Little Shop... Little Shop of... Whores?

First off... I hate that word.

As you probably saw on DramaMama's blog, we got tickets through my work to go to Broadway Palm dinner theater to go see "The best little whorehouse in Texas". I was wary of it, but figured the free food would be worth whatever we had to endure.

Here is my review:

The food was good.

End of review.

Um... okay here's some more.

There were a couple funny moments, but most of it was distasteful, and parts (mainly due to the actors) were atrocious. We left at intermission along with many other people. The theater last night was sparsely attended to begin with, so I imagine the staff got to wish the janitor goodnight instead of the audience.

There was very little of value to the production and once again, Broadway Palm left us disappointed. We have enjoyed some fantastic productions there, but they seem to have this seedy underbelly that rears its head from time to time.

My rating of the show? LOWZEE! (Say that with a fake southern drawl).

I enjoyed the food and the company of my favorite girl. The ones on stage did not attract my attention.

Side note: Best Suns game in a long frickin' time! I recorded it and it way made up for the lack of entertainment at the theater. They whomped the Dallas Mavericks by 28 points!

It Was Worth It

This election was huge on several fronts. The presidential race of course was high on the list, but Arizona and California both had propositions on the ballot to protect the definition of marriage. (Arizona Prop 102 http://yesformarriage.com/ and California Prop 8).

I am happy to say that both passed. In Arizona, I was heavily involved in the mailing lists and phone lists for Prop 102, while in California, my oldest brother Keith who is a city councilman in Azusa worked hard on Prop 8. Here is a youtube video of him in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH_AWZ8mCwI

Although I spent long hours working on this, and many of them uncompensated, I find that it was all worth it to see that this important issue got the attention it needed to get passed.

It does my heart good to see people stand up for what is right, not for what is popular.

Do I Have Horns?

I must, because I think I'm in hell.

For the past several months I have been eyeball deep and beyond at work compiling data and prepping political mailers, along with building several websites, and many other things. As the the Primary election approached, I soon became burned out on data. I needed a serious vacation.

The day of the Primary election, I let out a sigh if relief, because I figured the pressure was off, and that I would get a few weeks reprieve from political data.

Exhaled too soon.

I got no break at all from it. In fact, it got about ten times worse. I have been consistently working 12 to 14 hours a day, usually with no lunch. It is a constant barrage of "I need this right now!"

Over the last week or so, we have been working on the "Yes for Marriage" campaign (yesformarriage.com). We have been working on a huge mailing (500,000+ addresses), and I was responsible for laying the address info and voter data on the pieces. I got that going, then as I lay awake one of the nights, I had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. It got so bad that I called my boss at 1:00 am and woke him up. We met at work, and discovered that there was indeed a problem. I had accidentally run a batch of 100,000 records through twice, which would have resulted in that many duplicate mailers going out. With that, we only lost about five hours production time.

After we had already printed 150,000 of the mailers, I had another awful realization. I had made and error combining names from same households together. (up to 2 people from one house on a mailer.) The result was that names from completely different counties were being put together on some of the mailers. I had this thought during the day, and we quickly did some figuring and found that a little more than 36,000 of the mailers were bad because of this. CRAP CRAP CRAP!

To my boss's credit on both of these, he remained very calm, and we worked through the problem. He did however point out that these mailers cost about a buck apiece, so that little oversight cost the company a little over $36,000. CRAP CRAP CRAP!

So together my boss and I figured out how to determine which mailiers were bad, and how to get them pulled out of the stacks before they mailed. (Luckily, I found this before any mailers went out).

So I fixed the problem, and started production over again, confident this time that I had covered my bases, and that the product I was generating was accurate. I got to think that for a whole day I think.

The woman in charge of our mailings came into my office and told me (as I heard it) that the barcode in the mail panel was wrong. I happened to have a Sharpie in my hand at the moment, and I threw it. It bounced off the edge of my desk and flew across the room. I sort of kind of yelled. "Don't you tell me there's another problem!"

Once we talked about it a bit, it turned out that my barcode was correct, but the city state and zipcode above it was not correct in some circumstances. AAAAUUUUGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

So, I went to the boss expecting a directive to fill out my own pink slip and kick my own butt out the door. The three of us got together and discussed the problem. It turned out it wasn't as widespread as I initially understood. The mail woman took a batch that had some of the non-compliant pieces to the post office, and they all made it throgh without being rejected. WHEW!

The next day I apologized to her for my outburst. All is well I thought.

FAT CHANCE!

Later she was back saying that another problem had surfaced with the city state and zipcode. The data I used for the barcode was run through a system that gives the most current zipcode. The city state and zipcode, came from year old data. The problem that surfaced was because of growing areas and zipcode splits. Pieces were showing a city and zipcode but the barcode referenced a different city and zipcode. (one city merged into another larger city, and therefore no longer existed).

I pulled the boss out of a meeting on that one. The question was: does the post office actually look at the city state and zipcode, or does their machine simply read the barcode? Once again, the post office trip became necessary. And once again, the pieces passed. WHEW!

We purchased a newer version of my production software that is server based that allows us to produce the pieces a lot faster. So I took the remaining 278,000 records on with that, fixed the mail panel problem, and finished the job.

Holy cow what a ride! I am so tired I can't stand myself.

The past two days have been spent catching up on all the work the got set aside to get this giganto mailing out. So needless to say, everyone needed their stuff done right then, and they kept letting me know that. I worked from 7am to past 7pm most days, and skipped lunch to get caught up.

Yesterday, I knew I had to leave at 5:00 because our neighbor was getting married at 6:00. I had a list of 7 or eight projects to get done in order to make that deadline. Of course nothing wanted to cooperate. I skipped lunch again, and plowed through. I knocked most of it out. A couple of the jobs got delayed because I didn't have everything I needed to finish them.

This whole run has been exhausting and incredibly stressful. I know that Monday and Tuesday will probably still be a bit nuts, but I think I may be on the down slope of my sleigh ride through Hades.

Time is an Enigma - the James Saga

Once a year, my son James comes to visit for a month in the summer. All too soon, I find myself back in the airport with him watching him fly away back home.

This year was no exception. July simply vanished. Granted, we did manage more one-on-one time than previous years, but still...

I did some figuring the other day. The actual amount of time that I have had James with me is still less than 3 years, and he is now 14.

This time, he told us that he wished he could stay here with us for 6 months, then stay 6 months with his mom. I wish that too, but it is very unlikely that this will ever happen.

Over a month ago, I filled out paperwork to have this past week off of work so that all-told, I would be able to spend 9 days with him before he left. 2 weeks before my time off, I scheduled a day for the Bear's surgery. That was cancelled but I tool the day anyway to spend with James. Half-way through the day, I got a call from my boss asking why I wasn't at work. I told him that I put in for that day a month earlier. I asked if he was aware of my week off... no, he wasn't.

They held a meeting at work with the full sales team to see what projects were coming so they could figure out if I could have my days. That was on Monday, and they decided in there, that I could have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and then the next Monday and Tuesday. Well, okay... still 5 days, but not surround by weekends for the full 9.

It played out that I still ended up going in on Wednesday and Thursday. I managed Friday off, but had to go in for half the day on Monday. Tuesday they left me alone. So out of the original 9 days planned, I only got 4, and 2 of those were the weekend. I was/am pretty bugged about that. Also, the main reason they said I need to be there for Wednesday through Friday never happened.

Friday night, we went to Broadway Palm with him and the Bear, then very early Saturday, I drove him to the airport to see him off. I really hate that part. When he was 2 and I would leave him and fly away, I would often fight back emotion. Now watching him fly away, it isn't a whole lot easier. WHERE DOES THE TIME GO?

Money issues on this trip kiboshed several things I had planned to do. Our transmission on the van croaked on July 4th. It is finally fixed, and now we have to wait for payday before we can go get it. We did have a coupon for "Real Bowling" as the Bear calls it (Not Wii bowling). We only had to pay for shoes.

While James was here, I transcribed a few of the songs I wrote years ago. One of them was the song I wrote for his mom and played for her at our reception. Another was the one I wrote for DramaMama and played at OUR reception. He set about learning those and some other songs that I have played over the years. He is really quite talented. He drew a picture of the Bear as a baby that was pretty impressive.

Delta threw us a curve-ball on James' flight down here. Because he was under 15, they charged his mom $100. Southwest let him fly alone after he was 12. So to circumvent this stupid fee that we couldn't afford, we celebrated James' 15th birthday a bit early. I take full credit for the lie to Delta Airlines, I have already confessed to God, I have accepted my punishment of 40 lashes with a wet noodle. I figure since James has been travbelling alone on Southwest since he was 12, he didn't need a baby-sitter. The $100 fee would have been a big waste of money.

Gas - a rant

This is frickin' NUTS!

How can the price go up over a dollar in 2 months time? We all panicked with hurricane Katrina when gas went over $3.00. Now we sit and dream of those days.

I have been thinking about getting out my trusty bike and pedalling to work. That is until I went bike riding this evening with the Bear. We went about 3 blocks out and 3 blocks back. My legs were burning, the fellers were squarshed, I was huffing... I wont be riding my bike to work.

If this gets much worse, I don't know what we will do. We are being ripped off, and there isn't a whole fat lot we can do about it.

I would applaud goverment regulation of gas prices, that way the local stations couldn't gouge us just because they are greedy. If the feds started handing out fines for price gouging, I would think that prices would even out nicely. Granted the price of oil is rising, but the gas industry is using that as an excuse to force us over one of the barrels and ram the gas dispenser up our hoinky.

A Bit of a Sobering Day

Last Wednesday, we saw on the news that 4 teens were involved in a very serious accident in which one was killed. He was 15, and his 16-year-old brother was driving. The one boy that wasn't ejected was the only one wearing a seat belt.

The next day, I found out that they are the sons of one of my co-workers.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/video/?bcpid=1155316042&bclid=1155212903&bctid=1509297819

The video is labelled Fatal Crash in Gilbert.

Today I attended the memorial with several people from work. Very sad.

------

There is another video on that page labeled Mesa Standoff. THis happened just down the street from us. It mentions Leisure World. This is a retirement community where my dad lives.

That day, they locked down the Bear's school. Somehow the kids learned that a bad guy with a gun was loose in the area. So naturally the Bear had a thrilling tale. According to him, the man with the gun shot him right in the back. He took the bullet out of his back and threw it at the bad guy. :) Later he came back to DramaMama and said he wasn't telling the truth... Oh REALLY?

What has become of Cheez?

Good question.

I know that I have lost all 3 of my readers due to lack of diligence here in blogland, but I thought it time to write something anyway.

I started a new book recently, and am into the 8th chapter already. I am receiving good reviews so far from my writing group. They have said that of all my stuff they have read, they like this best.

So this makes 1 book with 2 revisions completed, another book about 2/3 way through first draft, the NanoWriMo book that never got far that is morphing into still another book I started, then this one.

Work has been nightmarish the last few days. Bad stuff followed by more bad stuff. We are still cleaning up the mess, and hopefully will get it wrapped up tomorrow.

We are enjoying American Idol. So far most of the ones I wanted to go away have done so.

I am also enjoying the Celebrity Apprentice.

GO SUNS!

Next week is our 8th anniversary. We already got our "present". Our 4 year old TV did a croaker, so DramaMama went on Craigs list and found a nice tv for us. We got a smoking deal on it. The Bear came down the stairs and notified DramaMama that "this TV is HUMOUNGOUS".

I am taking a couple days off at the end of our anniversary week, not the day of unfortunately. But that will give us 4 days.

If anyone reads this, please leave a comment. I don't get many anymore.

AWWWW GEEEZZ!!!

Tagged again!


Okay here goes:

The rules:Post the rules before giving the facts. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves - People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their eight things and post these rules - At the end of the your blog you need to tag (hopefully) six people and list their names - Leave them a comment on their blog, telling them they have been tagged and not to forget to read your blog.

Here are my meaningless random acts of drivel:

1) When I was 7, it was time to go to Primary, (a church class for kids, that at that time was held on Wednesday evenings), and I didn't want to go. I defiantly told my mom that I would rather live in a pig pen than go to Primary. Guess where I spent Primary? In the closest thing we had to a pig pen. In our dog run that was conveniently decorated with poop at one end. I went to Primary after that.

2) I have always been a good speller. In high school, I took a 400 word spelling test and only missed three words. One word had a hypen, one was a capilization, and the other I simply left out a couple of letters.

3) I have always loved writing. I recall one of my earliest works in first grade. I described clouds as thick as peanut butter. Throughout the years, I wrote several goofy stories. I was in college before I really started taking it seriously. I took a couple of writing courses, which dramatically improved my writing skills. I also took a correspondence course from the Institute for Childrens Literature. I am currently querying my first novel "Black, White, and Shades of Gray". I also just submitted an article to "The Ensign" which is a church magazine. The article was about my Bible that I posted about a few months back.

4) I have also always enjoyed music. Either playing it or listening to it. Over the years I have played several different instruments. My first of course being piano. I took up trumpet in Jr. High, then added bass guitar in 9th grade. Later when I was 17 or 18, I started tinkering with guitar, and eventually took on classical guitar. The trumpet is now in the hands of some under-privileged kid in Tahiti, my ex-wifes brother hawked my bass amp at a pawn shop, the bass which never was used much after that, eventually found it's way to Deseret Industries. I still have my piano, keyboard and classical guitar, though none of them get nearly the attention they used to. I have also written several songs.

5) I spent most of my childhood with people calling me by my older brother's names. Even my grandma did it. Except in her case, I got all of them: "Keithy, Kenny, Mikey, DAVY!" One day I told my mom that I wanted to trade names with my brother Mike. I got called that frequently enough, that it would have made sense. She didn't go for it though. At least they had sense enough not to call my by my sister's names!

6) I don't drink, I dont smoke, what do I do?

7) I have my own side business where I sell lots of varied things on the internet. I program the websites in PHP, and even built my own shopping cart system. I have been a programmer since 1988 using a variety of languages. I started with BASIC, used Pascal in college, actually worked at a job using C, then took up Foxpro with version 1, which eventually was bought out by Microsoft. I currently use Visual Foxpro on pretty much a daily basis. On the web I use PHP, Javascript, MySQL, HTML. I have written some rather sophisticated online systems for clients at work.

8) I met my wife when I was 36. We each had a son, then together we had the Bear. Hers, Mine, and Ours. We live in Mesa, AZ, where we just broke the record for the most consecutive days of over 110 degree weather. It's hot! Dang Hot! Frickin' Hot! They finally fixed the AC at work though, so that makes working much more pleasant.


I'M NOT TAGGING ANYONE, SO THERE!

Muchas Politicos

Since hardly anyone laughed at my joke, I will regale you with tales from work. I covered the illness thing pretty well there. Lately, due to the upcoming election, our company has been uber-swamped with work for political candidates.

You know those annoying signs that get stuck all over the whole dern town? We do that.

You know those annoying political mailings you get every day for two months from various candidates trying to slurp up your vote? We do that.

You know those annoying phone calls you get asking you questions about the election and who you are going to vote for? We do that.

You know the web sites listed on the annoying signs (ie ErnestTBoogerheadForArizona.com)? We do that too. We have a local channel here that presents a show for the Mesa city government. I pause there occasionally, because I know pretty much everyone on the panel. I built the Mayor's website, the vice-mayor's website, numerous city councilmen websites, and one for the janitor to sell glow-in-the dark yo-yos.

I have a huge hand in the mailings and the phone lists. We are working statewide this election, so there is an abominable amount of data to organize. My brain is usually fried by end of day. But it is all worth it to make sure you get your share of political mailings and phone calls.

Vote for Ernest!

My Week and My Letter From the Bear

As you may have read on DramaMama's blog, I have been rather ill this week. It hit me Monday evening with a vengeance.

I stayed home from work on Tuesday, but still ended up doing a couple hours remotely.

Wednesday I went in, even though I felt like the Triceratops poop pile on Jurassic Park.

Thursday I stayed home, and talked my boss into paying me sick pay for the two days I was out. He agreed as long as I kept on top of all my work remotely. He's a peach ain't he? So there I sat at my home computer for several hours... feverish and chilling... helping some local politicians get their message out. I went to the doctor and got some meds. During the day as I was resting, the Bear came in with a sheet of paper with kid squiggly writing on it.

"I wrote you a letter, Daddy."

"Gwarksit Zhey?" Translation from ill-speak: "What's it say?"

"I hope you feel better, because you still talk weird."

Friday I was starting to feel better but was still way below par. I went into the office for what turned out to be the day from that hot burny place. I ended up pulling a 14 hour shift and finally left at about 10:00pm. I had very little for breakfast, then I had a Healthy Choice dinner thingy for lunch (very small). I had a yogurt too, but I guess when I put my lunch in the fridge, my for pierced the foil cap, and by lunchtime there was yogurt all over everything. I didn't eat the yogurt.

I drove from work to DrummerBoy's school to pick him up. He had just returned from playing at a football game.

Once I got home I finally got to eat, but then a long night of coughing commenced. Boy was that fun! A couple of times it felt like my lungs were going flop inside out of my mouth. I was coughing so hard that a couple times my neck popped. It was one of those very dry, very scratchy throat kind of cough. I'll spare the imagery about the voluminous goo.

So last night I got about zots for sleep. "Why are you typing a blog then dough-head?" you might ask. Well... iunno.

I am feeling somewhat better today, but am still having periodic bouts with this cough.

This thing really kicked my butt. I can only think of two instances in my life where I felt more sick than I did Thursday:

1) Just over a year ago when I was hospitalized (thinking I was having a heart-attack). I had been having severe nausea and other end, mixed with cold sweats. The whole scene was rather graphic, I will spare the gross details for non "technicolor yawn" fans.

2) Probably 13 years ago, I ate lunch at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants and ordered the Mexican-poop Tacos... um, I mean Chile Verde Chimichanga. This was my usual there. Something weren't quite right with it that day though. That evening I would have been glad to have been put out of my misery. This too involved great expulsion of barf matter from full-wide mouth portal, but I'll spare the details. *

So as you can see I felt rather crappy. I am happy to say though that my very long day yesterday did get me caught up with the mountainous amount of political mailing list data you can imagine.

So now... I think I'll work. On my book, I mean. :)


* See the comments for a cool story about this.

Speaking of Arse's

Unreasonable: Adj. CheezWeezil's boss

Let me set the scene for you. CheezWeezil has already spent the bulk of the day eye-ball deep in work goo, skipping half of lunch to get stuff done.

Senor Boss creature arrives at 4:40 and asks me if a political candidate has given the information we need for his website.

"uh... no."

He leaves my office.

A minute later he is back and he tells me that we will be building a website and it needs to be up in the next few minutes, because the client is trying to see it.

"Oh, really?" CheezWeezil says. "Do you have any content for me?"

"They are saving it for you."

Then he shows me the mailer that the new site is to be patterned from.

A few minutes later he hands me his cell phone. It is the client. The boss tells me to ask for whatever I need to get the site up. By the way, he has already told the client that we have the site done, and all we need is this info to get it launched. He told them that before I had even heard I would be building the website. SHEESH!

I set to work with no content, and a very vague description of what was wanted for the site. About 20 minutes later, I am still waiting for images, but have a format setup. Finally some images arrive, but wonder of wonders, they aren't the ones I need.

Another ten minutes passes until I finally get the right images. I go into hyper-drive and slam out 3 pages based on the mailer I was shown.

At about 5:20 I was wrapping up, and the boss walked by. I called him in to look at what I had.

"That's all you have?" he asked. "We've been telling him what great things we can do. That's not very great."

"And I haven't had very much time to work on it either." I replied.

I flipped through the pages.

He had me add another panel from the mailer which took about 10 minutes. I uploaded that and went home fuming.

Hydras, Dragons, and Chimeras, Oh My!

As you are most likely aware, I am a computer guy of the web developer/programmer persuasion. In my company, we have a small IT department... for awhile I was IT.

A few months ago we added a networking guy into the mix. He is of my ilk, and enjoys a good laugh. Well yesterday we had a good reason to.

About a week ago the company hired a new accounting woman, but there were too many butts, and not enough seats, so they parked her in our office. That was all well and good, except that her training then also happened in our office.

Now programmer types like their quiet, so I glued my headphones in my ears and cranked up the tunes to cover the training-in-loud-voice behind me.

So I was engrossed in my programming, writing a PHP script to change the world when the trainer and trainee both wigged out and ran from the desk screaming. My immediate thought was that a big spider or cricket had "attacked" them.

Trainer: "THERE'S A LIZARD IN THERE!!!!!!!"

Trainee: "I'M DONE, I'M OUTTA HERE!!!!"

Me: "A lizard? COOL! where?"

"ON THE DESK, ON THE DESK!!!!"

I looked around and couldn't see anything.

"IT'S RIGHT THERE IN THE CORNER!!!!"

So I poked my head in there, and nearly missed it again. What I saw was hardly terrifying, in fact the critter was a BABY lizard, and was about an inch and a half long.

So I grabbed a DVD spindle cover with the intention of trapping it underneath. As I got near, it darted out the hole in the back of the desk where the cables go through.

"I didn't get him."

Trainee: "You mean I have to work there, knowing that thing is around?"

Me: "Well... when he runs up your leg, let me know."

Oddly enough, I have a small plastic lizard that the Bear got from Chuck E. Cheese sitting on my keyboard. I took that over and set it on her desk.

"So he has a friend..."

May the farts be with you

Everyone has had that inopportune time when your body language speaks volumes and your mouth doesn't.

I had one of those moments today that in some ways was hysterically funny, and others was rather mortifying.

I was walking down the hall at a brisk clip this afternoon, when my boss stepped out from one of the offices and I nearly steam-rolled him.

"Daaavvve... how are things going?"

Deciding not to regale him with tales of injury and woe, I said, "Great!" Then it happened.

With no warning whatsoever, a succinct but distinct BLAT sounded.

"OH MAN! Excuse me!"

Without missing a beat, he said, "Just passing through!"

After making myself disappear, I told the guy I share the office with, and we had a good laugh.

Later as I was fondly reminiscing about it, I thought that just how many times in your life do you get to say exactly what you want to your boss, and get away with it. Honestly, I wasn't that great and the body language told the truth. I gave my boss the south port raspberry! WOO HOO!

He'll think twice about asking how I am doing from now on!

Climbing Mount Krapatoa

What does this have to do with anything? Not a whole lot, I am just so thouroughly overjoyed that it is finally the weekend, I decided to be silly for a bit to see if I am still alive.

This past week was one that I would not care to repeat anytime soon. It was one of those "I-hit-the-bottom-of-the-barrel" weeks, only to find that there was a hole in the bottom and I kept on going.

Yesterday I had pretty much had it. I came home from work and went straight to bed.

I slept acceptably well last night, and today was much brighter. I was able to flush one of the problematic projects, and actually made some good progress on several others.

This weekend we are de-junking our house. Not in any small way either. DramaMama Has already loaded 4 large garbage bags with clothes to donate to Deseret Industries (similar to Goodwill). I took stabs at the garage and my office, and earmarked many an item for donation. We have so much stuff everywhere that it is nigh unto ridiculous. We have a 2 dumptruck garage that we hope to be able to get a car into one of these days.

We sorted through the Bears toy boxes (3 of them) and boxed up quite a lot. We are borrowing my sister's truck for Saturday to load up with boxes, furniture, clothes, toys, books, computer stuff, and the occasional cockroach.

We thought for a moment about hosting a garage sale, but no more than a moment... it's frickin' 110 outside! The few bucks we would get out of it aren't worth barbecuing my brain cells for.

I feel a lot better today, especially because it is the weekend. I even worked on my book at lunch today!

You Talkin' to Me???

I can go two ways with this post. Tell you all how I feel, or share another Bear moment.

I guess I'll do both... First the unpleasantness:

I feel a lot like that guy looks... A whole lot of "go away" written all over my face.

I am weathering a severe bout of job burnout. I am so buried that I sometimes want to go nuclear on some people's hind parts. I lately have had little or no desire to even go to work. There are so many things I need to get done with my own little company, and unfortunately, they are very similar to the things I do at work all day. This of course compounds the burnout.

I have had a couple of those projects that just dont want to allow themselves to be completed. One problem after another, and a couple hour job has turned in to a couple week job. There is a high level of frustration in all of this. I am expending all of my energy for some other guy's business, having little or none left for my own.

Now, enough of that...

The Bear and I were playing what he calls "The Different Mister Noodle Game", when he really means "Ludo" which has no real connection to the game other than I gave the characters in the game names from the Harry Potter books. So anyway, he was playing along, and in a singsong sort of voice said, "Bad guys... where are you?"

AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!

The Fam just left on vacation without me. They are going to visit DramaMama's parents in New Mexico. That means that I am home alone for a whole week. I don't even get Memorial Day off from work. >>mumble grumble mumble<<

I have plenty of work to do at home and an occasional Suns game to keep me busy, so I should be fine.

The Food, The Fat, and the Fruggly

Over the past several weeks, I have felt as though a giant crap-beast has been dumping on me at work. I have had so much to do that I often have missed lunch and have worked late. I have gotten a lot done, but it's much like a river... it just keeps a comin'.

So... needless to say, (but I will anyway) , I have been very tired for a very long time, and have little energy and patience upon arriving home.

I try to find solace by escaping to my office where I can think, relax, and perhaps write. But, and it's a BIG but... My five-year-old shadow follows me right in and wants to play a game with me on my computer.

This is fine I suppose, but there is rarely a time when I sit at my computer that this does not happen. I have tons to do at home as well on my own company, my brother's website, and a handful of other projects I am working on.

The Bear shows up and wants to play, and I am put in the situation of deciding whether to make him cry or not by insisting that I am going to get some work done. He is a special little guy, and doesn't yet understand why we cant play all day long on the computer.

These long hours have made me look more like that dude above. I usually have breakfast running out the door, and driving to work. I miss lunch about 50% of the time. I get home from work, and pig out. Being wiped out from the day, I look for the fastest and easiest thing to shove in my face, and it usually isn't something healthy.

I actually have been much happier lately, but I am just wiped out tired all of the time, and my head gets full of buzzing icky goo, and doesn't want to deal with anything more.

I have for the most part stopped writing because of it. I very much want to continue my books, but most of the time I sit at the computer, and my brain vomits and says 'no more for today'.

So downstairs I go to find something to shove in my face. American Idol with a frickin' big bag of chips.

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

A Kick to the Curb, a Movement of Cheese

This week I had to be the catalyst toward someone losing their job. A few weeks ago we brought in a new "Golden Boy" (GB) that based on his resume and interviews seemed to be just what we needed.

After a few projects, it became very clear that he was not what he said he was, and was in fact a rather useless employee.

We handed him a moderate project just to see what he could do. All credibility flew out the window at the speed of the winds of hurricane Katrina. I gave him the tools and the code from a more advanced project, from which he should have been able to easily do his project.

Part way through the day, after many calls from him for assistance, I visited the boss, and told him what was going on. He had already pretty much come to the conclusion from his dealings with GB that he was on his way out.

At the end of the day, I hung back after GB left, and sought out the boss. He was on his cell phone, so I pointed to my office, and ran my finger across my throat, signaling that it was time to do the deed.

Yesterday when I arrived at work, GB was there. ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

Around 10:00 the boss called me into a conference room where we discussed the situation. He had me send GB in. I made myself scarce.

Half an hour later, I went back into my office thinking that there should have been plenty of time for GB to clear out his things and be on his way.

Lo and behold, he was sitting there WORKING!

I knew the boss was in the conference room with a client, but I interrupted them and asked if GB was still supposed to be back in the office at his desk.

He said yes.

Arooooooooo?????

Apparently the client showed up right as the exit procedure was going to happen, so the boss told GB to go sit in his chair and not to get out of it. (he was a wanderer, slacker and talker)

So a little later GB announced he was going to lunch.

Down the hall I heard the boss ask "Why are you out of your seat?"

A few seconds later the boss and GB entered my office, and I again made myself scarce.

This time the deed was done.

It takes a lot for me to suggest to the boss for someone to lose their job. In this case, however, it really needed to happen. GB had grossly overstated his abilities in his resume, and made it crystal clear that he was not the right person for the job.

In the past as a manager, I would worry over something like this, but this time I didn't.

I think I grew up somewhere along the line. There are times that even though the loss of a job is going to seriously affect a person, that it will be better for the company, and ultimately better for that person.

When I am working for someone else, my work ethic is very high. I work hard, and when there isn't a project to work on, I make a project to work on. I really get bugged at people that piddle around all day, and go talk to others, distracting them from their work.

I may be short sighted here, but it seems to me that if someone is paying you to do a job, that you would feel guilty if you weren't actively doing that job. I wouldn't feel right about sitting around while there was work to be done. Or even if there wasn't work to be done for that matter.

There is always something to do, like improving your skills, learning new skills, etc.

I have been given many projects at this job where I had no idea how I was going to pull it off, but I dove right in, learned the skills I needed to do it, and in most cases came out shining. Sometimes the challenges scared the crap out of me, but eventually I figured it out and created a solid result.

When I was younger, this wasn't the case. I hated change, and was content in my cubby hole. Then I read "Who moved my cheese?" Ahhhhhh, what a wonderful book! If you havent read it, get and read it. It will change your whole thought process, and empower you to move beyond your little box into a whole new wide open wonderful world of courage, strength, and adventure.

Make it a belated resolution to read that book! Do it! Do it! Do it!

The Dark Mark

Over the past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about the early days with my son. He was for all intents and purposes ripped away from me when he was only 2. His recent visit stirred a lot of memories and emotions that surrounded that parting. I was digging through my funny file for a new blog when I came across a letter I had sent (of all things) as a Christmas letter to my family and friends that year.

This was probably the worst day of my entire life.

*****
Hi everybody, I wanted to tell everyone about what went on with taking Jimmy to California. I waited awhile to get some distance from it all. As Hamlet said, (paraphrasing) "Somewhere along the way here, I seem to have lost all my mirth." This has been a very difficult row to hoe, and the ground is a lot like that at Mom and Dads house... full of rocks.

I have found that when I am at work and just bury myself in it that my personality begins to surface again. When I am around family I kind of loosen up too. Overall though I find myself walking around with a scowl and pursed lips and clenched jaw most of the time. I was talking with one of the VPs at work the other day and he was asking me to do something and apologizing for bothering me with it. I told him that he apologizes too much. He replied that lately I have had "a lot of 'go away' written all over my face".

So anyway... here's the tale:

The week before I took Jimmy to California, I took the week off to spend with him. I let him decide what we would do, offering some suggestions of things I know he likes to do. We went to the mall a couple of times to have "rice and chicken". He loves to eat at the food court at the mall, and he always wants rice and chicken. We had a "beeg samwich" one day though (Blimpies). He wanted to ride on my shoulders a lot. It was always interesting going through doors with him up there. He would bend over which made him lean way forward which made me do the same thing.

On Thursday his Grandma took him for half of the day at her request. When I went to get him he kept saying something like "peedo". I had no clue what he was saying... Grandma finally figured out that he was saying "Play Dough"... he had been playing with some when I showed up. We played games on the computer and watched shows and played football, basketball, volleyball, etc.

Friday evening was when we flew to California. I did my best to get him to be excited about the airplane ride. He loves to fly, so I didn't want this to be bad for him. I personally had absolutely NO desire to go to California. We left my car at Park-n-Jet and rode the shuttle over to the airport. I didn't check any bags, I only had a carry-on for each of us. While we were waiting in line and sitting waiting for the flight, Jimmy was running around playing imaginary basketball and entertaining everybody there. He even dribbles.

Mom let me borrow the Etch-a-Sketch she has in her toybox for Jimmy, I had that out on the plane for him to keep himself busy. He calls it his "draw-er". He was excited to be on the plane because he knew the flight attendant was going to bring "pretzos" (pretzels). He decided he had to go potty right in the middle of the drink service, so we couldn't get to the restroom because the cart was blocking the aisle. He managed to hold on.

Sandra (my ex) and Eric (her new husband and future ex) met us at the airport... Jimmy saw Sandra and started crying, Sandra told him that he didn't have to go with her now, that he got to stay with me still, and that calmed him down.

I went and rented a car, and Eric went to get their car and was supposed to meet us to give me the car seat for Jimmy. We went and got in my car and drove around to meet Eric, and saw him drive back around the other side. We hurried after him, but couldn't find him... We drove around several more times and waited for awhile and he never showed up. I had my cell phone so Sandra was calling his cell phone and pager trying to find him. He didn't respond. So we eventually just decided to go to their new house which I wanted to do just to see what Jimmy will be living in. On the way there Sandra called the home number and Eric was there. I had to drive for almost an hour with Jimmy not in a car seat... I was not very happy about that.

I decided to stay in a motel that night instead of going to Keith and Belindas (my brother and his wife), because that would be an additional hour or so drive. As it was, I got to the motel at about 11:00pm. The motel didn't have a phone, and didn't even supply shampoo. I had some of my own though. Jimmy wanted to play golf... we brought his set from his new house to the motel with us. I finally managed to get him to bed. We had a king sized bed, but I got to sleep on the space about the size of a quarter because Jimmy is a major wiggle worm when he sleeps. I kept pushing him back over to the other side but several times during the night I got smacked in the face by a leg or arm as he was rolling around.

We slept in and didn't leave the motel until about 10:00 and drove out to Azusa. We stopped in San Bernardino at McDonalds to eat. Jimmy was being a big t-rex and taking dinosaur bites out of his food, it was pretty funny. It took a couple hours to get to Keith and Belinda's because there was an accident on the freeway. Jimmy fell asleep on the way.

When I got there, neither Keith or Belinda were home, but the kids were. Keith and Belinda were at their church helping get ready for the Christmas party that night. Jimmy didn't take long to join in with the toys, he had them spread from here to there quite quickly. We stayed in the guest house out back, and Jimmy found those toys which got spread from here to there. We went over to the church and help a little with the party setup. I think I flipped a switch to turn on a light and helped move the ladder a couple times... oooooo ever so helpful.

The party was pretty interesting, the gym was transformed into Bethlehem by a guy in Keiths ward that works for Hollywood. It was pretty cool. Everybody had to dress up in clothes for the time (or some facsimile anyway). I went as the Greek who wore tennis shoes. Jimmy was excited to go to the party because he got to run around when we were helping... he thought he got to run around again. The plan was to keep him around me, but he was here, there, and everywhere in Bethlehem that night. Keith introduced me to a guy there that works for Disney and we talked for awhile about getting me into animation, etc. He is going to get me some stuff on drawing Winnie the Pooh correctly. I got the impression that he was going to bring it to church, but he didn't. (This was the Pooh movie with the Skull-a-saurus I think)

The next day was Sunday and since their church didn't start until 12:30, I played with Jimmy. Jimmy was pretty good for church, but we spent the last 15 minutes of Priesthood meeting in the hall. I didn't put him in the nursery, because I wanted to spend all the time I could with Him... he didn't want to go in there anyway.

I didn't have much time after church before leaving. When it came time to leave I started getting emotional. I held on pretty good while I had Jimmy saying goodbye to everybody. Keith walked me out to the car, and once I said bye and walked to the car, I sort of lost it. That is a really horrible feeling to put your child in a car and drive off knowing that you are going to leave him and go away.

Jimmy fell asleep again on the way back to the airport. So when I dropped off the car I had to wake him up. He wasn't very happy about that. I needed to get the car seat out of the car, so I sat him down on my bag. He wasn't quite awake yet so he toppled right over and smacked his head on the ground. As I was calming him down a girl that worked in the car rental place walked up, and I had her hold him while I collected all my stuff. I got the car all taken care of then headed over toward the terminal. I had two big gym bags, a car seat and Jimmy to lug around. Eric and Sandra were just outside the rental place though. They informed me that I had already missed my flight. It was a half hour earlier than I thought it was. So we figured out what to do and Eric ended up buying me a ticket on another airline to get me home.

While he was gone doing that I was holding Jimmy and he still wasn't very happy. Sandra kept doing a peek-a-boo kind of thing to him and he kept saying "NO" and turning away. Then she started in on me saying that I was making it hard on him too because I wouldn't let him see her. I had no idea what I had even done, and she was ragging on me. So she told me that I was turning him away so that he couldn't see her. Like I am going to force him to look at her when he doesn't want too. She was mad because she said that I was teaching him that its okay to do that, and that I was brain washing him. I said several times lets please not fight, but she kept it up. I finally just said, "I am losing my son tonight, can we please not fight"... and that finally shut her up.

Eric came back with the ticket and said that we could negotiate how I would pay them back. Sandra piped right in and said that we aren't negotiating anything, that I was going to pay them back rag rag rag. Jimmy had to go potty, so Sandra went away. Eric said again that we could negotiate... I told him that she was just being hateful. She didn't say much from then on...

We decided to say goodbye there on the curb, since I had an hour and a half wait for my flight. So I took Jimmy and walked away for awhile and had to compose myself to talk to him. I told him that I loved him no matter what even though I wouldn't be able to see him very often. I really think he understood what was happening, because when I said will you come see me at Christmas he replied with a sad little, "yeah". After about 5 minutes I went and handed him to Sandra and turned and walked away. That was a very difficult thing to do.

I had a whole lot of "go away" written on my face through the rest of the trip home. The flight didn't leave Ontario until 9:30, and I had a stopover in Las Vegas for another hour and a half. Mom lent me her gameboy so I was playing that in the airport with all of the slot machines and whatever clanging and bleeping all around me. I got to Salt Lake airport at 3 AM, and got home at almost 4:00. I called and left a message on my managers voicemail informing him that I would be late and went to bed.

The next day at work was not fun... I archived myself in my office and did my best to be left alone.

I am doing okay all things considered, but I think it is going to take me awhile to get back to where I am enjoying life again. I went bowling Friday and sent my average into the hoinker. I haven't bowled that bad in a long time.

I want to thank all of you for your support and well wishes through this, it is very much appreciated. Even though its hard to know what to do or say in a situation like this, just being there usually does the most good.

Keith and Belinda, thank you for letting me stay there with you. That meant a lot to have some moral support there during the hard part.

Have a Merry Christmas everybody... I'll talk to you later.
****

Bowling With The Bug

Several years ago, I bowled on a bowling league with people from work, and would sometimes take the Bug with me.

He loved to see the pins fly and would do his own pretend bowling. He walked up to the foul line (without a ball), stood there for a second or two, then flung his right arm up in the air, then ran back.

One day, he had to have bowling shoes like dad. I went to the counter and the smallest size they had was a size 9, the Bug wore size 3. I got them anyway. The shoes were so big that I put his feet in there with his regular shoes still on. They looked like clown shoes, but he was happy.