couldn't be happier. Love the phone for a thousand reasons, and the reception and fast internet has been outstanding. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
A few more important events:
1) Got my Linux laptop up and running again. Mandriva 2010 rocks! I have fallen in love again with my Linux. I also decided to take a shot at learning Rails this year and installed the Ruby, Ruby Gems and SQLite packages. I've done a few tutorials and really like it so far.
2) DROID kicks ass. Got a guy at work who's had his for a few months before I got mine so he gave me a list of applications to download and they all rock.
3) Got a new HP computer and then threw done for a 1TB Seagate Free Agent external drive to house all the videos of Kenz and the family pictures we have.
Here's the year in review as well as the decade in review. Some of this is pretty crazy.
Year in review ala Google Wave (how fitting eh?)
The decade in review in a 7 minute video - this one rocks.
Alrights - see you in 2010.
Seacrest OUT.
IT'S BEEN A WHILE. . . . .
Three months have passed and during these months I keep telling myself, "i should blog about that." or "This would be a great topic for my blog to write about." Unfortunately with so much going on, I can't seem to sit down and just have a decent brain dump, so all these topics keep stacking up. The real question is where do I start?
I barely remember June, my son showed up and the end of July and we went up north and went fishing - which was fun. August was a blur as well. The highlight of the past few months has been Barack Obama's Health care plan which has turned into an all out war. It's still up in the air whether it's going to pass, but right now it's hogging a LOT of the headlines.
The other disturbing thing about 2009 is the amount of celebrity deaths which have occurred this year. Here's the list so far (and we're only in AUGUST!):
2009 - the year of the dead celebrity
A few months ago, I gave up getting up at 5:30am to exercise and now am playing hockey two to three times a week. I'm looking at dropping the Friday night skate and going mountain biking instead. It will save me a few dollars in the long run - but we'll see.
Not much going on at work, except upper management continues to keep the pedal to the floor as we try and squeeze as many sites as humanly possible out the door. This has lead to a large uptick in stress for myself. Maybe that's the reason I haven't been writing. . . too stressed and never had time to just sit down and write about stuff going on in my life. It's funny because I think management doesn't get the fact when you tell people three months in row that we're, "In a production push" people just turn off and you're not going to get people to go the extra mile month after month after month. You can do it every so often, but you can't continue to push people and expect them to perform without any type of break.
Anyways, this is short post, but we'll see if I can find more time to write more soon. . . .
Oh yeah here's a creepy story of Jackson's drug use. I heard on the radio a host saying Jackson was taking so much propofol, it would have been easier to sedate an elephant than it was to get Jackson to go under on this stuff - which is shocking considering how dangerous and powerful this stuff is.
Anyways, more later.
NOT A DAY TOO SOON.
Well, I was close to keeping my 30 day minimum on posts, but here I am on a Friday, end of the week and end the month with little to do to keep my busy. I'm close to hitting my goals, but anything I start now won't get done this month. This leaves me with a decision. Do I take it easy and then get back to it on Monday, or put in a bunch of effort for little or nothing? I chose the latter. I need the break since I'm getting really burned out. Too many things, too much micro management, and a sense I'm falling behind. Yes, it IS time to stop and take a deep breathe before I continue on. Which brings me to this excellent story I'm about to share with you.
*UPDATE*: I got my Twitter account re-instated. Google thought one of the video's I posted from YouTube contained malware. Oh the irony.
WHEN BEING ON PAGE 1 OF GOOGLE IS NOT A GOOD THING
Most people know I'm on Twitter (not linked because they suspended my account for some reason. I think its because I posted 3 youtube videos over the course of several hours. I'll update this more later) and know my screen name is phiberoptik. I really don't want to get into a huge conversation about why people pick the screen names they do, but I had a specific reason why I picked phiberoptik. It nothing to do with getting a high rank in Google. It was actually as a throw back to the golden age of hacking and world famous hackers. Phiber Optik was part of the hacker group which called themselves Masters of Deception. Many of the members used to be part of the Legion of Doom which also had a group of very famous hackers. I'm not going to rehash all of their exploits, but I can tell you both groups went at each other in an all out war which mostly took place in cyberspace (I hate that word, but what else do you call it?) over the span of several years. Since I was in college at the time and had heard of both groups, I figured it was a cool name and I wouldn't I idolized say Mark Abene, but his skills were impressive to say the least. I also had a roommate who was a hacker and knew of both groups and had meet several of the guys at one the famous 2600 meetings in New York City.
The point of all this is I've had my twitter account for several months and no one has ever message me to find out if I'm the "real" Phiber Optik, until a few weeks ago, I got several direct messages asking me if I was indeed him. I was baffled why all the inquires now, after having my account for so long. I did what any normal does. I went out to Google and typed in phiber optik and wouldn't know what was #3 on the first page? My Twitter account!! I thought it explained a lot and I think I'm going to have to put a disclaimer in my profile to let people know I'm not Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), I'm just a fan.
Which brings me to my brief stint as a hacker. In college, I lived with several engineers, two of which were computer science engineering students. My roommate Clark, was basically going through the motions of getting his degree as he was already programming in true third gen languages (this was in the early 1990's when most people had never heard of C++ and they had already spent several years programming with it) with one of our friends whose Dad owned a software company and employed them both. The funny part is they both worked at Great Plains Software company in Fargo and after they were purchased by Microsoft in early 2000, both were brought back in to help transition the software since much of it had been written by them.
ANYWAYS, my roommate had been a hacker for some time and during the early years of my college career he was doing some data entry for a company at night, doing server updates and patching some of their software. He used the downtime during the updates to log in and use the companies server to get out and jump to several other unprotected servers and generally wonder around, poking around and sniffing in files here and there. His hacking was never done to get passwords or leave sniffers on a person's network, or take down the network, it was done in fun, and as a way to kill several hours while he completed his other work. In a few months, his fun was about to turn very very dangerous.
The story goes, Clark was working on his CS degree, and visited several bulletin boards where all types of people met to swap funny stories, pictures and code. While on one board, one discussion got pretty heated when someone attacked at the programmers saying if it wasn't for engineers, there would be nothing for the programmers to do. Most responses were if the programmers didn't write the code for the engineers, none of their shit would work properly. It is the age old argument of which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Well, my roommate is a pretty laid back guy, but for some reason, the arrogance of this particular poster really irked him. He decided he was going to get even, and so he started to track his prey across the bulletin boards and eventually found out from some low level hacking and human engineering, his target just happened to be a professor at Michigan Tech in Houghton Michigan. Clark decided he needed to take his game up a notch and laid out a plan.
You have to understand these whole scenario was taking place in the early 1990's. Network security back then was almost non-existent. Firewalls? Anti-virus software? Not even close. Clark simply walked right into the NDSU library and told the person at the desk he was a grad student working for an engineering professor and needed his login and password so he could post his grades for tests. No breaking into the network, no lock picking, no nothing. He went in and ASKED for the login and password and the library admin gladly handed it over to me.
The reason Clark did this was for several reasons. First, back in the 1990's network privileges were pretty simple. Either you had administrative logins (like faculty) or non-administrative logins (which were all the students). By having the professors login and password, Clark suddenly had a "super user" on the NDSU network. Although most professors simply used their accounts for email, Clark could use his to mask his real identity as well as jump from network to network by using the NDSU network as a jumping off point.
Now Clark had two things he needed. He knew who his target was, and now he had the proper access to start some real fireworks. He knew he was holding all the aces and gave the professor one more time to recant his arrogance before he let loose with a barrage of attacks on the Michigan Tech networks. He once told me, he tried to reason with the man, but there was no reasoning with him. He gave him an out and he did not take it. He never threatened the professor directly or threaten to damage any of the network at Tech, which was probably the smartest thing he did. He simply told him he should realize the importance of programmers - nothing too major, but he wouldn't recant - he hated programmers. Unfortunately, he was about to change his mind.
I can't divulge the date, but at a certain time and date, Clark logged in using the professors login and skipped across several networks, before sending what appeared to be a harmless email to another Michigan Tech student he befriended on another board with one of his alias names he used when he was hacking. The email contained a trojan horse virus and as soon as the student opened the email, the virus would be launched. It was a simple virus. It scanned the network, looking for files to attack, disable and delete. Clark had no idea how potent his virus was. Within 4 hours, the ENTIRE Michigan Tech network had collapsed. Several days later when he logged onto the bulletin board, he was shocked to see over 100 messages relating what had happened. It took three days to patch the Tech network and get back up and running. 80% of the user accounts had been deleted, including all of the faculty accounts. He had no idea, but he said he walked around for a full week with a huge grin on his face. He had wrought destruction of his target and then he started thinking about rubbing it in. He admitted to me later on, "I got greedy. I was like any other hacker at the time, I wanted people to know it was me. I wanted this professor to understand that programmers were superior, and we could pull the plug whenever we wanted to. Coming out of the woodwork and taunting this professor was pretty dumb, and in the end, it's how the FBI got me."
This is how they caught him. He told me after he went back on the bulletin board and started taunting the professor, asking him why he wasn't on for several days and eventually got him to admit their network crashed. Clark started dropping hints it was him and continued to try and get the professor to admit programmers where superior. It turns out right after the network crashed and Tech had surmised someone let a virus loose on their network and it determined it was done with malicious intent, they brought in the feds and started tracking Clark and comparing Clark's posts to when he was logging in and out of the system. It came to a head one afternoon in one of the old computer clusters.
Clark said it was just like in the movies. He was sitting at his desk when three guys walked into the room. Two in suits (with sunglasses) and the computer admin who ran the cluster room. They walked straight over to him and he tried to blurt something out to the effect of, "Give me just a minute guys, I'm logging out here." to which the two federal agents said, "There's no need to Clark, we know who you are and what you've been up to." Clark told he nearly shit his pants. He knew of the feds, he knew they didn't like hackers and lucky for him, there were no laws in place to deal with him or what he had done.
He got pulled into an office and the agents told him what they knew and if there was anything he'd like to tell them. He knew he was in deep shit and just told them what he did, how he did it, and then told them he didn't mean any harm, it was just a personal thing he had with this professor. The agents told him he was in big trouble but unfortunately there were no laws to prosecute him under and since it would have been a federal case and because he didn't break into any government facilities or download any sensitive files, they weren't going to bring charges against him. He was also told they considered him a small fish in a growing murky backwater of hackers. The feds were after bigger fish to bring the hammer down on. Who was going to care about a hacker in North Dakota who crashed some university system because of an argument?
In any case, he was told he as now "on the list" of hackers who be under surveillance for the next several years, just in case he ever thought about doing something like this again. The feds told him they would be back and they would press charges. They said by then the set of statues being drawn up in congress would be in full effect and the federal charges would bring fines and jail time.
Clark said it was ironic he got busted when he did. Only a few years later the largest federal manhunt resulted in the capture and conviction of Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick was sentenced to 46 months in 1999, 4 years after his capture in 1995.
The university did punish him by taking away his network privileges for a year which meant no email, no computer login and no access to any of the computer clusters on campus. He told me he was lucky, and by god he learned his lesson. He hung up his hacker career and just stuck with developing software. It's something not a lot of people know about Clark, but I do. When people ask him about it, he just shrugs and says, "A hacker? Who me? I write software, I don't break into networks. That stuff is for kids."
ANOTHER 30 DAYS GONE. . .
Time really does go by fast when you have so many things to keep you busy. The focus of my blog has really been all over the map (if you've been keeping up with me) and I went back to my first post (08-11-2003) and remembered I would share some of my better college stories, funny or otherwise.
I started making a list the other night and decided to use this as the first one.
HOW I CHEATED IN COLLEGE AND GOT AWAY WITH IT
I know what you're thinking. I'm a bad person, I cheated in college to get better grades. Although this was a long long time ago, and I'm completely over the whole problem of the morality of cheating. I looked at it differently then and felt pretty guilty for doing what I did, but there were two possible outcomes. I cheat, I get a horrible grade in a class I don't really need, and my GPA is sunk. OR, I could cheat, get a good grade, and then retain a nice GPA and get on with my life. I chose the latter and it all turned out just fine for me. Although I'm a little suspicious about the really bad ankle sprain I suffered a few days after doing this. I'll leave it up those who believe in Karma if it was me getting payback for doing something ethically sketchy.
Anyways. . .
HOW I DID IT
Some background first. I was a sophomore at NDSU. I had a decent GPA (hovering around a 3.6) and was doing horribly in Psych 101. I hated the class, hated the professor and all the double blind, single blind, Pavlov's dog and Skinner box nonsense. I used to skip this class regularly and it showed in my test scores. I was heading for a D and only had two more tests to get my grade up to a C or a B.
I hatched my plot when I was talking to one of my dorm mates and he said he cheated all the time and said it was pretty easy. He said he ordered this book written by some Harvard guy who advertised in our school paper (the ad was right next to the same book about how to get out of paying speeding tickets. Trust me, the irony was not lost on me) and said I could borrow it. I figured what the hell, what do I have to lose??
I picked up the book later that afternoon and began reading it. Most of the techniques were about how to use your friend to cheat. Stuff like using the positions of a gear shift to tell the guy next to you what the answer was. Up was "a", down was "b", to the right was "c" and to the left was "d". Depending on the position of the non-writing hand, you could communicate what the answer was without making a lot of noise.
Other techniques included how to make crib notes and how to hide them properly so you won't get caught. One of the last ones I really thought would work was the idea of when there are freshman classes, professors usually have several different times and days for the same class. You could go to the test at one time, take the test, take home the questions, and then go to the class you registered for and then take the test again. I did some checking and guess what? My freshman Psych 101 class had two class times. One at 8am and my class which was at 1pm.
My mind was made up. I'd go take the early test, then bring home the questions, get the right answers and go take my "real" test at 1pm. Although there were two classes and both were huge (all freshman classes are), I felt I had to disguise myself to avoid detection. I couldn't wear the same thing both times, even in a classroom full of some 300 people, I thought I'd get caught. I can laugh now, but then I thought I was so smart.
My girlfriend at the time wore glasses and I told her what I was going to do and she reluctantly turned over her glasses to me for a few hours. The other problem was my hair. I had a HUGE mullet, so I took one of her Disneyland hats and tucked my hair up under the cap. I also wore her white tennis shoes to complete the disguise. I must have looked like such a knob, but I knew it was something I had to do in order to avoid getting busted.
At 7:30am my girlfriends alarm went off and I started getting ready. I got to campus and was hoping nobody would recognize me. I took the long walk from the T-2 lot to Stevens Auditorium. To say I was nervous was an understatement. I got there and shuffled in with all the rest of the freshman. I took a seat (of course not in my "normal" spot near the back) off to the left hand side of the main row and about halfway down the aisle. The grad students started passing out the test and I got mine and went to work. I filled in some fictitious student i.d. and starting scanning the test like some diamond thief who just got the master plans to the jewelery store. After waiting for a few people to get up to turn in their tests, I got up with a few other people and strolled down to the front of the class and slide my scantron test under a bunch of other tests already sitting on the professors desk. I strolled out and back to the T-2 thinking I had just completed phase 1 of my little scheme. I thought it was smooth sailing from here on in, but I was about to get the shock of my life. . .
I get back to the house where I lived and started going through the test, question by question. I was matching answers up with the textbook and double checking to make sure I knew the answer. Then my roommate came home and this is when my problems began. He asked me what I was doing and I was pretty confident I was about to usurp the system and get over the man so I told him what I did. I was waiting for the proverbial, "NICE! Way to not let the man hold you down!" but instead I got a twenty minute lecture on the ethics of cheating and how he had to turn me in to thwart my evil plan and restore balance to the universe. This was not something I was prepared for or ready to address. I still had 15 questions I needed to get the answers for and time was running out. . .fast.
I decided to make a deal (something I'm pretty good at) with him. I would take the test as scheduled and then if I got an "A" I would go and turn myself in. If I got a "B" or a "C" we would agree to let it stand for the greater good of keeping my GPA up. Trust me, my argument was a LOT more convoluted, but I could his expression turning to my side and we even had a handshake on it. I thought that was the end of it. . but it wasn't.
THE TEST
1pm came around too fast and I didn't get all the answers. I was about 5 questions short, but felt with the number of answers I had, I could make it work, get a "B", secure my GPA and also clear my good name with my roommate. I went to take the test and strolled in and sat with a few friends. Different hat of course, no glasses and of course, no white tennis shoes. It was a good thing I went for the answers instead of memorizing the letters of the answers. The sneaky professor had changed the order of the answers in the second version of the test. On the first test, the answer to "Why did Pavlov cross the road?" would've been "B", but in this version the correct answer was actually "C". I thought to myself, "The man just tried to thwart me and flush me out as a cheater, but I cut him off at the pass, I'm too smart you can't catch me!"
I finished the test and felt like Val Kilmer in "Real Genius" where he turns in his final test to professor Hathaway with a note that says, "I aced this". I really wanted to, but didn't. I walked out into a sunny spring afternoon, confident I had beaten the system and felt like I was well on my way with my college career. My general classes were now complete and I could finally focus on the really cool classes and the stuff which interested me - no more of this psychology bullshit.
I thought this was the end of the story. . .
AFTERWARD
When I got home later that night, my roommate was there waiting for me. He said he had felt so guilty, he told his academic advisor about my scheme and he in turn had escalated it to the dean of the Architecture Program who I was told will be calling me later that afternoon to discuss what I did. I can't imagine the look on my face when he said it. I started blabbering something about we had a deal and all the "good" reasons for cheating. He stood there for a second and then I could see the smirk on his face, which then turned into a huge smile, and then he started laughing at me really hard. He lied to me and got me - REALLY GOOD. I had a minor heart attack trying to think of what I'm going to say to the fucking dean of Architecture when he asks me why I cheated on a Psych 101 test. In his witty, "The morale of this story. . " voice my roommate gave me another 15 minute lecture on why cheating is bad, but I didn't hear one fucking word he said to me. Later that night I was at the bar basking in the glow of my perfectly executed plan, knowing in a few days all would be back to normal.
Two days later the test scores were posted and I scored a modest 89%. Good enough for a "B". It was the perfect score in my mind. High enough to affect my grade, but not too high to arouse suspicion of a cheat.
I had put together the perfect plan, and executed it to perfection. Although I had a few other times where I bent the rules, they were never as elaborate as this one. Looking back, I laugh at it all now. I should've just gone to class and endured it, and gotten a good grade, but I took a shortcut and it almost came crashing in on me.
If nothing else, I learned never to be so cavalier when doing something clearly beyond the bounds of acceptable academic ethical standards and just keep it to yourself. Then after ten years when it's safe, you can spill the beans.
More stories to come. . .
NEXT TIME:
How I avoided getting a $600 minor consumption ticket my freshman year.
ANOTHER 30 DAYS IN THE MIX
What's new? Not much. Some recent developments are I'm starting my own SEO / SEM company in order to drum up some freelance work. I'm down to picking two names out and I've already checked for the domains and they're available. I really want to get the business registered with the state before I open my doors so getting paid won't be an issue. I just finished a freelance project and we (my partner and I) had some issues getting paid since neither one of us had a fed tax id, and the guy didn't exactly want to give us cash since he can write off the site as a business expense.
I also have a pretty good idea of what I want the design to look like and have begun writing the content for the site. This should be a fun ride over the next 6 months or so. I pretty amped about going into business for myself. We'll see if my SEO skills are up to the task.
My son came for Spring Break and since I came out to see him in January for his birthday, I couldn't take any more time off to spend with him. We spent the weekend together and went Lacrosse shopping. We dropped some serious cash for his gloves (at least my Moms chipped in $50 so it wasn't horrible) and got him some decent elbow pads. I also picked up a stick so we could play catch. Unfortunately, it rained most of the weekend, so we only got one chance to play outside. After he started fooling around with my stick, he said he liked mine better so I told him he coould take itback to school with him but needed to bring it back if he wanted us to be able to play catch together.
One little hitch was when his Mom emailed me about him downloading an R rated movie and getting busted at school. I was more concerned about him doing sketchy things when we weren'y home, and he confessed he was actually covering for another guy at school who was a senior and who could've gotten kicked out if he got busted so he just made up the story about downloading at my place. Bren wasn't happy about him throwing us under the bus and making me look like a bad parent. I guess I don't really care what the fuck Karis thinks. She's so insecure and has a host of other issues she'll never outgrow - I stopped thinking her opinion mattered to me a LONG LONG time ago. All I can do is try and develop my relationship with my son. If it works,it works, if not, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
Besides the little controversy about the DVD, it's been pretty quiet around mainstreet USA. Nationally there's a ton of stuff going on.
I'm convinced Obama is an idiot. He bails out the banks, then the auto industry. He hands over the cash with no questions asked to the banks, but makes all the auto companies jump through these stupid hoops by making them draw up plans to show the goverment it's got a secure long term plan. Then he comes out and says their plans aren't good enough. Seriously?
Could it be they got burned by the banks and suddenly are realizing what they're doing? Here's a good idea, why don't you make EVERYBODY draw up a plan before you fork over BILLIONS of dollars to them? Clearly he doesn't have a plan, doesn't know what he's doing or a combination of both.
I'm not even going to start on the Treasury Secretary who doesn't pay his taxes, but at least he got grilled by a senator who asked him point blank if he thought his plan to seize private businesses was radical. Pretty funny stuff:
Besides the country completely going socialistic under Chairman Obama's watch, everything else is fine.
i'm holding my breath to see if my Manchester United Red Devils can hang on the premier league title and give them two titles this year. Liverpool is playing out of their minds and have dispatched Real Madrid 4-0, smoked Aston Villa (who were in 4th place) 4-1, and then smoked us 4-0. They're on FIRE right now and I'm hoping with a game in hand, we can hold on.
Well, time to get back to the grind. More on my business and some other random stuff later. . . maybe. . .30 days from now?
I keed I keed.
UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES
More updates and less than a month has gone by this time. Here's the list of things I need to update:
1) My trip out to Virginia to see my son and how it went
2) My impending trip to Florida with my entire family
3) Hockey
4) Freelance work
5) Some politics
6) Man United back on top
MY TRIP TO VIRGINIA
I went out for the weekend to see my son for his birthday and I must admit I really didn't want to go, but I guess hindsight is always 20/20 right? I flew out on Friday (I took a half day) and then had a long drive from the airport in Raleigh NC to Chatham VA. I picked up Kody at 9:30am and drove back to Greensboro and we got settled in and watched some TV till both of us crashed.
We got to sleep in on Saturday and then got up, went to the local mall and got some lunch and then walked around for a while. Kody picked up some new headphones for his i-pod, and then tool in a movie (Defiance). He wanted to go see Valkrye with TomCruise, but I quickly shot the idea down since I just saw a two hour program about the entire conspiracy on the History channel.
We had planned to go a a Chuck-e-Cheese type place called the Celebration Station for dinner and then we could play some putt putt golf and video games. This is where some pretty funny things happened. First we found out the putt putt course was OUTSIDE not inside like we thought. It was about 30 and we were both just wearing our hoodies. We still went outside and I think we played the fastest 18 holes of putt putt ever played. We completely blazed through the course and then went back inside to see if our pizza was ready.
Sure enough Kody heard them call #23,but our table tent was actually #43. We started arguing and I jsut said we need ot give it some time. We went back upstairs to play some more video games and then we went back downstairs to see if the pizza was ready. I showed the guy my table tent and then he went in the back and come out with that, "I have no idea." look on his face. He went back and forth a fewmore times before he asked me what I ordered. After I told him, he was like, "Oh sorry man, it's been sitting here for a while." At this point I could have made a scene, but was too hungry to bother. The pizza wasn't too cold so it wasn't a total loss. After we ate, we played some more video games and then bailed a short time later. We got back to the hotel and hung out for while before we crashed for the night.
The drrive back to the campus was nice. On Friday night we had some cool conversations, and now the drive back to Chatham was nice and we talked almost the entire way. Kody gave me a short touor of the campus and then I hit road so I could the car back and make my plane to get home on time. Needless to say, I flew home and slept like a baby that night. It was nice to have the day off after a trip with so much driving.
All in all, I didn't want to go, but am glad I did. We got along great and had some fun. I was thinking in future years to go to different cities and hang out in each city like we did in Greensboro. I'm hoping it won't be the same thing every year and then it will seem like we're just doing the same thing every year. In any case, I was happy I went and am looking forward to future trips.
MY IMPENDING TRIP TO FLORIDA WITH MY FAMILY
We leave Monday and I'm having the same feelings I had before I left to go out to Virginia. I'm starting to come around and this is making Bren fairly happy. Maybe it's just because my entire family is going and we're going to have small kids and its not like the usual vacation I take where the goal of the vacation is to do nothing. Sit on the beach, sit by the pool, have some drinks, nap and eat. I'm feeling like we're going to be going from sun up to sun down, which is not my idea of fun by any stretch.
I'm hoping ti will be like ouot trip out to Wisconsin last year which turned out really well. We had some time to ourselves as well as our "family time" with my parents.
Stay tuned for how this will turn out. . .
HOCKEY
Got some new Easton Synergy pants and it's took some equipment tweaks to get them to fit properly. I have two pairs of shin guards. One is longer and one is shorter. The shorter pair would flop over the top of the pants and drove me nuts when I was skating so I switched to the longer pair, went back to my slightly tighter sweats, and am wearing the pants a little lower than I normally do. Bada bing, it feels awesome now.
Saturday hockey has started now and I love the fact I can skate twice a week and get some decent cardio. It's similar to why I useed to play soccer - good cardio, sweat alot and feel great afterwards.
In any case, this is still a good thing.
FREELANCE WORK
We're making some huge changes at work and my next challenge is to learn CSS and learn how to cut and code sites. In March we're also starting on a brand new platform for all of our sites, and this is when the two roles of integration and front end development are to merge. How does this affect my freelance work? Well, it really hasn't. I've only had to two projects, both of them for my family members and both were for free. I also have another project I'm working on for a friend and I might just start looking for a viable template for her site.
I just had a stroke of luck and landed a fairly large project (20 pages, several templates, a lightbox gallery, and full on SEO) with my co-worker. This is going to be my first taste of a legimate project and a good ruler to see how well my SEO techniques are going to work.
All in all, this one has to be done by March 1st. With a short time frame and being out of town for ten days (yeah, I'll be doing some things on vacation, like I always do) and then having a compressed time frame, this is going to be fun!! Not to mention worth some serious $$$$.
Once this project is done, we'll see about future projects.
POLITICS
OMG, where do I start? The latest thing is Obama's stimulus plan. This is the biggest joke ever. He sais he would combat pork spending and his bill is full of it. He said he wants to stimulate the economy quickly which this stimulus bill won't (government construction jobs?? C'mon!) and then telling us we need to do something this year when the majority of the moeny won't be spent until next year.
Some proof. . .
Why it will fail. http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1232450084.php
Is it socialism in disguise? http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1232450084.php
I have more, but I think these two prettymuch lay bare the plan and how horrible it is.
Anyways, at least I'm gainfully employed and have been fortunate not to be working for any of the companies who are laying people off like a kool-aid stand. In the last week over 75,000 people have been laid of and plants and stores are closing all over the counutry. Good thing I bought my TV at Circuit City. Oh wait, they just closed down a few months ago. Whoops.
MAN UNITED BACK ON TOP AGAIN
Well after my Scouser and Blues co-workers taunted me about being 7 points a drift of the lead a few weeks before the FIFA Championship (which we won btw) the joke is now on them as both Liverpool and Chelsea have stalled out and have opened the door for the Red Devils to jump over both and take back the #1 spot in the premiership.
I'm thinking it could be another treble season the why they're playing right now.
Only good things ahead my friends. . .
Oh yeah, andBEcks is over at AC Milan on loan and now that Landon Donovan has left for Bayern Munchen, its been speculated that he won't return to the MLS. Either way, I don't care much.
Till then,
LATE
I NEVER KNOW WHY
My son goes home in a few days and I've been coming down on him pretty hard the last two days. I've spent some time trying to figure out if it's me or if it's him, or a combination of both. It just seems as it gets closer to time for him to leave, he starts doing things which really piss me off.
Yesterday I just got to the point where I just kept telling myself, "I really don't give a fuck. I've never felt close to my son and now I don't care. Let him do whatever he wants, it doesn't matter to me."
Then I starting thinking it might just be me acting out like he does when it gets close to the time for him to go home. I get pretty frustrated since now is the time when we could be spending a lot of quality time together, and instead with his numerous foot surgeries and his unwillingness to do anything I suggest (unless its a movie or dinner some where) has just pushed me to the edge.
The new thing is we met with his mother when he first got into town and he wants to change his visitation so he can skip Thanksgiving (I knew after this year it would happen, along with his mother's coaching of course) and then take away a week in the summer - which didn't surprise me either. His mother spoke of him starting to work this next summer (weird, since he has ANOTHER foot surgery during the summer) and this would cause him to need to be home to work.
My friends have always told me he will get to an age and then you just have to let him go and when he's ready, he'll come back.
I guess I'll just have to be patient - something I'm not very good at.
For now. . .
SEACREST EWT.
