To any and all who stumble upon this post, Happy Holidays! I have just finished my Festivus celebration and am looking forward to a nice Christmas Weekend. I hope that this past year has given you a reason to smile, frown, laugh, cry, work and play. Do everything you do with passion and as if it would be your last chance. You never know.

As the winter continues to dredge on after another long, boring, and predictable NASCAR season, I find myself longing for some real racing. I am currently enjoying last summers British and German Touring Car races on Speed Channel. This is what we really need here. The racing is good. There are both left and right turns. The cars are not ridiculous and you may actually own one. And it feels like a really cool event to watch, not just the place to be.

That is one thing I have never understood about the American sports fan. Is it the fact that we are all hudled into one giant mass of humanity that make these events great? We go to massive football stadiums, have huge video boards every where and go to be seen rather than watch the game. Has NASCAR become that? It was great in the 90’s when you had to search out the race and gear from your favorite driver. Now, I can’t go anywhere without seeing something to buy that is branded from NASCAR.

Or am I becoming to complacent in my fandom? If it isn’t greatness I don’t want to waste my time. The “highlightifiication” of the sports fan. Show me the shiny exciting bits and screw the rest. I don’t think so. I am longing for competition, not drama. The can be one in the same but not always. The drama of making the chase is not that competitive after mid August. I may be rambling but I really don’t know how to put my finger on what is bugging me with this. I want to enjoy motorsports. I do enjoy it in many ways, and maybe it is that I enjoy racing that is not a combination of a 500 mile drag race with pit stops.

So here is some highlights of WRC (rally cars) that I wish we could get some of this over here. Truly talented drivers….

If you have ever tried using Flock, it has some cool features. I find myself wanting more though. I use Seesmic as my twitter/Facebook interface and it work beautifully and I was hoping that with Flock they would have improved on their interface within the browser and sadly I was wrong. For those who haven’t tried it, the best way I could describe it is an attempt to bring usability into a browser that plug-ins and apps are usually used for. From within the browser you can set up photo/video uploader, blogs, twitter Facebook, and al. The concept is brilliant but it lags in updates to the twitter client and the photo uploader bogs my old machine down. So I suggest using good old Firefox and installing the plugins (or not) to get what you need the way you want it.

Flock in concept is a great idea, for me it just slows me down. Good effort, but I will pass, again.

Love,

P

I am so wanting to blog more often I have been looking for ways to make it easier. Flock was the thing that got me going earlier and finally I have returned to it after seeing it recommended for Linux machines and I have jumped back on. It is running better than before and I am going to give it a real workout over the next few days.

Since I have deleted all of my social media accounts I don’t know if anybody will even read this but it will make me feel better if I would explain what is going on. A loved one seems to have an issue with my phone going off and me getting on the computer to Twitter or update my Facebook account to the point of me not even wanting to do it anymore. I deleted my Twitter account on Sunday I think and deactivated my Facebook shortly after that. It has been very quiet as far as my phone going of and at least 2 more hammers that were used to beat me into submission are retired.  I hate that this is happening but I cannot get over the fact that it keeps getting brought up and that they think I am playing F’ing Farkle 8 hours a day instead of working and there is no way to convince them otherwise, I just cut off the source. So there is the explanation, it sucks and I am not happy about it but hopefully this person will understand that everything I enjoy does not mean I can’t live without it. I have all ready stopped blogging regularly, a podcast that I really enjoyed doing whether anybody listened or not, and now Twitter and Facebook. Soon I will probably shut off texting on my phone and go back to dial up. By the way, they still have their Facebook account so enjoy.

Having just completed the month of July and the break-neck flurry of acticities that the first two month of summer break have me physically and mentally exhausted, I have been reflecting on the way things were when I was in school and the way things are now.

The major difference that I notice as the father of 3 ages 16, 10, and 4 is the dependency on others to entertain them. I don’t know when that happened but it seems as if they cannot find things to entertain themselves that do not require adult assistance. We have swimming classes, ice skating, tee ball, and color guard scheduled throughout the summer and they are fun things that they enjoy doing. The down time is the killer. My wife prepared the “Bored Box” that has small peices of paper with tasks on them that will be drawn when the phrase, “I’m bored” or “there is nothing to do”. THis was implemented early in the summer and has only been utilized a few times.

When I was a kid we would find our freinds on our bikes and start playing whatever from morning til night. We got into trouble, had a ton of fun, and actually enjoyed having nothing to do but hang out. With my kids it is a constant deluge of “Can we go to Hawaiian falls?” “Can you take me to Six Flags?” “Can you do something with me?” Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy doing all those things. I wouldn’t have ok’ed the purchase of season passes for thiose places if I didn’t, but I like to go on my terms. The last thing I want to do after working 8 hours with an hour in traffic each way is drive up to Six Flags and hang in lines with folks that have been in the 100 degree heat all day and all you can smell is BO and funnel cakes. If you are not 100% on board with dealing with all that, it can suck the life right out of you. Watching them have fun is great, standing in line with them for 45 minutes for a ride that isn’t all that great after the 50th time you ride it, not so much. Hawaiian Falls is much closer but it has it’s issues with the mere fact that it is a water park. Kids everywhere, shade that is overwhelmingly crowded with hot and sweaty humans that are eating whatever as they sport the awkwardly small (not in a good way) swimming attire. I am guilty of this as I have a few extra pounds but my suit is not that small. Proportion, people, remember proportional attire. 550 lbs tattooed hispanic does not equeal a 38 inch waistband with elastic so taught his lower extremeties look like an atlas. It can be a blast if the heat is bearable and the crowd is not too bad, but if it is overcrowded the wave pool look like a back yard plastic pool full of 16000 minnows. For the good of it all we are learning how to manage the time well so we miss the times that things are bad so we have good experiences most of the time.

I pointed out to my daughter the other day that what she did on Friday and Saturday, would consist of an entire summer vacation for some. Going to Hawaiian Falls on Friday and Six Flags on Saturday in which we got to see Jesse McCartney in concert, would be a busy vacation for us back then. I only remember one time that we went anywhere of note. Most of the time we would go visit relatives and enjoy whatever local flavor was there. Not that we didn’t have a great time, but it was just different.

I have once again had a moment that has changed my life. I finally got a new phone that does more than answer calls. My wife and I upgraded just last week. She got the LG Xenon and I got an LG Vu. I have become more productive and more distracted at the same time.
The only thing similar to what I am experiencing was when we got a DVR. It transformed the way we watch TV. This thing is changing how I do everything.
It is more of a PDA than I have ever had. I have the ability to take photos,video, and all that good stuff. Here’s an interesting tidbit. We don’t have a data plan. My friend is telling me that when that happens it will change me even more. I am excited and afraid. Should I be?

It has been a very busy and productive spring. My work has relocated to a new hangar and we actually had more tech issues than I was prepared to deal with. Now that i am back in the swing of things I wanted to post what has been going on. To my brother, Andy, I am very sorry that I have not been able to do the show or post any thing at FTHTTT. I have been going so fast with Tee Ball, Color Guard, and other kid related activities by the time I get home I have totally forgot about it and it is too late to get online and get it done. To be honest i have not even had the chance to watch any racing, let alone form an opinion.
I have been working on learning about the open source movement and putting as much of it to work as i can get my hands on. I have created an ubuntu laptop now and am really enjoying it. I have a dual boot vista/ubuntu machine at home now and am loving it.

It has been a while since I last wrote and I am having a seriously crappy day. Things are beginning to happen around here and people are starting to realize the things I have been trying to bring to their attention actually need their attention. So I am getting looks like why didn’t you handle this when I give them the answer that Ihave been waiting on you to decide and it is really frustrating. Then I get routers and access points that have minds of their own. And now the computer that I actually do work on is acting crazy so as I wait for AutoCAD to uninstall so I can clean install it again I reach for the laptop and relieve some stress. I think I should watch a movie or something tonight,

Sorry for the gap in posts. Things have been happening quickly around here. We have had family emergencies, new offices in which I (the default IT department) had to setup everything from cat5 connectors to printers to phones. But I guess that is job security, maybe.

If you have read my post in the past you know that I have been diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia. Then after trying a medication that worked well I was told that the insurance would not pay for the prescription. After consulting the doctor who gave me some other solutions that were similar to what I had all ready been doing. I went to the VA and got the prescription filled by just showing the doctor my results and talking with him. Nothing too it.

I have been taking it for 3 days now and I feel better and worse. I was drinking 5 or 6 cups of coffee a day just to stay awake. Well, now I have to cut that back and the headache is starting to bother me. The mention of drinking decaf makes me cringe. I have also noticed that I become irritable in the evening. I don’t know if that is the medicine wearing off or a sign that I need to go to bed. I am fighting through it but I don’t want to bother my family. Over the last 2 days I have managed to more done than I would in a week.

My wife has been working on the flower beds and it really looks nice. She has great ideas on what to do with the little area that we have. I know she likes doing that but she seems very frustrated while doing it and I can’t figure that out.