So here is what is cool about my new job.

Even though I have to work a ton, and there is a lot of work to do. The atmosphere of the place is so much different. For example, my daughter was sick this week and had to stay home from school on Monday. So I brought her to work with me, and everyone is cool with that.

Another kid comes into the office all the time (a kid of one of my co-workers). It is rad, she tries to sneak by my desk every day.  Very ninja like actually, observe picture.

So what is so great about the sneaking kiddo.  Well, at the old job if you made the mistake of bringing in you kid, they would be surrounded by a bunch of adoring fans who instantly want to spoil the child.  Because it is the only thing that has happened in their day, that is different than every day that has happened to them in the last 25 years on the job.

I was only there for three years and I was starting to already succumb to that  insanity, and I was going home to my own kids everyday.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it isn’t cool to be excited about kids coming into work.  I’m excited when I see the kids, and people that come up to our office everyday.  It is just that no day is so mundane that I’m incapable of functioning the instant something a little different happens (like sneaking ninja kids).  It is nice to know that I can just enjoy my days here, and that things will never be so boring that the instant I see a child I go ape shit.

Turkey Launches Ground Operation in Iraq

I saw this headline on The Tribune’s website and the first image that came to my mind was something like this:

You don’t want none of this!

I realized however that the headline didn’t say “A” Turkey Launches Ground Operation in Iraq. My mistake. . .

Almost like a canary in a coal mine; a turkey in a tank? No?

Memoirs from the Land of the Plate

Picture this if you will, a young alchemist, not yet FullMetal lives with his family in a small town in the “Land of the Plate” (as Jack waste likes to say) near a farm with a field growing. . . gosh. . .I don’t know, soylent green? Anyway, the alchemist is around 9 years old when he has his first up-close encounter with. . .An airplane.

He had seen them before, but hadn’t thought much of them. He supposed one day he might see one up close, but wasn’t too excited about it. On a clear summer morning in ’86, sprawled out on the grass in his backyard after some HEAVY tire-swinging (they didn’t have “Extreme” or “X-Treme” in those days) he starts to hear the low buzz of an airplane. He doesn’t look because he probably won’t see it as it’s flying too high or the sound-waves are bouncing off of things making the plane seem like it’s in a different place. This time however, the buzz starts getting louder and closer eventually it gets so loud, he can feel the deep buzz in his chest making him sit bolt upright as if he just woke up from a bad dream. He looks to the direction of the buzz and suddenly cresting over the roof of his house, something big and yellow passes in what seems like minutes but is probably only a few seconds. If asked to describe what he’s seeing, in an instant he would say “a dragonfly if it grew really, really big” THIS, he realizes, is what an airplane is!

As it passes overhead, it’s so close, he can see the octagon shape of the bolts on the tires of the fixed landing gear. He runs to the fence separating the backyard from the alley and watches it get lower and lower eventually barely brushing the tops of the soylent green (I assume, or maybe it’s spinach?) crops in the field about 100 yards away.  He knows he shouldn’t because he might get in trouble but he leaves his back yard out the gate in the fence, crosses the alley, the vacant lot right behind that, the single lane road, and to the fence separating the field with the road.  He’s there for what seems like an hour watching the plane dive, spray, climb, turn, and repeat this pattern about 10 times. The plane is so close, he can see the pilot is wearing gold wire-rimmed pilot sunglasses.

The same model and color of the plane witnessed in 1986

Throughout the next few summers he continued his vigil watching the pilot dive, spray, climb turn. Eventually the pilot noticed him watching and would wave when beginning his diving run and wave again when he was done.

During the winter he would study airplanes make several models, which lead to other gateway drugs such as the study of Astronomy, Telescoping, most anything space or aircraft related.

Fast forward about 20 years. He finds that he is good at working on Computers and fits in well with the environment. He still loves to telescope and watches endless footage on the NASA, has thousands of hours on flight and combat simulators hoping to get his pilots license as a hobby someday. He plays hockey (another gateway drug) in a local rec league and one of the sponsors happens to be a crop dusting company. He follows a link to their site and sees that there are some planes for sale. He curiously reviews each plane of course knowing he probably wouldn’t be able to afford one, not to mention the hangar costs, fuel, and oh yea, he doesn’t have a license.

Looks worse than a poorly constructed Elitch’s ride. Still worth strapping in and taking off!

Once again, the reality of life getting in the way of dreams. It may still happen, the company he currently works for has a corporate pilot who barely got into it when he was 30 so there’s still hope. He may not be flying the 747’s or private jets, but even a modest prop plane would probably scratch that itch he has for experiencing real flight.

Cisco using Sysco

I’m in the IT department of a company that is in the food industry. sounds simple enough until you start to consider that on the IT side, we have accounts with Cisco, While on the food side, we have accounts with Sysco. All our phones are Cisco VoIP on Cisco networks.

Clearly for “San Francisco” or their logo is pure shyte.

Imagine if you will, our company is having a conference call with Sysco on our Cisco conference phone. They start having a problem and I (my name happens to be Francisco) have to troubleshoot and resolve the problem.The rep from Sysco is only going to hear the following: “Hi I’m franSYSCO, I understand we have a representative from SYSCO on the line? What is the SYSCO access number you dialed to get into the SYSCO conference?”

I can anticipate this going downhill FAST.

Clearly a box representing their product, but unless you read worse than a 2 year old, their logo makes no sense; Pay no attention to the top, then read “SYS” on the bottom, THEN go back to the top and read “CO”

Ass Effects

I was watching TV the other day. . . .scratch that, I had the TV on the news so I could hear it while I was doing something else. I hear this commercial come on about medication, you know the kind, “ask your doctor if blah, blah, is right for you” I swear when the guy first started talking about it, it sounded like he said, “my doctor told me that ass effects could help my condition” I looked up from what I was doing and looked in the direction of the TV with a puzzled look on my face.

Ass effects? what the hell? to top it off the guy talking about it is a tub; his girth alone when he said “Ass Effects” made me crack up. Also it’s Heartburn/acid reflux medicine so I started thinking it was a parody or something. Nope. it’s a real medicine.

Tub o lard

By the end of the commercial I finally realized (because it’s up on the screen in big letters at the end) that the guy is saying “AcipHex” which is the commercial name of the medication rabeprazole sodium. I realize they tried to combine the word “Acid” into the commercial name, but seriously I’m positive the tub actor, his actor kids and the people filming the commercial were not able to do it in one take. One or all of them would have laughed or said “ass effects. . .er. . .I Mean aciphex! hahahahaha”I was hoping beyond all reason that this wasn’t made by one of the elite drug companies: Bristol-Meyer Squibb, Pfizer, etc. Companies who take a lot of time coming up with the commercial name of their meds, or use the scientific name instead. Luckily, it’s made by the Japanese company Eiasi which makes me crack up even more. (if you don’t know why, visit engrish) I imagine their naming department trying to make it more appealing to westerners so they have lists of English words they’re trying to combine. (I have no idea what “Phex” would be) I can’t believe I saw a little circled “R” right after Aciphex suggesting that the name is restricted. I don’t think anyone is going to steal that gem Eiasi.

Ass effects is not medicine, it’s a fat guy wearing shorts that are too short and too much leg is being shown.
Ass effects is the sound your ass makes when eating too much Mexican: “dude, stop the ass effects, I’m trying to work”
Ass effects is the visual explosion that happens when you light your flatulence.

WTF happened to our blog?

It appears to be dead!!!

Mighty Ducks

One hell of a movie!!!

Emilio Estevez is a God among ducks and they all qucak together or some nonsence like that.

Am I Alone?

I watched an awesome series last night called “One Punk Under God.” And here is this really moving portrayal of how to really live your life for God and with a ton of grace towards everyone. Something that I often have a really hard time doing I might add. And all of that was amazing, but what I really was looking at watching this thing was how he was surrounded by people in everything that he was doing. When he had a tough decision to make he had friends to turn to, and a family that he communicated with and loved no matter how strained things were.

I have friends, and that is a huge blessing. And though my wife and I are separated, in a lot of ways I feel like I can go to her, and talk to her about a lot of things. But somehow I still feel totally alone. I have spent the last few months trying to figure out what it means to just rely on God, and what it looks like to just have the unbridled desire to serve Him in everything that I do. And that is hard, it involves getting rid of a lot of the clutter in my life (especially a lot of the stuff that I was doing just to fill time to make me “not bored”), it also involves being supportive of a separation from my wife. There are things that we both need to work on, but now is the time for her to be on her own to deal with her issues, and that leaves me feeling hollow.

I have been in a string of serious relationships all the way back to my sophomore year in high school. That means that there hasn’t been a time in my life where I have been alone for more than a couple of weeks for about 12 years. So getting into bed alone, knowing that I will be alone in that bed for a while, and that the person that I want to be in that bed with isn’t really interested in ever being in a bed with me again is a really daunting prospect. And it leaves me with that gut level emptiness. An emptiness that in the past I would have rushed out to find a new relationship for.

But today I’m realizing that the real filling thing would be God. Something that I used to do. There was a point in my life where I was looking to God for everything, and at some point I stopped doing that so that I could revel in my sexuality. There are these verses in Jeremiah that really resound with me right now (ironicaly enough they are the verses that my pastor is basing a sermon series on right now). The ones linked out above are how I feel about my life as a teen, as this kid that wanted nothing more that to see God glorified, but then I got caught up in all this other shit, and I get to here.

I was so quick to say, I don’t need community with God, “I don’t need community with God’s people. I don’t have a problem, I have my problem under control.” Next thing I know I’m saying, “I can’t quit.” And my life is falling apart, and the one person that I feel like was keeping me in check is telling me that she doesn’t want to be there for me anymore. And I’m realizing that this is God telling me, “Rely on me, not on yourself, and not on others.”

So I’m sitting by myself thinking, “What does being alone look like? Can I take that if I have to live the rest of my life this way? Am I really alone?”

So the bible tells me that I’m not.  But I feel like I am.  I feel just totally alone.  Because everytime one of my relationships has dissolved, I have run right into another one, with another person.  Maybe the answer is this time I should run to God.  Maybe that is the relationship I should be jumping into.

I just have to keep working on all of this.

New Blogroll Entry

I love propaganda posters and this site has an awesome group of them blog style.  Thought we would blogroll them.

So about wednesday!!!

Are we meeting up this wednesday to pocast? I really want to also Gabe if you have time call me man i want to try and get together with you today or tomorrow even if only for a min to explain the program we have been usin and get it going on m y laptop. Well hope you all can make it.

Why the hell did this drop off the radar?

Bird Flu totally hasn’t gone away, and I don’t think anyone is really looking into it too well. It sounds dumb to say but there is the chance that this disease could turn into a pandemic everyday. The way Bush handled Katrina, I hope that shit happens after we have a new president (and that that person is competent).

You want to know how serious it still is. Click me.