Jason Moran

New Qualities of Potential Terrorists

2011-04-04T15:56:00.005-05:00

Are you a domestic terrorist? You probably are if you have any of these qualities according to this:

Expressions of libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)

Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership, holding a CCW permit)

Survivalist literature (fictional books such as "Patriots" and "One Second After" are mentioned by name)

Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)

Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)

Religious views concerning the book of Revelation (apocalypse, anti-Christ)

Expressed fears of Big Brother or big government

Homeschooling

Declarations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties

Belief in a New World Order conspiracy

Happy Birthday Kelly

2009-02-12T10:59:00.002-05:00

It's bragging time.

My wife makes a homemade dinner 5 nights a week - and she's a really good cook. When there aren't any leftovers in a Tupperware container for lunch at work, Kelly usually sneaks downstairs while I'm brushing my teeth to make me a sandwich and pack me a lunch. I'm...pretty messy. Somehow I have no natural sense of my own filth, but my wife manages to put up with me and clean up after me as I leave a disastrous path through the house.

Everybody's wife/husband/child is the "most beautiful", but just check that picture out - my wife actually is.

Thank you, Kelly, for the wonderful 9.5 years we've had together. Have a happy birthday and remember that you are my favorite and I love you!

Best Albums of 2008

2009-02-05T11:10:00.003-05:00

The “top albums of 2008” is obviously a matter of opinion. I am not a well-regarded and highly-heralded music critic. I really don’t care what kind of music you listen to either. Therefore, I have decided to rate the music I listened to in 2008 on the Jason Awesomeness Meter. I took the top 8 albums ranked by how much they *JAM*.

Metallica – Death Magnetic
Girl Talk – Feed The Animals
Santogold – Santogold
Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
TV on the Radio – Dear Science
Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
Kanye West – 808s and Heartbreak

Metallica caught me by surprise with one of their best albums of their career. For those that care I would rank the Metallica albums in this order:

Master of Puppets
...And Justice For All
Death Magnetic
TIE: Black Album and Ride The Lightning
Load
Garage, Inc
The rest of them are in no particular order and are not really my favorites

Girl Talk is actually a Biomedical Engineer named Greg Gillis from my Alma Mater (Case Western Reserve University). At first listen it sounds like a mash-up record...and maybe it is. If so he is the best at it. In much the same way you might have a 13 year old cousin named Jared that is a "guitar player" but I'm sure he's no Jimmy Hendrix. That's the rift between Girl Talk and any other mash-up artists.

Biggest Disappointment
Rise Against - Appeal To Reason.
Not that I didn’t like it - it was actually pretty good. I just had such high hopes after the wonderful “Sufferer and the Witness”.

EP of the Year
It's a tie between State Fair - Change and Emery - While Broken Hearts Prevail
State Fair is a local band (to Cleveland) but they deserve national attention because they are truly that good.

RANT: Entitlement Is NOT Your Right

2009-01-08T10:43:00.003-05:00

Some things make my blood boil. Boiling blood typically leads to a rant.

Hey all of you "Gen Y"ers or whatever you are called. The 25-and-unders of the world. Those born after 1984, the later the worse. Listen up: You are NOT entitled to just about anything.. I know you think you are, but you are wrong. You are not guaranteed happiness, you are only guaranteed the pursuit of it. The government is not your long lost rich grandparents that will sweep your problems under the rug if you slack off or screw things up. By simply being alive in the United States, you do not necessarily get a free place to live. You do not get to reap of the nation's bounty and eat to your fill. It is not any government's job to take care of your children. School is not a daycare. Even if you stay at home with the kids, the government should not pay you to babysit your own.

Life is hard! Grow up and realize your own personal responsibility! It is the fault of nobody else that you did not study in school and now you aren't qualified for a high paying job. If you got pregnant at 16 years old - buck up and realize it is your responsibility and you really should have just left your panties on. Whoopsie.

What happens when 30 million elderly and needy are on so much expensive medication and hospitalization that Medicaid and Medicare starts costing the government 30 or 40% of the money it can possibly provide? Guess what? It's almost there. At some point the government can't just put a band aid on everything to make it all better. You can wait until the entire system collapses or you can cut out a little bit of what everybody seems to feel entitled to. Is it harsh? Yes - but better than the long-term alternatives.

Let's get back to the modern-day high schoolers and the even younger brats. Don't tell me about the exceptions, there are exceptions to every stereotype. Mommy and daddy don't have to get you everything. You actually don't need a cell phone - and you definitely don't need a texting package. You don't need brand name clothing to survive. Owning every video game system and game gives you bragging rights, but it is a lucky privilege. Driving a car is a privilege, not a right. Go cry about it - nobody is gonna get you a freaking pony.

What about schools that no longer post "Honor Roll" boards on the walls of the school because it will make Johnny or Suzy depressed that they couldn't make the grades. Boo-hoo. Sports that don't keep score so there aren't any losers. Now nobody has any motivation to achieve anything. Now nobody gains any character because apparently the average human has become too frail over the past couple of decades to handle any sort of hardship. If there are no losers then there are no winners. If nobody wins then there's no point to even playing. No wonder the masses are full of unmotivated zombies that aimlessly wander through "life". Everything has become ambiguous and numbed, dulled and jaded. Get off your lazy butt and doing something useful for once.

I'm Nestaron, What's Your Elvish Name?

2008-12-18T12:45:00.003-05:00

I always love the way elvish names sound in movies and books such as the Lord Of The Rings. As it turns out, many names have an elvish version. I looked them up for my wife and I:

Kelly Warrior Maethoriel (My-thore-ee-ell)
Jason Healer Nestaron (Nehs-TAR-on)

Elvish female names
Elvish male names

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been busy. I was gonna post all kinds of neat stuff about Obama and McCain and Social Security and taxes and welfare and income redistribution and pay systems and free-loaders and banks and no proof of income loans...but I never got around to it all and it really isn't as interesting any longer.

Market Predictions From Grandpa

2008-10-23T09:27:00.007-05:00

Grandpa Bouchard stopped in town yesterday seemingly to rave about the stock market, cycles, charts, patterns, and the idiots of the world. Grandpa is retired now, but he has been a broker among a myriad of other things. He has spent 10-16 hours per day for 60 years researching the market - and he has some pretty strong opinions.

He said just about everything fits into one of 16 (or so) patterns and it is so easy to predict what will happen next if you identify the right pattern.

One of them is a depressionary cycle that was supposed to hit a year ago. He told us to get our money out of the market and even to get it out of banks. He was a year off, but it was a 240 year cycle leading into a depression that he identified quite a while ago and it is hard to get down to exact dates when the cycles are that big. Of course it is cool that his predictions are starting down the path that he felt they would, but if he continues to be correct then things will get far more scary than they are now.

Grandpa told me (with crazy eyes) WAIT FOR GOLD TO HIT $650. As in, he's positive gold will continue to drop in price at least to $650 per ounce. Once it does then I should buy up gobs and gobs of it because it will go through the roof for years and years.

So, why are precious metals dropping in price even though demand is through the roof? Have my lessons in economics been a complete waste? He says this: Hedge funds and the other very large owners of gold and silver have to sell now because they need cash to stop the bleeding - that is helping to drive the price down over demand because they are bigger players. They should be all sold out soon which is when those with demand (regular people) will start getting their hands on it...and when prices will skyrocket.

Overall Grandpa B is worried about having almost anything sitting in the stock market as a whole. He is actually serious when he says this will be a Great Depression unlike the 1929-1932 time period. He thinks nearly every financial institution will collapse and he has asked my cop dad which gun he should purchase to protect his home from the crazies in the coming years.

"A depression is when money goes back to it's rightful owner". - Grandpa Bouchard

Unfortunately my grandpa thinks things will get far more difficult than I can imagine (with me being 28 years old and never having lived through difficult times during my lifetime). However, he believes the U.S. will fair better than most of the rest of the world. Sure, there was a housing bubble in the U.S. with home prices going up an average of four times their value over some number of years I can't remember. However, over that same period England's home prices went up 12 times, Ireland 20+ times! Most countries went up a similar amount. So, if a $100,000 house in the U.S. drops down to it's real value at $25,000 that's pretty tough to deal with. However, in Ireland that $100,000 would drop down to about $4,000! My head would asplode.

Deleveraging, Depressions, and Bailouts Oh My!

2008-10-03T14:17:00.003-05:00

I hate those greedy, evil and selfish banks as much as you do. This predicament is a terrible spot to be in. However, do you want to have another depression? The depression was the result of a "do nothing" policy. The government never stepped in and things were pretty bad for a while. They would have been worse if a world war didn't start up after a few years.

Anyway, $700b bailouts suck, too. I've been paying my mortgage and other debts, so why should I take on more to cover the sorry louts that can't pay up (and to cover the banks sorry behinds for ever approving them in the first place!).

However, have you ever heard of The Paradox of Deleveraging? The same principal carries in the opposite direction. If *I* am thrifty then *I* save money. However, problems happen when *everybody* does the same thing. If *everybody* suddenly becomes thrifty then they do not save money! By spending money I am providing somebody else's paycheck. If everybody stops buying things then *I* do not have a paycheck because of how everything interacts. The paradox of deleveraging is similar because it isn't one or two banks failing - it is all of them!

The third option that isn't being talked about is nationalization a la Sweden a few years back. Not everybody is a fan of it, though. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are already pretty much nationalized...so why not some more financial institutions? I haven't come to a conclusion on this one yet.

-<---------->-

I did want to say that the powers that be are finally checking into the silver market. It seems that when demand is through the roof, supply is pretty much gone, yet prices go down it raises some eyebrows.

Great Depression II

2008-09-19T11:30:00.004-05:00

In the 20s and 30s W.W.I was simple the World War. Maybe we'll start referring to 1929-1932 as G.D.I because it was simply the first of it's kind.

I don't want to be a doomsday nutcase, but I am deeply scared about the world we live in. I'm not scared of life ending - I'm scared about catastrophic economic collapse. Something that can shake the world more than a 10.0 earthquake, a worldwide wipe out of retirement savings, financial institutions, and debt/credit.

Grandpa Bouchard, my mom's dad, was nearly vibrating a few months back because he was so excited about the massive collapses he predicted would be coming in the near future. He was never specific, but he felt like many banks would fail and we might just see times not-so-different than those during the Great Depression. He was envious that I was young enough to experience it, learn from it, and make it out on the other side someday. I guess it is possible that much of what is remaining of his retirement savings could get wiped out. I certainly hope not because if that turns out to be the case then the Average Joe will be in a much worse predicament.

I was reading a few articles and they didn't scare me - but that's because I already scared myself by wildly speculating what could happen.

So many of the banks out there are interconnected such that the rapid failing of a few could bring down the whole lot of them. The Fed pretty much had to bailout AIG a few days ago. If they didn't I think things could have quickly become exponentially worse.

It's no wonder my favorite commodity (silver) has spiked (along with gold, oil, etc) - these things are considered "safe" thus many are buying them up because they don't know exactly what stock will lose them their life savings next. At least gold and silver have a REAL value to fall back on...

Convincing You About Silver

2008-09-15T09:47:00.003-05:00

It doesn't seem like you are all convinced that silver is a good thing yet. Think again.

I already presented my case by showing that industrial use is growing every year (after all, silver is the most reflective, conductive, (etc) of the pliable precious metals). The world's existing supply has nearly been depleted. One of the richest sultans or oil czars out there could actually buy all of the known silver in the world (if they wanted to). Very little silver exists, it's as simple as that.

However, that article I linked to has something even more interesting to say:

Let me state that clearly - one (maybe two) U.S. bank holds a net 36% share of the entire COMEX silver market. The same one or two U.S. banks hold 82% of the total commercial net short position. This is a concentration that is unprecedented; maybe double or triple or more what the Hunt Brothers held on the long side in 1980. Without these, one or two traders, there would hardly be any commercial silver short position at all. This makes the big concentrated short a danger to everyone, including the market itself. That’s why the regulators must act now.

This bank(s) will probably go out of business (is it JP Morgan/Chase?) because it will simply not be able to buy out all of the shorts it now owns. That may not make perfect sense to you, but this is a way to sort of think about it: One unlucky bank owes the world massive amounts of the not-readily-available silver, and when push comes to shove it will simply be unable to pay up. When it makes the attempt silver's value in dollars should sharply increase.

The gamble is worth it! Worst case it's an even trade, best case you make a pile of money.

Mosaic Game

2008-08-18T13:21:00.005-05:00

Here is what you do--

1.) Type your answers to each of the questions below into the Flickr search engine.
2.) Pick an image from the first page only (I even tried to go with the first photo on most of mine)
3.) Copy and Paste the URLs for each image into Mosaic Maker.
4.) Save your mosaic to your computer and upload it into your own post.

1.) What is your first name?
2.) What is your favorite food?
3.) What high school did you go to?
4.) What is your favorite color?
5.) Who is your celebrity crush?
6.) What is your favorite drink?
7.) What is your dream vacation?
8.) What is your favorite dessert?
9.) What do you want to be when you grow up?
10.) What do you love most in life?
11.) What is one word to describe you?
12.) What is your flickr name? (or a common handle you've gone by)

I stole this idea from Angela

Silver Spoons

2008-08-08T09:01:00.003-05:00

"[Silver] was politically demonetized beginning in 1873 and ending in the late 1930s when Roosevelt's silver manipulations forced China off the silver standard. Removing all that monetary demand for silver naturally made it lose value against gold, and rising industrial demand could not yet soak up the excess supply."

It makes you wonder whether the United States is as rich as it is because it went off of both the gold and silver standard. Maybe the fact that America started living off of credit and fiat money (money that the government mandates is legal tender but really has no actual value) gave it the leverage to spring ahead of everybody else. However, we all know that fiat money can have the bottom fall out from under it (see the Japanese Yen in 1989 - it is still recovering. I wonder if it was smart in the short run (of 100 years or so) but dumb in the long run. Sure I can buy expensive houses, cars, jewelry, and great stuff on credit - but that doesn't mean I can afford that debt and continue living that far above my means in the long run.

Historically gold was more expensive than silver because there was 8 to 12 times as much silver as gold. I don't know if anybody has been paying attention, but we've already mined 95% of the worlds surface silver. Nowadays there is 7 times as much gold as silver! Also, silver has a rising demand every year because it has an ever increasing industrial use. In other words we have used 90% of the worlds surface silver in the past 100 years and we are using more every year, yet it still doesn't cost very much.

The government wanted us off actual bullion (silver, gold, etc) as currency so it forced us to use worthless paper money instead. It's an "agreement" that the government has forced upon us. When we run out of money, the government simply prints more. I feel like we've been living in a land of make believe our whole lives and somebody is just going to stop playing the game sometime soon. We're living in the money Matrix and I've just figured out the facade that has been in place this whole time. There is no dollar.

Is it possible that the dollar (well, all of the world's fiat money) could collapse? I mean, do you understand that at a point in time the paper money we had were representations of actual bullion (silver or gold) that was held in a safe repository somewhere (like a bank)? Paper money exactly represented trading gold/silver for other goods or services. Now it is simply paper money that represents...uh...well, the government tells us it has legal value. Dimes and quarters used to have 90% silver in them and were roughly equal in value to the precious metals inside. In 1965 they changed half dollars from 90% to 40% silver and most other coins were filled with worthless metals. Let's just say that coins prior to 1965 are worth a bit more than face value.

Anyway, I haven't plunged into this yet, but I plan on grabbing up all kinds of silver and perhaps gold since it never really loses value. It fluctuates in the market, but over time it is more dependable and stable than almost any other commodity. In the long run your pile of silver and gold can be traded for more and more of the increasingly worthless money we use to buy things with.

1-2-Many

2008-07-14T15:26:00.003-05:00

So, there's an African tribe that doesn't count using numbers (the Pirahas). They have a word that means "one or two", a word that means "four or five", and a word that means "many" or "a lot". In other words, they never directly count or say exact quantities of items.

This guy says it the best - and I know it's a really long quote to read through, but it's funny and interesting and it explains how baboons use the same counting system:

So, I grew up on a Bushveld Farm in Africa.

And, as one does on farms in the raw, one must maintain a system of control... over baboons.

Experience taught the farmers how to deal with baboons, as a necessity towards having a harvest- baboons are quite destructive you see.

The first method is by catching one using the 'pumpkin' trick. Quite easy:
Tie down a pumkin, make a hole in it just big enough for a baboon hand to slip in and wait.

The baboon will come along and stick his hand into the pumpkin, grab a handful and then try to remove his hand... but as an empty hand can go in, the clenched fist cannot get out... baboon does not want to let go... and is therefore stuck. Then you paint the fellow white, and let it go. The returning baboon will scare the living daylights out of his tribe and they will disappear for a while.

The other method... well... shoot a couple and the farm will be avoided for a LONG time.

It is not as easy as one would think to hunt baboons, firstly, as they have very effective watch..err.. watchmen (Bobejaan-brandwag) who will sound the alarm as soon as they spot people with guns. The trick is as follows (works for Maize fields):

If one man walks into the field, and hides, the baboons stay away.

If two goes in, and one comes out, they stay away.

If three goes in and two comes out... they stay away...

But if four goes in and three comes out... they seem to think that many went in and many left... all right to plunder. (ok, know it should be 'feed', but we live in a relative universe!)

We used to tease and say "1-2-many" is how baboons count. So, imagine my puzzlement when I saw that there are... well... humans living by a similar system!

Salary Vs Contracting: The Other Side Of The Fence

2008-07-08T11:28:00.003-05:00

I thought I'd revisit Salary Vs. Contracting now that I'm back in a salaried job.

I have now worked an even amount of hourly, salary, W-2 contracting, and 1099 contracting.

My overall take on it is this: I want to do pure 1099 contracting if I can help it at some point in the future...but I am enjoying the perks of a salaried job while I can.

I haven't gotten paid for holidays in years, and it is really nice to still get a full paycheck for 3 and 4 day weeks. I don't have any vacation days yet, but when I do and I take my vacation it will be awesome to not take the "double hit". When you are contracting it is a double hit because you pay lots for your vacation and you come home to no pay for the time you took off.

However, let me explain why the 1099 route is the best way in my personal opinion (for software developers). First of all, you don't 1099 under your personal name. You create a corporation (LLC, S-Corp, etc). The business at the front end is the key to the whole thing.

Since you are working for this newly created business you can pay yourself for your work and for rent (because you have to do your work at some physical place). Then you get to write off your computer, supplies, travel, and all kinds of other things on your taxes. Plus, it provides legal protection. If you did something stupid like break a non-disclosure agreement they can't sue the pants off of you directly, they would be suing your company.

Before I continue with a few more good 1099 points, let me tell you some of the bad. Your taxes are way more complex, so you'd better hire an accountant. You'll have to do some payroll stuff for yourself and any other employees you have, including their taxes and sending off IRS paperwork. Some of your clients won't pay, or at least not in a timely manner. Sure, you might make 30,000 dollars, but what if they give that to you in 5 months in a single payment? Can you survive until the check shows up? One last thing, you need to pay double taxes (employer and employee portions).

Anyway, the last couple 1099 pros: You generally make a bit more than salary/normal contracting so that covers your extra taxes and then some if you are writing off enough on your taxes. You can hire other people to do the work for you. Lastly, you can work on your own terms.

Let's say you are busy at a client but company ABC wants you to redo their website for $8K. You don't have the time. However, you ask your website-savvy buddy that wants to moonlight a little how much he thinks he could redo the site for. He says he could redo it for about $4K, but in case anything unexpected comes up it could max out at $5K. You take the contract, let your buddy do it, pay him worst-case-scenario $5K and bank $3K just for setting the whole thing up. You can't do that if you are working directly for an employer.

All that being said, I'm happy where I am at my salaried job right now.

Go Ahead, Chop My Hand Off

2008-07-02T12:05:00.002-05:00

I love wacky science and health stories. A guy chopped half of his finger off and it grew back.

Using some cellular matrix powder made out of pig's bladder like some sort of magical pixie dust the dude just sprinkled it on his stump and the finger grew back in a few weeks.

I can't wait until they start growing back amputated legs or tossing a third arm on people. Yo, doc, my liver's going bad can you grow me a new one? Thanks, bro.

I wonder if we can use a sport star's tissue to grow near-superhuman legs/etc for next gen soldiers?

Implants? No, these are natural. Naturally somebody else's, but still natural.

The possibilities are sort of crazy.

Beware of the New World Order

2008-06-26T11:17:00.004-05:00

I have always been interested in all of the conspiracy theories and ghost stories surrounding the Illuminati, the Free Masons, and the New World Order. That triangle eye on top of the pyramid on the back of the one dollar bill has ties to the Illuminati/Free Masons. In fact, if you dig into it, the Illuminati has many strong ties going way back into American history.

The New World Order "is a secret shadowy cabal of Illuminati elites who secretly run all the banks and the governments and the big corporations", at least according to some website I read.

This stuff gets really crazy and full of conspiracies the more you dig into it. The conspiracy theorists believe The Bilderberg Group is trying to institute a globalist New World Order. Most of the US Presidents have attended Bilderberg Group meetings or are members of the "Behemian Club" (also called Bohemian Grove). The "Bohemians" are the most exclusive men's club / fraternity in the Western Hemisphere. It's "a Who's Who of corporate board members, bankers, entertainers, faded literati, world-class politicians, and heads of government."

Every July at Bohemian Grove, California (on the south shore of the Russian River) is a commencement ceremony called the "Cremation of Care". The club's mascot is burned in effigy to a 40-foot owl god (Moloch) which symbolizes a freedom from care. The wild story is there are rumors that they do a human sacrifice there (it is very well protected).

The Grove has a Shakespearean motto: "Weaving spiders come not here." Not many details are known about discussions or agreements that have been made in the grove, but one example is the "1967 agreement by Ronald Reagan, over a drink with Richard Nixon, to stay out of the coming presidential race – have helped mould America’s destiny." ~ Maclean’s Magazine, March 23, 1981.

I won't go into much more here, but the conspiracy theorists have tied the Free Mason's to the occult and have tied major politicians and prominent figureheads and decision-makers to Illuminati clubs. I'm not saying any of this is true - but if it is then should we be scared?

Time Travel Paradoxes Part 1

2008-06-18T14:58:00.002-05:00

If it was 3 AM during my freshman year of college and I was NOT drunk at a party, chances are a few of us engineering nerds at Case were debating about time travel, black holes, or some such pseudo-science / pseudo-mind-fsk topics. My favorite was when we would – scientifically mind you – argue the possibilities and paradoxes surrounding time travel.

We’ve all heard the problem with going back in time to kill either yourself or your parents. It has to be impossible because then the future you that just did it would not exist and it could never have happened in the first place. It’s to time travel what divide by zero is to math. It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s a freakin paradox.

What if the universe, by some great cosmic force, course corrected for the changes that you made in time. What if it is more intricate than you thought it could be? Sure, you stepping on the butterfly changed the wind such that the storm hit a different city across the world which caused a different guy to skid in the rain and run over a woman bearing the child that would have grown up to lead the fight against our robot overlords in 2042. So, instead that cosmic force rearranges a few inconsequential things to raise a DIFFERENT robot overlord fighting hero. Is that possible? What would the limits be on such a force? What if you knew what the force either had to do or what it planned on doing? Could you escape fate? Could you live forever? I guess it all depends on whether or not such a force even exists.

Consciousness displacement, also called being “dislodged in time” by Kurt Vonnegut who authored Slaughterhouse 5 (good book, also read Cat’s Cradle if you get a chance), is when your whole being isn’t what travels through time – it is simply your thoughts. This is apparently also what is happening on the television show “Lost” when a few characters suddenly jump between certain times in their own life. Basically think about it this way – you can only jump to a place that you have been at or will be at during another very specific time-space point on the map. However, whatever you knew then is replaced by what you know and are doing now.

Dislodging yourself in time can create brand new paradoxical situations. For example, if I stayed at home because the forecast called for rain but future me jumped back knowing that it never rained and I instead went to the amusement park and got on the roller coaster that fell apart and killed all of the passengers then future me could never have even done it. In fact let’s say I never died, but my experiences changed. Ok, so what happened to all of those memories? They never really happened. Or, is my brain aware of both situations (what really happened the first time and what really happened after I changed things)?

Here I go again…I can think about these things for hours…

Mini-Updates About Jason

2008-06-06T11:58:00.004-05:00

I was going to write a bunch of little meaningless blog posts, but I became more busy than expected and it would have been some boring stuff anyway. Instead I'll jam a few things into one larger and more useless update.

1. Jason, did you get the laptop, PS3, or Xbox 360?
I decided the laptop would be more useful for my career...plus it was tough deciding between a 360 or PS3. Dude, I ended up getting a Dell. It's super gay yellow, 15.4" 1440x1050 resolution, 4 GB RAM, Core2Duo 2x2.0GHz processor, etc. The super gay yellow is probably the best stat if I had to pick just one. Oh, and it came with Vista, which is simultaneously as bad as I had heard yet better in a lot of ways, too.

2. Wresting with my weight
I have always told myself that I would never let myself become fatter than 200 pounds. So, in mid-January when I was at 199.5 lbs, I decided to give myself until mid-June (6 months) to lose 20 pounds (goal of 179.5 lbs). If it proved to be easy then I really wanted to get down to 175.

So, by mid-March I was 188 and things were looking good. In the first week of April I was slowing down - but I made it to 183.5 pounds. But...I don't exactly understand what happened after that. I was still running at least a couple of times per week. I was eating salads and egg whites and skipping cheese and not drinking pop most of the time.

I creeped up over 190 for a little bit but I'm back down to 187 now. I only have 8 days left and I'm 7.5 pounds over my target, so it looks to be impossible now. I won't give up, though. I've been doing sit ups every day for the past 3 days and I plan to continue until June 15th. I'll give the final weight when I get there.

My Dog Sadie Growing Up

2008-05-21T12:26:00.003-05:00

Sadie Fergalicious is nine or ten months old now, so she's about as big as she'll get. The pictures start in mid-October and continue until her newest picture at the bottom. The other dog that looks like her is Trinket, which is Sadie's sister who is owned by my sister Kelly.

Adventures In Wealth Building

2008-05-13T13:33:00.003-05:00

The goal is to be able to retire someday without caring whether social security pays me a dime.

You get there basically by increasing your net worth to the point that you can support your lifestyle via stuff you've saved. Net worth is basically this: Take everything you owe anybody (debt) as a negative. Next take everything you have (cash, 401K, IRA, house, cars, giant bars of gold, etc) as a positive (asset). Put those together and you'll have your net worth.

It's very common for a recent college graduate to have a large negative net worth. To increase it, you have to keep paying off debt while trying to gain less new debt while adding to your assets. I signed up at Net Worth IQ to help me track it over time.

I'm happy to say that I made the switch from negative net worth to the positive side in early 2008. I still have $25K of the $36K of college debt left, and I have a huge amount of mortgage debt - which sucks because I owe more on my house than it is even worth now that homes dropped in value. However, I've been stashing money in a Roth IRA, regular IRA, and a 401K. Plus, I just paid off all of my credit cards and I paid off both of my cars as of last month (I used that tax rebate everybody got to make the final payment!).

I just made it into the positive - so I have a long way to go. I hope to be on track by the time my early 30s hit. Check out this formula to see if you are on track:
AGE: Your current age (you can use decimals to be more exact)
$$: Your annual spending. This is not what you make, this also should not include most of your debt (like student loans). This is today's dollar amount that you spend on living or want to spend (food, travel, clothing, property taxes, car payments). Basically the things you'll be paying when you're an old geezer.

Target NET WORTH = (AGE/166 - 0.15) * AGE * $$

That is what your net worth should be today...based on this semi-common premise: "You will need 20 times what you annually spend to retire at 72".

I'm way behind...where are you at?

New Job!

2008-04-23T09:57:00.005-05:00

Oh man, I never told everybody about my new job! I was working for Harley-Davidson Dealer Systems as a contractor, enjoying my job and definitely not looking for a new position. In fact, my contract was extended and Harley really like me.

Out of the blue Secureach Systems gave me a call and wanted to know if I was interested in a full time (salaried) position.

Being the good contractor that I was and also being content with my current employment I told them "no". However, I'm always a pleaser so I agreed to sit and listen to their sales pitch at their office in Medina, OH. I'm going to skip a lot of details but I was basically able to ask them for what I wanted and they gave it to me because they wanted me to work for them so badly.

So, here I am, out of the contracting world, sitting in an un-air-conditioned room filled with servers (making the room average about 90 degrees). Needless to say, my new building better get their air conditioning working soon. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy. I started a few weeks back - March 31, 2008.

Oh, I'm "Senior Programmer" for now, and somewhere down the road I'll get a new title: "Senior Development Manager". They are a company that makes a product for the health industry. It securely calls patients with test results, appointment reminders, and most importantly it ties the loop together for the doctor's practice so nothing falls through the cracks (so lawsuits are a think of the past and malpractice insurance rates are actually reduced).

PS3 Or Laptop

2008-03-28T13:30:00.003-05:00

Question: Should I get a PS3 or a laptop?

The obvious answer is both, but which one should I get first?

PS3:
I've got this 50 inch 1080p HDTV at home that is wasting its 1080p abilities because even HD channels via cable are only 720p or 1080i (less than 1080p for those that don't know). I can watch DVDs and they look "pretty good", but I've seen a movie or two with HD quality and it's pretty nice. So, if I had a Blu-ray player I could watch 1080p movies. Blu-ray's spec has not been finalized, which means if you buy a player now the movies you buy in a few years might not play. Tech savvy folks like me can fix this buy downloading and installing firmware updates for the "old" Blu-ray player, but the average Joe's only safe Blu-ray bet is to get a PS3 since it will automatically download and install firmware updates if you plug it into the internet.

Anyway, it is probably obvious that I'm mostly considering a PS3 because I want a Blu-ray player. However, fringe benefits are the ability to play Guitar Hero / Rock Band and maybe a few other games now and then.

Laptop:
I don't need to tell everybody that a laptop can do pretty much anything I want it to do. I won't play games on it. I will sit in front of the TV and search on wikipedia when I have a question. I will sit in coffee shops with free wifi and drink trendy drinks. I will watch a movie on my laptop while riding an airplane - because I can. You see, these are all things that I can't do right now because I do not have a laptop.

The most important part of having a laptop is that I can do side work on it. I am a software developer and being able to take my work on the road will help me with possibly starting up my own business or at least doing a little bit of supplemental contracting side work.

The only other argument I might consider is getting an Xbox 360 first, since I like more of the games it has and most HD content will be downloadable within a year anyway. But, you know what? I don't want to download a movie for 3 days before I can watch it.

Somebody Should Invent This

2008-03-13T12:16:00.002-05:00

Somebody just has to invent this stuff.

Flying car.
Cure for the hangover.
Plug-in memory expansions so you can learn useful skills, equations, etc. without sitting through boring lectures and tests.
Beer that makes you skinnier instead of fatter.
Dog-cat hybrid. Like a cat, it doesn't need your attention constantly, but it pays attention when you want it to, like a dog. It's comes when you call it like a dog, but it's clean like a cat. Plus, it barks AND purrs.
Teleporter. I'm sick of commuting.
Eye contact computer displays

Flying car
The main annoyance with personal flying vehicles is that you need to go use airports or similar areas. If landing areas were as common as gas stations and they cost less than a house then this might start gaining acceptance.
Cure for the hangover
If this absolutely HAS to be injected, so be it. Worst case it should take 10 minutes to go into full effect. How have we made it this long - suffering through nausea - without a quick cure?
Plug-in memory expansions
Neo in the Matrix learned kung fu this way, and that used a huge and painful looking plug directly into the spinal cord. I'm sure we can do the same thing in a much less invasive manner.
Skinny Beer
Beer that either has 0 calories and no cancer-causing agents or even makes you lose weight? We can all dream, right?
Dog-cat hybrid
These genetic engineers need to be challenged, so I think this is an obvious benchmark of just how good they are.
Teleporter
This probably has the least feasibility of all of these inventions, but, it would probably be the most awesome. Even if it took a huge power source and it cost double what a plane ticket cost for each use, it would be the best way to get from New York to Japan and back for a business meeting.
Eye contact computer displays
Some basic work toward this has already actually happened. Glasses that project a laser display directly into the iris have been prototyped. Supposedly they can generate a nearly infinite resolution. The problem is you have to wear these clunky glasses to shoot the laser into your eye. Now, if that display was on a pair of contacts, most people would barely be able to tell the difference between you and a non-cyborg.

The idea I have is that it would work in conjunction with a nearby device, maybe a cell phone or PDA type of thing. It could probably have configurable opaqueness and how "far" away it appears to be. However, thinks about the possibilities! If your car has GPS and you forgot where you parked it, you can enable the "Find Car" program which would display the distance to your car and actually LIGHT UP arrows on the sidewalk telling you where to walk to get to your BLINKING and GLOWING car!

A military squadron, FBI, etc can all wear locators and when you walk into a crowded bar or a terrorist base all of your comrades will glow bright green so you don't totally kill them by accident.

Forget What You Know About Taxes

2008-02-26T15:10:00.004-05:00

This is the last entry from the What Would You Do As President? series. Up this time around is:

Revise the tax code to bring fairness and relief to the working/middle classes.

Could that be any vaguer? Revising the tax could mean such a wide spectrum of thought that there’s absolutely no way to cover all of it with any depth in this one post. If I had to boil my thoughts down to a single politician’s views, and please don’t stone me for saying this, but it would be that crazy Ron Paul. Look up a few of his speeches on youtube and you might be surprised. The whole point of Ron Paul is that he is a strict Constitutionalist that thinks there is far too much government and that government has more or less missed the point for far too many years.

Lincoln started taxing to pay for the Civil War, but it was repealed after a few years. Income tax started up again in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional the next year. It came back for good in 1913 with the 16th amendment. Even though the Constitution prohibited direct taxes to individuals, the powers that be decided to make it possible.

Regardless, the key point is not the constitutionality of taxes; the point is that income taxes have only really been around for less than 100 years. If we survived without taxes before, what makes today so much different other than us being satisfied with our present condition? I'd like to argue that everybody could be better off with less, or even no taxes (gasp!).

Maybe it has something to do with our money not being on a standard (like the gold standard). I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I do know that when there is a gold standard the government can’t just print money to fund its spending, so it keeps government spending in check. Plus, it helps keep inflation under control so your money doesn’t become practically worthless in a few years.

So, what is my advice? To completely dump the entire Internal Revenue Service and forget about taxes? Not quite.

Let’s replace personal income tax with a consumption tax.

So, the taxes you pay when you buy stuff increases, but that is what replaces the income tax. In other words, if you buy less stuff you will pay less taxes. Businesses still get taxed separately, but their write-offs would obviously be better considering the inherit tax that goes with all of the products and services supporting their business.

Maybe that’s too crazy, so how about a very low flat tax plus consumption tax.

How about a 5% flat tax on all money earned (and we’ll still throw in a few tax incentives like dependents, mortgage tax adjustments, etc). Since people with a few more bucks will be buying the yachts and the luxury items, the taxes they will be paying will go up according to all of the stuff they spend their money on. I don’t know if these concepts are feasible, so maybe the better place to start is to start cutting out government programs and services since the government just costs way too much money. If we cut out enough, then the taxes we pay will be reduced.

Immigration, Citizenship, and Voting

2008-02-22T13:47:00.004-05:00

One more from the What Would You Do As President? series (I think I'll do one last one after this, maybe). I want to debate the pros and cons of what a few of the denizens of the web think:

English is the national language. You want a government document in something else? Too bad, go to a country that speaks that language.
Build a border-spanning fence. Every 75 miles, have a reinforced entry way in which people are allowed through.
If you get caught in the country illegally, you get thrown out. Today. No questions... you're on the plane. Each time you sneek in, we send you farther away. If you've been here over 5 years and can speak English, you can stay. You're not a citizen. You're on a permanent visa. No voting. If you want citizenship, you can go back to your country and apply like everyone else.
Voting tests. They may have a really bad rap, but that's OK with me. Nothing complex, just some simple stuff. You have to be able to read at a 6th grade level. This discriminated against blacks because it was illegal to teach them to read. These days if you can't read, you can't participate effectively in politics. You also have to pass a ludicrously simple geography test. They will always change so you can't easily be taught to the test. If you can't find Canada on a map, you can't vote in the US.

The basics of what these folks are talking about are a national language (English), adding to the requirements to become a United States citizen, illegal aliens, and reintroducing voting tests.

I don't know how feasible a border-spanning, check-pointed gateway is, but if it was made to be nearly impossible to get over/under/through then I could see it stifling illegal immigration. The only problem would be if the checkpoints were very far away from each other.

I am a native English speaker, and I have to admit that I get pretty annoyed when I call into an automated phone system that will not continue until I pick a language (#1 for English, para espanol - oprima numero dos). If the system always used to use English, why would I have to make a selection before continuing? Shouldn't the system assume that I want to use English and have an option to switch to a Spanish menu? I'm not against the spanish menu option, I'm against forcing me to actively choose English when it should be the expected norm.

As for illegal aliens, I think immediate deportation is a bit harsh because there are some people that were here legally but have had their visa lapse - sometimes out of their control. However, if you were caught working in the U.S. without a visa and you don't get it cleared up in a week, then you have an option of immediate deportation or jail followed by deportation (unless you resolved your visa status while you were in jail). Obviously this goes directly against the thought that non-violent criminals shouldn't be clogging up our penitentiary system, so maybe it's just a large fine that quadruples if you get caught again.

As for voting tests, let's not forget that there is free public education for all. I don't see any persecution or unfairness with extremely trivial voting tests. You should only have to pass it once (perhaps per voting district), and it has to be standardized so it won't become unfair. If you cannot read at a very basic level and / or pass a trivial test then can you be doing anything other than voting either by guessing or being a brain-dead hole-puncher for somebody else that told you what to vote for? The test can be something as easy as this:
Pick the option that is a color:

Magnet
Pencil
Yellow
Fluffy

If you guessed fluffy you can't vote...and you should be shot.

How The Universe Works

2008-02-15T17:05:00.003-05:00

I read this comment on slashdot and it made me laugh:

God made the universe 6,000 years ago. If you do not worship him and subjugate yourself to his will, he will torture you forever. He just put in things like dinosaur bones and black holes to mess with your head, to get you to disbelieve in him, so that he can torture you forever without feeling guilty about it.

He's kinda messed up because he was alone for like, eternity, until he made up some friends in his head, but he's incapable of imagining anything that is actually his peer, so he secretly hates us all for not providing the companionship he needs. That is how the universe works.

I'm a Christian, but I'm still allowed to laugh at this even if I don't believe in it, right? Many of the points the original quoter makes are either directly believed by hardcore fundamentalists or at least are derived or inferred from fundamentally interpreted scripture. Why is it that we (humans) are the glory of God? Why didn't He make some super being like Voltron that would break-dance and give God high fives whenever He leveled up in WOW and play some inter-galactic game of billiards involving planets and suns with? I dunno why, I guess that's why He's God and we're the created?

Legalize Stuff

2008-02-13T15:46:00.004-05:00

This is more from the What Would You Do As President? series. These are all items that I may or may not agree with, but they are pretty interesting to talk about. How about we just start legalizing all kinds of stuff? These are what some people think:

I would legalize hemp for industrial uses. There are so many great industrial uses for hemp that it is absolutely stupid not to be using it.
Legalize ALL drugs (this includes regulation and taxation. Want to end the illegal drug trade? This is the fastest way.)
Pardon and release non-violent drug offenders to help with prison overcrowding - stick 'em with a fine instead.
Reverse laws that punish victimless crimes.

Overcrowded prisons are a fact, so how can we deal with that problem? We could build more prisons...or we could let the ones that won't hurt anybody out. That makes you wonder 'who are the ones that won't hurt anyone?' Speaking in generalities, it would be the ones that did white collar crimes (fraud, etc) and probably drug offenders.

The immediate red flag is that if you don't go to jail for dealing drugs, then it'll get worse and worse. The best response to that is to regulate and tax the living crap out of selling recreational drugs - and to stick a heavy fine on those that do it illegally. Heck, while we're legalizing, regulating, and taxing the entire drug industry, let's legalize, regulate, and tax prostitution because all of that tax money would probably pay for a free universal health plan. Oh, and da ho'z wouldn't need no mo' P.I.M.P.S, fo' shizzle.

Going back to the druggies, I don't even think you'd have to lower the rap sheet implications for continued participation in the illegal drug trade. If it was a felony before, it still is. You just pay a hefty fine instead of doing jail time.

Cannibas Sativa (hemp) has a bazillion industrial uses. It's pretty much as useful as water. Millions of products could be produced from it, and it grows like a weed! Dude!!

I know that I don't agree with doing drugs, but why is there a double standard? Alcohol is a drug and it is legal, regulated, and taxed. Cigars and cigarettes are addictive, give you that 10 second high the first few times you do them, yet you can buy them everywhere. Marijuana is really not much different, so why is it illegal? Or, on the other side of the coin, why is alcohol legal? What about harder drugs? Maybe it's just the really hard and crazy addictive drugs (I'm thinking heroin) that should be illegal. Why are we only allowed to have one legal drug, and everything else will put you in jail?

You know what's weird? I always considered myself on the straight-edge "stick those druggies in jail" side of the equation, but there are too many inconsistencies for me to be happy about the current state of affairs. Besides, I tip a few back now and again, so why should I be allowed to look down upon pot smokers and other drug users unless they have truly destroyed their lives to the point that they have become complete degenerates? Alcoholics can also become degenerates or have little impact on their lives - so why the double standard?

Entitlement and Mandatory Service

2008-01-29T14:14:00.000-05:00

After last night's State of the Union address by George W, I was reflecting on some of the items suggested in my previous post What Would You Do As President?

I want to think about entitlement and mandatory service. The talking points from that post follow:

Social Security and Medicare stop. You can stay on, but if you are under 40... you can forget ever using them. They are entitlement and bankrupting the government
Mandatory civil service. We can talk about giving you college tuition, but you serve. It can be military, or it can be civil (be a meter maid, that's fine with me). You will do something to give back to your country for a little while.
Require all able-bodied citizens between ages 18 and 35 (male and female) to undergo military bootcamp. This is NOT a draft however; after going through bootcamp, you are not required to serve in the military.

It is very obvious that the entitlement programs are bankrupting the government and something, somewhere is gonna have to give at some point.

Bush has one plan: privatize social security savings. The first bullet point simply decides to drop it. It doesn't really provide any details, but I'm sure a complete removal of social security while allowing grandfathered recipients to stay on would cause quite an uproar. Perhaps he means more of a phased diminishing of what we currently know as social security until it gets to a point where it no longer exists as we currently know it.

Medicare/Medicaid is another entitlement program that costs bazillions of dollars. I mean, I guess we don't want all of our nation's seniors to be forgotten and left to die because their medical expenses are too expensive (yes, I know seniors are not the only users of those programs...).

What are the alternatives? Nationalized health care? Privatized Medicare programs? Letting people get sick and die long before they would if health care was provided for them?

I don't even want to get into other entitlement programs like welfare, but let's just say that lots of money gets spent by the government on citizens that put far less into the system than they are now receiving. It's a small case of take from the rich and give to the needy.

How can the government pay for all of it?

It reminds me of JFK when he said "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". When everything is boiled down the government can only do things that it has the resources to do. Those resources come from the people. We usually think of resources as dollars, so that translates to various taxes. However, it could also mean "free" service to the country.

Israel requires all of it's citizens to participate in mandatory military service. That applies to both males AND females. This is addressed by the last two bullet points. Mandatory civil service is a much more realistic concept than mandatory military service so more diverse opportunities would be made available to those required to serve. Mandatory boot camp is a separate but interesting concept. This would actually cost the government more money than it would possibly raise. However, I can immediately see a handful of benefits:

Many boot camp graduates would continue on into the military as inertia would simply make that an obvious choice
All U.S. citizens would have a very basic level of military training. This is important as our borders do not provide an impenetrable barrier to war and terrorism. An attacker that makes it to domestic territory would meet a more ready force if boot camp was mandatory
Fringe benefits of increased structure, respect, and healthy habits

The other option is to have greatly increased taxation levels - much more than today. We are talking at least an extra $1000/person every year. Minimum.

Which choice sounds the best? Eliminating or drastically changing entitlement programs, creating mandatory civil service, or dramatically increasing taxes? Probably some combination, but how would it look?

What Would You Do As President?

2008-01-15T12:43:00.000-05:00

A bunch of people responded to the question What would you do as president of the United States of America?

I compiled a list of some of the interesting responses here (I'll be talking about a few of these in detail in a future post). I don't necessarily agree with all of these, but they are interesting to think about -- even if many are not feasible.

Social Security and Medicare stop. You can stay on, but if you are under 40... you can forget ever using them. They are entitlement and bankrupting the government
Congress now has a term limit. Lets say... 15 years.
Cable lines are nationalized. Comcast et al can lease them from the government. Heck, you can use them for free. We need competition.
Net neutrality is mandatory. If you degrade someone else's service because it competes with your own, you get fined BIG.
Drivers licenses get harder to get and keep. Too many morons on cell phones that need to learn it's not a right.
If you get caught in the country illegally, you get thrown out. Today. No questions... you're on the plane. Each time you sneek in, we send you farther away. If you've been here over 5 years and can speak English, you can stay. You're not a citizen. You're on a permanent visa. No voting. If you want citizenship, you can go back to your country and apply like everyone else.
English is the national language. You want a government document in something else? Too bad, go to a country that speaks that language.
Mandatory civil service. We can talk about giving you college tuition, but you serve. It can be military, or it can be civil (be a meter maid, that's fine with me). You will do something to give back to your country for a little while.
Voting districts are now drawn by computer based on population and area. No more rigging that. You can't do it by race. You can't do it by party affiliation. If the seat isn't competitive, then we change the district to make it more competitive.
Voting tests. They may have a really bad rap, but that's OK with me. Nothing complex, just some simple stuff. You have to be able to read at a 6th grade level. This discriminated against blacks because it was illegal to teach them to read. These days if you can't read, you can't participate effectively in politics. You also have to pass a ludicrously simple geography test. They will always change so you can't easily be taught to the test. If you can't find Canada on a map, you can't vote in the US.
Able-bodied welfare recipients using benefits for greater than 12 months of the previous 4 years lose the right to vote.
You can't get divorced without 6 months of good marriage counseling, preferable faith-based (you choose the faith, obviously). The one exception is abuse. If there is abuse, you can leave today. We'll help. But if you accuse abuse and it is proven that you lied, you're locked up.
Also on the marriage front, you can't get married without at least a few sessions of marriage counseling. Talk about kids, values, in-laws, sex, where you want to live, religion, and everything else. The divorce rate is too high, and I see it as causing too many problems. These last two are designed to help lower that and improve things.
There is a lot I don't like about the education system. We can try many different things to fix that. But if you cause too many problems schools should be able to kick you out. If you are that problematic your parents can educate you (or find someone else to). Stop ruining it for everyone else.
Speaking of schools, let's partially privatize them. Similar to vouchers, the parents of the students can decide semester by semester where to send their kids. Schools get reimbursement based on their popularity and testing rates. Some privatization needs to occur to make education more efficiently run.
If you don't like high school, that's OK, you can quit. As soon as you hit... let's say 10th grade... you can choose. You can continue on college prep (which is what most high schools are at this point) or you can go to a trade school. It's your choice. If you change your mind you can always get your GED later.
File all the lawsuits you want. But if they are proven frivolous, you're paying for court costs (capped to keep things reasonable). You can't sue everyone, hope something sticks, and get away paying nothing anymore.
Reverse laws that punish victimless crimes.
Pardon and release non-violent drug offenders to help with prison overcrowding - stick 'em with a fine instead.
Revise the tax code to bring fairness and relief to the working/middle classes
Legalize ALL drugs (this includes regulation and taxation. Want to end the illegal drug trade? This is the fastest way.)
Require all able-bodied citizens between ages 18 and 35 (male and female) to undergo military bootcamp. This is NOT a draft however; after going through bootcamp, you are not required to serve in the military.
Abolish the two-party system
Erase all censorship from all media...This includes: Internet, Television, print, video games, music, etc.
Build a border-spanning fence. Every 75 miles, have a reinforced entry way in which people are allowed through.
Require that any immigrants that enter the US to be able to speak English prior to being granted citizenship.
Create a program that would be known as "If you can't feed em, don't breed em". Welfare drastically reduces for each additional child, hitting zero additional benefit after the third child.
I would legalize hemp for industrial uses. There are so many great industrial uses for hemp that it is absolutely stupid not to be using it.
Create a new government department who's purpose is to remove, regulate, or severly limit government programs and departments that are unnecessary, outdated, or are full of too much glut. Every government program gets increasingly bloated and expensive as time goes on, and it will continue to do so if there is not revolution or an active force combating it.
Remove all religious persecution on the law books. The separation of church and state means faith-based institutions and leaders do not have direct political power. It has nothing to do with christmas trees, prayer in schools, putting a picture of Ghandi in a walkway, Halloween, or singing songs that may or may not have originated within a specific faith. It comes down to individuals and their beliefs, not institutions regulating these activities.

You can read more at slashdot

Cutting Out The Excess

2008-01-11T15:16:00.000-05:00

So, I don't understand why we have less money every month than the month before. A year ago I had $10K in the bank, 5 months ago I had $3K in the bank, this month I have $17.00 in the bank. If this trend continues I will have a lot of debt collectors bugging me starting next month.

I figured it out.

I create a real budget-- using actual bank / credit card statements to determine what we really spend month to month. Now it all makes sense, here is why we are losing out money:

We spend more per month than we make.

It doesn't feel like we are living lavishly, and we used to have money -- so what changed? My wife stopped working, but we kept on living at the exact same lifestyle.

A cup of Starbucks here and there or a night out for dinner and drinks a few times a week had been adding up to a considerable amount of money. Somehow, without buying cars, HDTVs, or really anything we have found a way to spend more than I earn.

Now it's a big game of cutting out the excess in our lives, making everything efficient, staying home more, going out for coffee less, and figuring out how not to go into debt. Where's Dave Ramsey when you need him?

FUN FUN FUN.

End Of 2007 Update

2007-12-27T15:45:00.000-05:00

I suppose I have to give an update to all of my countless readers every once in a while. Hundreds if not thousands of you may not even know me in real life, so this might be the only chance you'll have to take a peek into my life.

The "big" things are being out of work, the new job, and of course the puppy (which you can sometimes call "puppie", I heard).

I'm a contractor and I certainly unsderstand that there is always a risk that I will find myself lacking enough work to pay the bills. However, I did my due diligence and I had the next thing lined up to start at the end of my previous contract. Mere hours before I was supposed to start the new contract (in reality I think it may have been like five days...) I received a call informing me that all new contracting positions would be suspended until at least the following month. If you can't translate what that meant to me it pretty much meant that the rug got pulled out from under my job at the last second (and some other poor souls as well).

I'll skip the gory details in between then and the final result and I'll just tell you that I eventually managed to find a new contract. Now I'm doing [NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT] and working on [N.D.A.], which obviously sounds super rad and crazy awesome. I mean, how many places have you worked at that regularly have employees wearing as many leather products as the new place I work. Harley-Davidson Dealer Systems has nothing to do with what you all thought at the end of the previous sentence (you have sick and twisted minds!). Anyway, I'm digging the new job as it is challenging, interesting, a growth experience, and it pays more than the last job -- which is pretty much all you can ask for.

I'll still be digging myself out of the oops-I-forgot-to-save-money-for-times-when-I-don't-have-a-contract situation I was in for a long while. While I'm doing so I have a semi-retarded but ultra-cute puppy at home. We asked around and my mom would be the prime candidate to take Sadie when we get rid of her.

The thing about it is we are sort of attached to Sadie and she is getting better at most things. She usually sleeps through the night and doesn't pee on everything all of the time anymore. She listens to a few key commands if she isn't being moody. I'm used to that with my wife, so I already know how to handle that. Plus she doesn't usually pee on things when she gets excited (I'm not sure where my wife stands with that). I'm thinking we'll be keeping Sadie around (my wife, too).

I probably need to throw some pictures up showing how much Sadie has grown (she's 5 pounds now, which is like 2.777 times bigger than any of the other pictures you've seen).

Peace out homies. Stay crunk and shake dem apple bottoms, aight?

The Puppy #2

2007-11-05T15:20:00.000-05:00

The return policy on my new puppy (Sadie) changes the longer you wait to make the return. If you return within a week of the purchase, they give you almost all of your money back. However, if we want to return Sadie now it'll be difficult and we won't really get very much money back.

Plus...we bought her all kinds of stuff.

You're like: RETURN! But she is sooooooo cute!

Dude, you aren't the one that cleans up her poop which is on things she shouldn't poop on.

You aren't the one that has a whiney dog that whimpers and yelps all night long.

You also aren't the one that has a dog that will bite your hands, toes, and eat your clothing and consume entire couches and other furniture.

Plus, she's already doubled her size from our first set of pictures.

However, she has not lost her cuteness, so I don't think I will return her...yet.

We are taking the little stinker to some puppy classes at PetSmart to see if she can't start to learn SOMETHING useful.

Jason Moran Dot Com is ALL NEW!

2007-10-29T10:03:00.000-05:00

Hey, did I tell everybody that I finally got around to updating my main website, Jason Moran Dot Com? I mean, for the most part I took a lot of what was on the old website and moved it to the new "look".

A lot more than that went into it, though. The entire site is now running as an ASP.NET 2.0 web application with lots of AJAX.NET whiz-bang flashy stuff going on. The best part is that I finally designed the site in an easy to maintain way.

Why would *I* care?...

Psssh, cuz now I can update the site 10 times faster which means I will actually update it! Also, one of the cool new things I added was that the home page to the site (the News page) actually displays this Jason Moran blog's posts. So, like, if you wanted to, you could just go to jason-moran.com to read this news.

I have lots of plans for new stuff and enhancements to my website, but those will all come down the line when I start to get free time again (and who knows when that will happen).

The things you should check out on the site:

Write on Jason's Wall
Picture Gallery (like, actually click on a picture and it will go into a full screen mode where you can click on the right-half of the picture to navigate through the entire category)
Remember that you can upload your full quality pictures to the listed categories in Big Pictures.

Sadie Fergalicious

2007-10-17T13:17:00.001-05:00

My wife and I got a new puppy. (By the way, I tried to spell it puppie but a red dotted line appeared under it so I must have been wrong).

Anyway, our new "puppie" is a Toy Fox Terrier / Jack Russell Terrier mix. The little booger came with the name Tori, then I named her Fergie, but since I bought this dog for Kelly she came up with a better name the following day: Sadie. I liked Sadie, but I didn't want to give up Fergie.

With much ado our new puppy is named: Sadie Fergalicious. Check her out...

Alzheimers Might Be Diabetes

2007-10-02T12:35:00.000-05:00

So, research is pointing at Alzheimer's Disease actually being a type of Diabetes (Type 3 Diabetes) because the lack of insulin is what prevents memory from functioning correctly. I read about it here.

I'm worried about it because both sides of my family have a history of diabetes. I don't even know if any of them lasted long enough to worry about Alzheimer's.

I was reading some comments about Alzheimer's and this one really grabbed me. Sorry for the small amount of language--it's a good read overall. I don't know if I could handle it.

You know what's great about Alzheimer's?
You make new friends every day!

Haha, "New friends every day." Get it?! LOL.

It's not so funny when it happens to you or your family. Wait until someone you know gets it. You won't be laughing anymore.

Haha, that guy has a limp. Haha, that woman is blind. Haha, that kid is retarded. Hahaha. Fucking hilarious.

Whatever you do, don't get Alzheimer's disease. It sucks.

My grandmother just turned 94 and has advanced Alzheimer's disease. She can barely walk anymore. I devote a few hours of my life every single day to caregiving. If you've never known someone like this, you really have no idea what's involved. Yeah, we could put her in a home. We could watch her die sooner that way, wearing diapers and ceaselessly, hopelessly calling out for someone to please take her home. As it is now, she wears diapers, but at least we always change them. In nursing homes, they don't.

Have you ever had someone you know and love, who helped raise you and even changed *your* diapers and then helped teach you how to count and how to read and how to do puzzles and math and typing and how to play games, who taught you the names of the plants that grow out in the back yard? And now she can smile and say "Hello", and tell you to get the hell out because she don't know who you are a moment later?

That's Alzheimer's. You can be helping to manage her most intimate financial affairs completely honestly, you can be doing her laundry and getting her medicine and bringing her groceries and cooking her meals and washing her dishes and vacuuming her floors and helping her get to the doctor and even wiping her ass, when she cannot do it herself anymore, and yet she'll still tell you she loves you one night, and the next morning she wants you to go away, go to hell, or just please, please take her home. Because she doesn't know what home means anymore. She's already at home, and she doesn't know who you are anymore.

She knows what she knew in 1920 or 1930 sometimes, funny stories she can still tell sometimes, but she mixes up everyone's names; she doesn't know who is who anymore. She used to speak three languages, English, German, and French. But now she often speaks gibberish, a weird combination of whatever words she still can recall. She can't always understand simple sentences. She's like a kid who cannot learn.

Alzheimer's sucks; nursing homes suck. Go visit one someday if you doubt me. My grandmother's genes and her circumstances allowed her to outlive two of her children. She never got cancer, but that's what killed her elder son at 50. She had a heart attack thirty years ago, but she didn't die of heart disease. That's what killed her elder daughter at 60. Yet my grandmother lives on, as her mind slowly disintegrates.

She still likes to watch children playing, or to meet a drooling baby, maybe a child of someone who helps care for her, brought over to visit. She still likes to pet her cats and smile and watch them roll on the floor with catnip at her feet, she still can interface with her two grandchildren, she still has a sense of humor that we all can understand and sometimes laugh about together.

She doesn't know what year it is or what day it is, and sometimes she can't remember how to properly hold a spoon (or she'll try drinking from it like a straw). But she especially likes bananas and squash and sweet potatoes and chocolate chip cookies. I know this because I'm there sometimes to remind her to take another bite. She says "This is good, thank you!"

And sometimes when you help lift her into bed at night, she'll tell you she loves you. I guess that helps make it all worthwhile.

Anyway, this is what will happen to you if you don't die of anything else or get hit by a bus before your brain starts to degrade. I suppose it hasn't been all bad, I have learned a lot caring for my grandmother. But she is no longer able to offer her opinion.

Source: quokkapox's slashdot comment

A Couple Pictures From Arizona

2007-10-01T09:17:00.001-05:00

I promised some pictures from Arizona, so here are a couple tasty morsels. What you should really do is head over to Jason Moran Dot Com which has the full list of pictures from the Arizona trip.

If you are looking specifically for the pictures go to the Picture Gallery at jason-moran.com.

Back From Vacation in Arizona

2007-09-25T10:20:00.000-05:00

My wife and I had a blast touring around Arizona. I hate to admit this, but I didn't know where Arizona was until the last day of our trip. I knew it was somewhere south of Colorado, but I'm not even all that sure about where Colorado is. For some reason I thought there was a state south of AZ...

Anyway, it was so fun and beautiful. The scenery is so much cooler than ANYTHING in Ohio. We flew in to Phoenix, grabbed our rental car, then headed to the Fairmont Princess Resort in Scottsdale. Dude, that place is serious luxury (and huge...requiring up to MINUTES of driving to get to different parts of the resort). It has the longest water slide in Arizona for it's guests, a huge spa, a PGA golf course, like 5 restaurants, and I'm sure a lot more.

Scottsdale is ritzy and expensive. The worst car we saw in 3 days of driving around was a 2005 Lexus. I'm not exaggerating at all either. Anyway, I don't know what you are supposed to do in Scottsdale, but we mostly just went out to eat or shop at expensive places.

I don't want to get too detailed, so let's speed this up. Next up was Sedona, which is where the "Red Rocks" are. We took a Pink Jeep Tour which was freaking awesome and otherwise took in the impressive scenery. Oh yeah, back in Mesa (in the valley near Phoenix just like Scottsdale is) we went on an ATV tour through the mountains--this was the best part of our trip.

Next was a day trip to the Grand Canyon which you need to see in person (pictures don't do it justice) followed by a quiet night in Flagstaff. This state has such extremes! In Scottsdale it was 109 degrees and a couple of days later it was a high of 55 degrees in Flagstaff (7000-foot-elevation is why).

Anyway, the return to the valley had us stop by Sedona again at the Sedona Rouge Resort and a stop by the Cowboy Club restaurant for Cactus Fries, Buffalo Steaks, and Rattlesnake Skewers (they were all really good). We finished the trip up in Tempe, which is nestled up to Phoenix and Scottsdale. It's a cool college town, so it's much younger than the rest of our trip was.

I really liked AZ and I would consider moving there... I'll have some pics out some time later this week (possibly on my soon to be updated website).

Washing Your Feet

2007-09-06T15:32:00.000-05:00

I'm just hopeful that nobody had any weird foot diseases. Athlete's foot, eww. Since I was the 2nd last one to put my foot into the washing bowl, I have a lot to worry about.

You see, last night as part of my Christian men's group we did something with very little social relevance nowadays: we washed one another's feet. We coupled each foot washing with words of encouragement and a few minutes of prayer as we laid our hands on the man's back.

I suppose that kind of thing is weird sounding to the average Joe, but it was a good and memorable time. It takes a lot of humbleness both to wash a foot or to even let your own foot get washed. In the present age, letting another dude grab your foot and wash it is, well, awkward. I also don't know many people that would think "Hey, let me rub your bunion-riddled and corn-covered crusty heel and toes." (Thankfully nobody had feet that gross).

I think a lot of people know the story where Jesus washed the apostles feet (and they objected because that was a servants job, not their master's job. That sacrifice and humbleness was just a glimpse into the sacrifice and humbleness a God was about to take by allowing iron nails and some wood to take the life of the same being that flung stars into distant galaxies. His feet washing was paralleling the washing of our sins away. For the 0.007% of you that will get this reference, it was like the Scouring of the Shire at the end of the Lord of the Rings book in that it was a tiny paralleled version of a bigger story.

I don't usually make very religion-oriented posts, but yesterday was enough out of the ordinary that I thought I'd make an out of the ordinary post about it.

Is a Salary Better Than Contracting?

2007-08-31T09:49:00.000-05:00

It is common knowledge that contracting pays more per hour than a salaried job does. I don't know that there is an exact expected ratio, but in my experience an hourly paid contracting job pays a minimum of 1.333 times better than a salary would. (I know there are caveats, I'll get to those in a minute).

Take your salary and multiply it by 1.333. That is practically the worst case scenario for how much you would make by contracting instead. That sounds totally worth it, doesn't it?

Pros of contracting:

Lots more money
You still get paid even if you work more than 40 hours in a week
Lots of varied experiences which will make you well-rounded
You can never get bored because things change all of the time

Pros of salary (with cons of contracting):

Predictable pay
No "Bench Time" (This is a contracting term that means you are not currently billing any hours to anybody / out of work)
Vacation time and sick time!
Other perks like cheaper health insurance, 401K matching, bonuses, etc
Gaining a much deeper understanding of one line of business (become an expert because you have worked at the same thing for a long time)
Potential to "move up" within an organization because of how super good you are.

So, is 1.333 times your salary worth the gamble of having bench time? Can you handle the fact that vacation is completely on you, and you will have next to nothing in your next paycheck? Is it worth it to have no income if you get the flu? What about having to prepare for retirement without any help from any company?

So far it is worth it for me because I am pretty good with my money and I believe I have what it takes to prevent myself from being out of work for too long. Is a salaried job the easy way out or is contracting just a long-term Vegas-styled gamble?

Confidence Drainer And Booster

2007-08-24T09:49:00.000-05:00

This new job thing is simultaneously a confidence drainer and a confidence booster for me. You see, I really liked it when I was working on the project team that I have been at for 2.5 years. I don't enjoy documentation, too much "process", or too much red tape. However, my boss said I need more of that so they want to send me out to more enterprise-level situations. Our business has two halves: a project team half and a staffing half (consulting). I am now on the consulting side.

I don't know how anybody else reads the situation, but that was a serious blow to my confidence because it infers that I'm lacking in my ability to work through red tape situations. I would probably call it more of a "lack of desire", poh-TAY-to poh-TAH-to.

On the other hand, I know I was placed in a lose-lose situation and I certainly worked my behind off and did a bang-up job. The best confidence builder that came out of this was all of the support I got when I was getting ready to leave.

"Dude, if you are leaving I'll be leaving a little after."
"Trust me, you were the only one that knows anything around here and it will suck when you are gone."
"Jay, everybody will see how important you were once you are gone and everything falls apart."
"I'm already trying to figure out where I'm working next because I'm not gonna stay if this is how they're gonna play it."
And this one from a client of ours: "What! You're leaving? (sighs) Great...they're taking the only person that understands what's going on and taking him off my project. What are we going to do now? Maybe I should wait until you are back before we start the next set of work."

In the end I am at minimum happier now because my stress level has dropped significantly and I know that I am very good at what I do.

New Job

2007-08-22T14:05:00.000-05:00

I have a new job in Brecksville. It's just a contract for a few weeks at IPA off of Snowville Rd.

I haven't had to relearn parts of existing projects in a long time, but I forgot how slow going it is for the first few days. Anyway, the good part is that it affords me a couple of minutes to update this mostly dead blog.

Maybe I'll revive it and start making weekly (or more often than that) updates.

Disco Murder Mystery

2006-12-03T10:21:00.000-05:00

Before the party started we watched a great OSU-Michigan game.

We gave our couches "ground effects".

Then the girls started getting ready.

Angina Palpatori is ready.

So is Shaka Moon and Polly Ester

We had to put Ethan to bed before we got started.

Brian could have really lived in the 70s.

Keith looked like a ghetto fabulous pimp.

Josh was wearing a $10,000 chain **bling bling**

Donna wore some go-go boots

Kelly was a little 'saucy'

Ethan didn't want to stay in bed.

The girlies

I call this photo "Dudes on a couch".

Cheryl and Brian

Jason and Kelly

Celena and Keith

THE PANTS in all their glory

Tab and Keith (Jammin' Mon!)

I Am...

2006-11-27T09:31:00.000-05:00

I took a long time to sit back and think about what I am, who I am, what I'm scared people think about me, and what I hope people think about me.

Good or bad, I just wanted to really take a hard look at exactly who I currently am. Here is who I AM:

Loud
Loyal
Constantly in need of approval
Selfish
I always think I am right
I don't really listen very carefully if I am not interested
I'm a bore
I have some inner need to 'not miss out' on anything
Can always get things done in a pinch
I have some pride issue where I want the coolest thing around and I want everybody to know that mine is the coolest
I "check out" and withdraw if I'm not feeling good.
Take accomplishments and successes for granted even though I don't mean to (job, wife, possessions)
Authentic
Interested in things that won't matter in a couple of years.
Fun
Energetic
Willing to bend my morals/right thing in order to create a good story
A bad influence
Always follow through to completion
Smart/Quick wit
I complete people's sentences
I secretely want girls to 'want me'
I have a good self image yet I'm superficial
Glass is half full
Spazz
Annoying
I became funny through brute force and pure will power (I never understood jokes growing up and I never knew how to 'role with the punches')
Nothing gets to me
Great at rationalizing
Making fun of me doesn't work
I don't take advantage of people
Great at assimilating info
I'm very grounded in my beliefs and with who I am (I'm an anchor)
Lazy
Pay no attention to others feelings (especially to get laughs)
I want everyone to be successful
Love and specially care for the outcasts and the underdogs
Never want to exclude anyone
Random fact extraordinaire
Logical deducer
I interrupt because as a quiet kid I was never heard
Love music
Love the feeling (accomplishment) of completing epic video games
A very creative scientist (or scientific artist?)
Don't get angry
I defend the innocent
I believe the best in people
Procrastinator
Thinker
Individual

Mi Casa

2006-10-30T18:42:00.000-05:00

I haven't really put pictures up showing the "progress" we have made at our house. As far as the yard goes I think it was way too much work...especially now that it might end up dying off. It looks like Jason has a "yellow thumb". Anyway, here are the pictures:

In the picture above you can see the backyard when it looked like it was coming in well.

In the picture below you can see some of the atomic fireball sized hail that bombarded our house all day Saturday.

In this last picture you can see how the grass is yellowing...and we have never had to mow it...

All Hallow's Eve - The Tough Decision

2006-10-16T08:41:00.000-05:00

My wife and I have been asking each other a really difficult question for the past few weeks. I don't think we started the decision making process a bit too early...because we are still pretty far from reaching a decisive decision. The question does not seem to be a difficult one, but when I look at it I almost break out into a cold sweat.

Should we pass out candy on Halloween?

After all, every good Christian knows that it's an evil holiday (remember, holiday is "holy-day". Also remember, holy means "specially recognized, sacred, hallowed, consecrated... and my pastor has said it basically means set apart").

Halloween originated as a pagan celebration that the Celts (pronounced Kelts for the uninformed) brought to us. It is the night before All Saints Day (or, All Hallowed's Day, making Halloween "All Hallows Eve"). Some also call it Pooky Night after púca, a mischievous spirit. Anyway, according to wikipedia, Halloween started out as Samhain, "End of Summer," a pastoral and agricultural festival of fire, when the dead revisited the mortal world, and large communal bonfires would be lit to ward off evil spirits.

I don't want to support a pagan holiday that is basically an afront to the religious holiday All Saints Day. The thought is: Well, if we're gonna remember the great religious folks on that day....then the day before we'll remember the bad folks. The dead are coming back to our world, so we need a celebration to ward them off.

The rationalization (which I'm very good at) is that the meaning has mostly been lost and now it's just a fun fall time to give candy to kids and to let older girls dress really slutty for one day of the year.

That, however, might not be a good enough rationalization. I know we'd be letting the kids down by either not letting them participate if they were our own kids or not passing out candy to the other children on that day. However, is that very thought and action/non-action part of what is letting this holiday continue? For example, what if I make up a percentage of Americans that are 'christian' that used to either hand out candy or let their own kids go out every Halloween. Say that percentage is 25% of Americans. Now what if they all just STOPPED one year? What if that tradition continued for a few years? Can Halloween be stopped?

The fun part of this argument is to take the pagan-ness of Halloween and how "evil" it is then take a look at Christmas, Easter, and a few other Holydays. I think I'll wait for another post to start explaining how Constantine has given us such confusing holiday celebrations. We are all a bit more pagan than many believe us to be...

Stop Looking For The Cheapest Gas

2006-09-18T18:19:00.000-05:00

I was reading an article that really helped to put the way many people go out of their way to get to the cheapest gas station into perspective. Lots of websites exist to help locate the cheapest gas at any given point in time. People will spend extra effort in locating gas stations which are cheaper than other gas stations in the area.

However, you need to put Gas Prices In Perspective. If you really analyze the situation, you can spend your effort much more effectively in shopping smarter in the other areas of your life. My buddy Luke's mom worked in NYC and would pay the toll to get in and out of the city to buy the cheaper New Jersey gas. However, even a fill up at 15 cents per gallon cheaper doesn't save enough money to even pay for the toll.

Yes, gas is a mostly inelastic good. Yes, people buy A LOT OF gasoline. However, just by bargain shopping elsewhere for 1-2 items will completely offset any "gains" from bargain gasoline shopping. Buying a few items from discount stores instead of a higher priced specialty store will save you more than a month worth of bargain petrol shopping. Making your own coffee/getting one from a gas station instead of Starbucks a few times a week and you can just start using the "Super" grade gas every time.

The point is...if you are going to put a little bit of effort into things...it's much better to locate other "deals" than to go out of your way to find the cheapest gas station.

Toronto

2006-08-29T17:12:00.000-05:00

Kelly and I took a short vacation to Toronto, Ontario. I really enjoyed this vacation because we only did the "sort of" touristy stuff. We sort of made an attempt at seeing the CN Tower (tallest building in the world), but it was hazy so we skipped out. Besides that all we did was visit some neighborhoods, shop, eat all kinds of delectable foods, watch a Blue Jays game (7 rows back!!), try to figure out how to get to places (cab, public transportation, walking, driving, etc), and have some yummy IceWine (restaurants sell it for $25-$30 a glass!).

(A street performer from "Buskerfest")

Is My House A Bad Investment?

2006-08-23T13:49:00.000-05:00

Strictly speaking, houses always are. However, despite not making as much money as other investments can make you, you shouldn't convince yourself not to buy a house. Houses certainly provide lots of non-monetary perks. Owning a house can provide feelings of self-worth, accomplishment, or even prestige. Working on projects around your house can provide anything from a time consuming hobby to great stress relief. I could probably go on and on with the pros of home ownership that do not directly translate into $$$, but I'll avoid that for now. The point is, owning a home is considered to be a type of investment that does not return as much as certain other investment types, however, it should return more than you put in to it.

I bought my new Ryan Home in Brunswick Hills to meet a few needs. For one, I felt it was time to stop setting my money aflame by renting. Secondly, I did not want a place that would require many hours of "fix up time". Lastly, a definite consideration was "Will this be a good investment"? I actually specifically avoided certain neighborhoods because the neighborhoods were "well established" or "aging". That usually means that home prices are not increasing as fast as some other area. It was for that reason that we settled in Brunswick Hills...one of the fastest growing cities in northern Ohio. We also bought with the future in mind to some degree. We knew that 4 bedroom houses sell for much more than 3 bedroom houses (so we got the 4th bedroom).

I read this news report and it is making me question the timing of my investment: Existing Home Sales Low. According to the Realtors data, the national median existing home price for all housing types was $230,000 in July, up 0.9 percent from July 2005, the smallest year-on-year price gain since May 1995. The number of homes for sale is increasing by quite a lot. The price of homes is barely increasing, which is not good for existing home owners, but great for those that are looking to buy soon.

The historic home-price gains are 1.5 percentage points above the rate of inflation. Most people ballpark the average rate of inflation to be about 3%, but over the past 20 years it's been a lot closer to 2.6%. Based on those "loose numbers" that puts the average home-price gains at 4.1% per year. The thing to go for would be to get a house that can earn greater than 4.1% per year (obviously). Well established areas (I'll pick Cleveland and Berea as examples) will probably find less than 4.1% on average, while certain other areas will probably see something at or above 4.1%.

Now, if you put two and two together you will notice that the historical average of a 4.1% home-value increase did not match from July 2005 to July 2006 (it only had a 0.9% increase).

So, maybe I won't end up with the "profitable increase" I was planning on...

My Blogging Is Important?

2006-08-10T10:59:00.000-05:00

Okay, first of all, I did some checking and various muscle mags and muscle blogs linked to my Guide To Getting Huge (Pt II) articles. Some site called BirdFluBreakingNews.com linked to my Doomsday Predictions article. I can only guess that I'm moving up in the world and I will be getting my most recent article about economic trends (Yuppy Life) or my pointers on eliminating debt in some economics magazine.

The yuppie post definitely struck a nerve in lots of people, as it was my first post to get so many on-topic comments pretty much ever. In fact, the comments themselves nearly deserve their own post.

Here are some key comments:

...tremendous spike in the price of an inelastic good (gasoline) takes place. Individuals are forced to choose luxeries [sic].

I think people buy semi-luxury items because their friends buy semi-luxury items. It has become uncool to be thrifty, or just downright cheap.

What was the person's service worth in real world dollars?

if I were to order $500 worth of food...I wouldn't tip $100 and I wouldn't tip $20

Don't worry Dave I still think you're cheap

if it was true that waitressing was a more lucrative profession in the long-run, you would see more people stick with it rather than going to community/technical college's

I don't even know a Jew who'd have the balls to say that. So let's get this straight. You never ever tip?

If you're stuck in a minimum wage job, you need to suck it up, get some training

The T.I.P.S. (To Insure Proper Service) idea. If you paid money into that and you did NOT get proper service, then the insurance would pay out (most likely paying for your meal).

Minimum wage should at least follow the pattern of inflation

Let the markets set the wages.

I feel the value of college will dwindle vs its cost at some point unless things change

the social norm of a strict percentage of tipping: The more I ponder it the more I think it's a pretty stupid social norm

Look at any country where the "market" sets the wages and you will see that those employees make nothing as employers will use "desperation" to always find someone willing to accept a lower wage.

Obviously many of those points don't follow in a narrative order, but at minimum they presented lots of interesting concepts. The minimum wage arguments and the tipping arguments were my two favorite.

Yuppie Life

2006-08-08T08:17:00.000-05:00

During college I minored in Economics because I knew I did not want to major in it, yet somehow I was interested. After taking various courses I find my interest piqued when anomolies or trends pop up in the economic landscape around us. For that reason, and thanks to far more eloquent writers who have penned discerning articles (trading up and rising luxury costs), I have found some trends which seem to directly mirror my own experience and habits. These economic trends actually explain WHY I'm spending like I'm spending.

First off, isn't Godiva Chocolates considered a high-end luxury store? You see, many stores cater their products to the affluent. They look for their niche among the rich because they charge greatly inflated prices for their products. Even Starbucks coffee is supposed to be a high-end commodity. For generations now the poor have shopped at discount retailers and the rich have perused the limited/rare/niche stores that by price simply exclude the non-rich. The "non-rich" in question even includes the masses: the middle class.

However, over the past 10 years a trend disparate to the norm has become evident: the middle class and upper middle class are "trading up". They are picking areas of their lives to live like the upper class. These types of thoughts go into their minds: "I'm a chocolate connoisseur, so it's okay to have Godiva" or "This is my hobby/passion, so I'll just spend a little more on this". The interesting thing is that it sounds perfectly normal to think that way, but it is NOT the way things used to operate.

That type of spending has translated into lower profit margins for Walmart, fast food, etc and huge earnings for the higher end "yuppie" stores. It has become so profitable that many of these "yuppie" stores have built plenty of new stores in very accessible (read: available to the middle class) areas. Now just about anybody can have at least a little bit of luxury in their lives. Some fancy shoes here, a yummy truffle there, a few Frappuccinos here, a nice spa treatment there...

A new trend seems to be starting. Over the past few months the trend is the exact opposite. Starbucks profits are down. Nearly across the board every so-called high-end retailer has come in under their projected earnings...especially during July. Now, we all know that the rich will stay rich and they really won't be hurt badly if the market takes a dip. However, the middle class and upper middle class will be hurt because they are the ones that have already gotten used to trading up and living above their means in a few areas of their lives. The new trend makes it look like the upper middle class is reeling in it's expenditure on luxury items. It's sort of a "You know what, honey? Let's not go out to eat at the Cheesecake Factory and instead just have a little Burger King." Do you know why this is happening? It's because Thorstein Veblen's conspicuous consumption is becoming more and more expensive to partake of (If you are lost that is the guy who came up with the theory that says you buy luxury items to make yourself stand out in a crowd and appear to be wealthy). If you follow the wall street stock index for Starbucks and it's kinsman that target the upper middle class you will see that they have all taken a dip recently. Beyond that, the cost of their items has exceeded inflation. In other words, for every dollar you earn over time you can afford less and less of these luxury items. They are becoming TOO EXPENSIVE for the average person.

Doomsday Predictions

2006-08-02T14:15:00.000-05:00

The NY Times (Required registration...) said that "Doomsday can be understated". It brought up the bird flu, the Blackout from 2003, and the virus in the 1930s that killed 30 million people. Thanks to SlashDot user Phat_Tony for his arguments that follow, can "doomsday be understated"?

No it can't.

None of those things listed are even close to Doomsday. They're barely even little blips on the radar screen of history. Out of 6 billion people, the computer virus and the blackout killed how many? These things were moderate inconveniences for thousands, not inescapable death for billions.

Even the flu killed 30 million out of almost 2,000 million, or 1.5%. Yeah, sucks to be them, but killing 1.5% of the population didn't exactly move homo sapiens to the endangered species list.

A modern super-bug could be terrible. No one knows if the worst case scenario is the death of millions or into the billions, but I bet you'll have a hard time finding biologists who think a bug could show up that kills ALL humans. It not only would have to spread like mad, have a long incubation period, be untreatable, and not have any people with any natural immunity, it would also have to be able to get through gas-masks and biohazard suits, infiltrate our best air filters, cross oceans to desert islands people had isolated themselves on (and shoot anyone who tries to get near). And with all that going on, I wouldn't call in understated anymore.

The real Doomsday fears list is pretty short- Nuclear War, Meteor, other improbable astronomical events like supernova. Global warming is NOT a doomsday scenario. It might be a "things are really going to suck" scenario, and I'm not saying we shouldn't be trying to stop it, but it's not going to KILL everybody, it just might make it unbearably hot, ruin crops, cause flooding, worsen natural disasters, etc. But Earth's spent many millions of years being hotter than our global warming forecasts, and life goes on. The real doomsday scenarios ARE NOT understated things that creep up on us- pretty much by definition, little gradual changes are things we adapt too, anticipate, measure, study, and, if they're really getting serous, do something about before we all die. We aren't going to suddenly switch from a negative feedback cycle to an unstoppable positive feedback cycle that destroys everything. If that were in the cards, it would have happened in the past 5 billion years. Our systems (biological and social) are much more robust and stable than that. Realistic doomsday scenarios are big, colossal, horrific events that are anything but understated.

Can you think of very many scenarios that are actual extinction-level events?

Bigger Than You Can Imagine

2006-08-01T11:28:00.000-05:00

I bet you I can think of something bigger than whatever you can think of (and your thing can't be God or the Universe). It's probably not THE biggest thing out there, but it's the biggest thing humans have found thus far: Giant Amoeba-Like Blob From Outer Space. It's 200 million light years wide. It actually contains a bunch of galaxies and lots and lots of gas. A light year is the distance light would travel in one year (light is the fastest moving thing we really know about). You could also use "Parsecs", which is 3.3 light years.

Anyway, that blob is mind bogglingly enormous. It reminds me of the not-all-that-uncommon concept that heaven/hell might actually be somewhere out in space. Ridiculous? Maybe. The scary movie Event Horizon basically found an alternate dimension in outer space which turned out to be Hell. It's a remnant of times long ago, but people commonly look up at the skys when they are referring to heaven. It's just like the search for the Garden of Eden or the search for Atlantis. In that same way scientists are searching for the "center of the universe", or the starting point. Since the universe appears to be ever expanding, perhaps it all started expanding from a single point (goes along with the whole Big Bang Theory).

Anyway, there's some side thought that twists that idea around to be that the so-called center of the universe is the physical location of heaven. Do I believe this? Nope. But it's a pretty fun concept to entertain. What if we could find some sort of special location where physics/time behaved differently or some long lost alien civilization. I know it's not out there, but I guess I just like to imagine it could.

Get Out Of Debt

2006-07-27T08:10:00.000-05:00

I have lost my list of financial pointers, so I'm gonna have to wing it and probably only give out a couple of good pointers. I already gave the disclaimer that this was going to be a very short list of a few "common sense" items that could help some people.

Just like losing weight, where the only way it will happen is to consume less calories than you use, the only way out of debt is to make more money than you spend. Why is losing weight so hard? Because it's so much easier to just eat whatever sounds good. Why is is so hard to get rid of debt, because it's so easy to buy all the cool stuff you want. It is desireable to be grandiloquent.

Step #1 (the most important step): Do not get any more debt. I could tell you about starving children in Africa or homeless folks everywhere to scare you with the "why would you buy an iPod if some people live in a cardboard box" argument, but I'll do even less. Do you need to buy a car more than once every 10 years? Do you need to even own a television? Do you need to update your wardrobe every year? Is it just because everybody else goes into debt to get ahead now? The quote to apply here is "Live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later."

To go along with that just remember that 60 years ago there were no credit cards and department stores ADVISED AGAINST CREDIT/LOANS. Also, if you are, say, 23 years old, out of college and on your own now, then let me ask a question. Why would you try to have the same quality of life as your parents? It took them 50 years to get where they are! How can you expect to have all of that stuff NOW?

Anyway, step 2 is the snowball method for debt elimination (idea from Dave Ramsey). You take all of your debts and order them by how much money you still owe on them. What you do is you pay the minimum amount on every debt except for the smallest of them. Pretty soon that small debt is payed off. You don't get a break in how much you pay now, instead you take that entire payment and "put another layer on the snowball" and make a higher payment on the next highest payment. If you are keeping to the plan and not taking on any more debt, then you can get on top of things after some consistency.

I do, however, have to admit that the snowball method is not mathematically consistent. The reason it works is because it gives periodic psychological micro-encouragement after each debt is eliminated. This helps a person to stay with the debt elimination plan.

However, if you are a "strong enough person" to stick with maximizing how much money you will throw at debt to eliminate it all, you will most effectively eliminate all of your debt by always making your maximum payments on the highest interest rate debts. I will follow with some examples:

Debt	Rate	Minimum	Payments Remaining	Total
JC Penny	7.90%	$17	13	$117
Credit Card B	5.90%	$120	60	$6,000
Credit Card A	19.80%	$160	64	$8,000
Car	8.50%	$400	30	$9,000
Student Loans	6.00%	$178	175	$18,000
Mortgage	8%	$1,100	342	$148,000

The total minimum monthly payments are $1975. So, if you can spend $2000/month, and you start out by NOT buying your new outfit for $75, you will have JC Penney paid off after the first month. Now you can add what you used to pay to JC Penney to the next payment.

I will play devils advocate and show you what happens by paying the higher interest rates instead (using $400 applied to the two credit cards every month).

DEBT SNOWBALL PLAN: PAY THE LOWEST BALANCE FIRST

Card A: $8,000 at 19.8% at $160 per month Card B: $6,000 at 5.9% at $240 per month Total payments equal $400 per month

Card B is paid off in 26.74 months. At that point in time, Card A has a balance of $7,068 to which we start applying payments of $400.

Card A is paid off in another 21.06 months.

Total payoff time is 26.74+21.06=47.80 month

Total payoff cost=47.80 x $400=$19,120

That's $19,120 out-of-pocket cost for the Debt Snowball.

PAY THE HIGHEST INTEREST RATE FIRST

Card A: $8,000 at 19.8% at $280 per month Card B: $6,000 at 5.9% at $120 per month Total payments equal $400 per month

Card A is paid off in 38.96 months. At that point in time Card B has a balance of $2,124 to which we start applying payments of $400.

Card B is paid off in another 5.39 months.

Total payoff time is 38.96+5.39=44.35 months

Total payoff cost=44.35 x $400=$17,740

That's $17,740 out-of-pocket cost paying the highest interest card first.

CONCLUSION
"Debt Snowball" costs $19,120 "Pay highest rates first" costs $17,740

Additional cost for the Debt Snowball is $19,120-$17,740=$1,380 (because it takes over three months longer to repay the debt using this method).

Get Rich Or Die Trying

2006-07-25T09:13:00.000-05:00

50 Cent's first mainstream album title is what the average American spends much of their life trying to do. The rich seem to stay rich and the poor stay poor. I just read an article which talks about the "Ghetto Tax". What it basically talks about is how expensive it is to be poor. Insurance is higher, you pay premiums on mortgages and car loans, check cashing stations charge a 500% APR, rent-to-own places are a ridiculous rip off, the "hood" has no quality food stores, overdraught fees at banks are crazy expensive (and it's only the poor who are usually in trouble of overdraughting, making it a catch 22 that keeps you poor!).

The article: The High Cost of Being Poor

After reading the article I also noticed some great feedback that was thought provoking (Here are a few):

I'm white and well educated. I also spent six months six years ago living in a transient motel. I enjoy watching people and finding patterns and links. Here are a few:

1. The poor often make bad decisions, period. Having a TV seems to be a priority, and it better be big and with cable. Expensive Nike's, high alcohol consumption, and drug usage are way too often part of the lifestyle. As someone notes here, they buy cars that both buyer and seller know will be repoed within two months, wasting incredible amounts of money that could go towards necessities.

2. Once upon a time if you had $25 or $100 you could walk into a bank, open an account, and pick out your check pattern. For 25 years now almost all banks have a minimum creditworthiness to become a customer. Once, when I worked for a bank I was refused an account! This is the real reason all those payday loan and pawn shops have popped up like mushrooms after a rain.

3. Rent to owns are a rip, even the customers know that. But ego and desire overwhelm common sense. No RTO store has ever forced a poor customer to sign a contract, it's all voluntary.

4. I have had low income people ask me if they could have a computer free (I was rehabbing them) at the very same moment a cable installer was there to start a $60/mo habit.

5. Boy, how true about no grocery stores or gas stations nearby! Where I used to live has lost the one gas and repair station for miles around. And my insurance dropped $200 a year when I left the hood!

I guess I'm saying that there are some issues which are the poor's fault, and there are some issues that they can't help. Like so much in life, it ain't simple. As The Duke said, "Life's difficult, and being stupid makes it more difficult."

Here is one more:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they manged to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, where they were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the carboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kinds of boot Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.
--Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms, pg 35

For my next post I am going to give three or four (out of the hundreds of possible) examples of how to get out of the poorhouse. My only problem is that I am not ever good at following the advice I dish out. I don't think that changes the quality of the advice, though. Check back next time for some good pointers (backed by tried-and-true financial advisors).

I Got Hacked

2006-07-21T16:02:00.000-05:00

My home computer got hacked.

This is devastating because I am, as others call it, a "computer nerd". I run a firewall with most of the ports closed. I also have a windows firewall for a second-tier "just in case" protection. I use a password on the only administrator account that exists and all other accounts are limited.

As it turns out, those limited accounts are exactly what saved me from even more trouble. Well, that and "nice" h4x0rz.

You see, this hacker got in via a program running on my computer which allows somebody from a remote location to see what the computer would display on the monitor and for that remote mouse and keyboard to interact with my home computer.

What is lucky is that when the hacker got there it was at the login screen. The administrator account has a password, so he used Kelly's limited account. The saving grace is that Kelly does not have the privileges of installing anything. Therefore, the hacker was not able to install a keylogging, backdoor, trojan, etc program to further screw around with our computer.

Furthermore, the hacker left extremely obvious traces that he had been there. If the hacker had quietly gone on and off and we never noticed, then perhaps at a later point in time the hacker could have gotten on when my administrative account was currently logged in (and wreaked havoc). However, this h4x0r wrote disgusting phrases regarding Kelly and put text files in various places talking about files/directories he found being "awesome" or "good" or "gay".

Anyway, I took some strong initial steps...but I don't like my computer to be so locked down that I can't do cool things with it. Therefore I plan on taking some time to put the proper levels of protection on my computer in the next few days.

Guide To Getting Huge II

2006-07-05T09:03:00.000-05:00

You aren't huge yet? Well let me tell you about a little bit more to get you over those hurdles.

I will cover these 3 areas:

More supplements
Cycling
Lifting

ZMA. It'll zap some zinc and magnesium into your body. Through lifting you use up too much of your body's zinc and magnesium, which will drop your testosterone levels. Therefore, taking ZMA will indirectly help to keep your testosterone levels high (which will help with your lifting energy). A great side effect is that you will sleep like a baby and have wild dreams. Those dreams alone are worth the money.

Omega-3 Fish Oils, Flaxseeds Oils and other fatty oils/lipids. These are commonly deficient in many people. They encourage healthy cell membranes and are good for your brain.

A daily multi-vitamin. These are essential as they will actually help your body to assimilate the protein and creatine you might be taking. Most studies have shown that removing the daily multi-vitamin greatly reduces the effectiveness of most other supplements.

Caffeine. This doesn't mean go and drink coffee non-stop. You can take caffeine pills to stimulate your muscles. Do you ever have days when lifting is "easy" and other days when you just don't have it? Caffeine will help to get rid of those drowsy days.

Glutamine. Most heavy lifters operate in a deficient state of glutamine, which is a conditionally essential amino acid. It is used during lifting, and overtraining can deplete your levels. By taking a little glutamine to aid your natural stores, you should have more energy to lift weights. Amino2222 and others will also help with your amino acids.

Lastly, some people put their faith into Animal Pak, claiming it is the ultimate muscle gaining supplement out there. Animal Pak is loaded with like 8 million different things, but somehow it scares me. I'm also scared of Uni-Liver. I mean, when you take a freshly slaughtered cow's liver, flash freeze it and put it into pill format...why would I want to take it? I mean, sure, putting a bunch of highly concentrated animal hormones into my body might make me HUGE...but I dunno if I want to try it.

Cycling:
Whether it is taking supplements or lifting weights, true gain will only last a short while. After a little bit of time your body gets used to the things you are feeding it, and your muscles get used to the workouts you are making them do. Therefore, you should cycle after a while. Maybe 6-8 weeks. Once your body gets shocked with new supplements and a radically different pattern in working out you'll keep it guessing and your muscles will keep on growing. I only discovered this truth very recently, but it is this fact that has helped to push me past a plateau I've been stuck at for months.

Lifting:
Lastly, the style of lifting you do changes what impact it will have on your body. Remember how I said testosterone helps stimulate your muscles? Well, lots of people only focus on their upper body. The two best excercises for overall strength are squats and deadlifts. Those two exercises stimulate natural releases of testosterone, making all of your other lifting more effective.

Whether you are doing lots of repetitions or maxing yourself out after only a handful or reps makes a difference in how your body responds as well. Strength and size come primarily from low rep lifting, while leanness and cuts often come from higher reps and less rest in between sets.

All in all it depends on what you want to achieve and what body type you have (ectomorphs, mesomorphs, and endomorphs.)
Ectomorphs – have short upper body, long arms, legs, and has very little fat storage. The chest and shoulders are generally narrow with long, thin muscles.
Mesomorphs – have large chests, long torso, solid muscle structure, and can gain muscles quite easily without putting on too much extra body fat.
Endomorphs – have wide hips, round face, short neck, and can gain and store body fat very easily.
Most people are combinations. I, myself, am about a 75%-25% mix of Mesomorph and Endomorph. If only I had less Endomorph and more Ectomorph. Sure, I'd have trouble gaining muscle, but at least I wouldn't be so fat. (Tony and Jean have mostly Ectomorphic bodies).

Guide To Getting Huge

2006-06-30T13:52:00.000-05:00

Do you wanna get ripped?! Have muscles stretching the fibers of your shirts? I'll give you the exact recipe to be HUGE. I'll give you the expert advise you need to have that body you've always wanted!

Okay, maybe not.

I have, however, been researching the ins and outs of weightlifting, nutrition, diet, and supplements. I have been having many, many people ask me in the recent weeks whether I have been lifting lately. Well, duh, why do you think I am bigger? I have not been lifting any harder than before. I have just gotten smarter at it. Your diet and supplements have so much to do with the effectiveness of your workout.

Most people know that protein is the main building block for muscles. Therefore, if you lift weights and your muscles are looking around for something to build more muscle with (because your workout has signaled them that you need more muscles to handle the load you are putting on them), then it needs some building blocks. To make that more clear, I'm saying that a workout is nearly wasted if you do not have excess protein available for your muscles to build with.

That means that you should take some protein in after a workout is over. For even better effectiveness you take protein all day to really saturate your body with protein.

Another helpful item that comes naturally in chicken, beef, fish, and certain other foods is "creatine monohydrate". You usually eat 2-3 grams of creatine a day. For those of you that took college chemistry you might remember learning about how ATP is basically an energy store your body uses when you need to move. Creatine is naturally stored in your muscles as one of the sources of ATP (You also store glucose - a sugar - and fat as other sources of ATP). Anyway, if you take your daily intake of creatine from 2-3 grams up to 7-8 grams...you'll have way more ATP. What does that mean? It means that you'll have an extra burst of energy and endurance while lifting weights. For example, say you try lift for 3 sets of 8, but you actually get 8, 8, then only 6 because you ran out of steam. With creatine you'll get 8, 8, 8, and probably another 8 because you have a strong store of ATP.

Creatine powder will just pass through, and you don't want to "piss away your money". Therefore, creatine should be taken with a bunch of dextrose. The purposes of that is two-fold: First of all, know that dextrose is just another term for glucose, a main source of your body's ATP (energy). The main reason, though, is dextrose works as a delivery system. Basically you take the creatine in with the dextrose, and your body freaks out because you just increased your blood-sugar levels a bunch. Therefore, your body pumps you full of insulin to handle that sugar. Insulin takes sugar and packs it into your cells. Guess what? While it's packing sugar into your cells, it's taking creatine along for the ride and packing it in there too!

BEWARE: That sugar is NOT GOOD if you are not weightlifting. If you just take your creatine/dextrose mix without lifting weights then it will convert itself into fat and you will increase your chances for becoming diabetic. However, with lifting, it all gets converted right away for ATP and all is good. The other side effect is that you will be very thirsty because the packing into your cells requires excess water. This has a pro/con effect. You will be drinking water/peeing ALL OF THE TIME. However, your muscles will fill up with water weight and you will appear to be much, much bigger in your muscles.

Wow...I had no idea this would take up so much space! Well, I have covered the top two supplements so far. I will finish up the last couple in my next post. Until then...keep on working out and staying healthy!

Strein Wedding Photos

2006-06-23T11:40:00.000-05:00

My batteries were operational for the Strein wedding, so I've got more of these to show. It also helps that I was recruited to drive all of the out-of-towner wedding party around town to the various photo shooting locations.

Anyway, check out the photos. Unfortunately I do not have a picture of me when I was eating a potato bug (rollie-pollies for you out-of-towners).

Brian and Cheryl

2006-06-22T12:49:00.000-05:00

I forgot to post much about the Brian and Cheryl Hockett wedding I went to a few weeks ago. I'll toss a few pictures in here, although I don't have many. My batteries were dead and the replacement ones I grabbed were also only 1/5 charged. Sorry Brian and Cheryl. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures:

I also went to the John and Jerilyn Strein wedding this past weekend. I'll get pictures up from that wedding as soon as I can.

100th Post

2006-06-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

This is my 100th post and it's only a week after my 1 year anniversary for blogging. I looked back on my first post where I had this to say: "Anyway, I'm sure this will be yet another fad for me. In another 6 months I'll be posting useless news about once a month."

Well, that has sort of come true of late. However, it's not because I've grown tired of blogging, it's just that I've been so busy I had to either get rid of sleep or blogging. At any rate, I've looked at my previous posts and this is what I've been writing about:

Tab and Keith's Wedding
TJ thinks I'm a hero
I complained (a lot). About computers, debt, time management, and about my weight about 72 times
Tommy and April's wedding
The Best MoviesEVER
Kelly's Quotes
Parties!!! (Mullet, Dan's crazy one, Housewarming, etc)
My old crappy house (with long lists about how awful it was)
Our Chicago 1 year anniversary trip
How Kelly joined then quit Mary Kay
I brought you all on a workout escapade for 14 grueling days
The E.R. for choking on food
House Hunting
I reached 100 Gigs of MP3s
We bought our house in Brunswick Hills!
Stories from my Alpha Table
I was a doctor for Halloween
I taught the kids how to B.S. through English
What are the best Superpowers?
I kept on complaining about my weight a lot more
I gave the complete History of Jason
I DJed the CD7 banquet
I got hung up on Conspiracies
Plenty of pictures of my house getting built
Various surveys because I was getting so lazy
I CHOKED ON FOOD, AGAIN
I came up with this photo sharing idea
We packed and moved into the house
Software Engineers have the world's best job

I finished things up at 99 with something about potatoes, but that didn't really have much to do with anything. I hope I can keep on getting time to dedicate to blogging. I also hope Sammon and DaveD stop scaring people away from my blog. I started out by getting lots of very good comments. Then it moved to me getting hoards of comments (but most were just Sammon having arguments about pooping on the lawn with himself). That turned into me getting like 2-3 comments at a time (and I'm pretty sure most people don't even read my blog anymore).

Anyway, it's not about the comments, it's about me expressing myself through my blog. So here's to a great year and 100 posts, and to a spectacular new year and hundreds of more posts to come.

April May and June

2006-06-14T08:03:00.000-05:00

Lots of things have happened during April, May, and thus far in June...but it all seems too boring to post about. Yet, I guess I'll fill in the details as best I can.

April:

April 1: We moved into our new house in Brunswick Hills
Later in April: We had cable tv and cable internet installed, a new phone line run to the house, and we finished unpacking all of the boxes of junk (of which those that helped us move know how exceedingly much junk it really was).

May:

May 1: My birthday
At work I transitioned off of the SecuReach project and on to the ActionLink and Vista7 projects. Things are getting busy at work.
We started to paint the master bedroom a dark red. The ceiling color needed to be changed a number of times because it was always way too light. We also ordered a new bedroom set.
May 13: Housewarming party at our house.
End of May: I have secretly decided that I am fat. I am partially in shape (muscle-wise), but I have a layer of fat that is way too thick.

June:

I have decided to start getting my body back into shape. This means running more than once a month (which is what I was doing before).
Work is officially insane. I'm starting to work extra hours to get things done.
We finally got our new bedroom set. Check it out here and here
We went to the Hockett wedding (Cheryl and Brian)
This weekend I have lots of family coming in to town since it is my Aunt Jerilyn's wedding to John

Potato Potato

2006-06-12T11:38:00.000-05:00

So when you are talking to somebody and you start to compare and contrast things but you end up realizing that it's all the same thing you might say, "Potato potato". The only problem with that is when you read what I have just typed it's just not the same. An even further problem is for me to further explain the pronunciation I have intended. I mean, what if you read it correctly the first time?

The first time I read it it sounded like this: "POH-TAY-TOE POH-TAY-TOE"
What I intended you to read it as is "POH-TAY-TOE POH-TAH-TOE"
That's right, "Tah-toe".

Anyway, Potato potato.

So I was wandering around the internet when I accidentally ran into the tree sweater lady. I mean, it makes me sick to see these ladies get tiny dogs and put outfits on them. Well, by sick I mean it's so cute that I want to punch somebody in the face. Anyway, this sweater tree lady took it a step further. Please take a look, so you can enter the same state of mind as I am in right now.

Quick, take a look at your right hand. Are you holding a knife? I know, so am I. Weird, right? Anyway, before you think or do anything else grab a pillow. ... Wait for it...GO!

[Slash] [Stab] [Puncture] [Rip] [Sigh]

Don't you feel better? And all you lost is a pillow (much better than a random passerby).

Finished Da Vinci Code Quest on Google

2006-05-22T11:41:00.000-05:00

I have completed the Da Vinci Code Quest on Google. This was basically a 2 part advertisment campaign by Sony (maker of Da Vinci Code the movie) and Google. For 24 days a new piece of the quest was available to be conquered. These were usually some flash games mixed with some oddball questions. You know, translate this psuedo-language into English or answer this trivia question or watch this movie.

Some Google service was used to view/search for every answer. Google Video, Google Books, etc. Anyway, they weren't exactly impossible, but they weren't easy enough to answer without looking most of them up. At the end, if you were one of the first 10,000 people to finish the 24th puzzle, you were considered a "Finalist". The servers hosting the game (or something) had some hiccups...so perhaps some of the ordering of those initial finishers were out of order. Plenty of people complained...but who really cares?

Well, by making it into the final 10,000 you were promptly shipped a Cryptex in the mail. It's this sort of combination locked storage container. It's supposed to have vials of vinegar which will dissolve the parchment found within to prevent any attempts at breaking it open without using the correct code. Anyway, the one I got has no vinegar, and it doesn't even have a complete code. Even though the password says it requirs 5 letters...only the last 2 letters are truly necessary.

So, as a finalist I was permitted to take on the final challenge: a 5-part test that did not include any of the oddball trivia questions. After all was said and done I completed it in about 6.5 minutes. Many people took well over an hour to finish the same test. Did I win? No. A couple of people managed to finish a hair under five minutes. But maybe that's a blessing in disguise. The prize is valued at $140,000, which at 40% tax means I would owe $56,000 in taxes next year (just for this prize). Of course there are ways around paying that full amount...but it would still add up to probably $20,000 in taxes. That's definitely money I would not have planned on spending (even for trips to New York, London, Paris, Rome, flat screen tv, mp3 players, laptop, etc).

Housewarming Party on Saturday

2006-05-10T12:46:00.000-05:00

I will be having a housewarming party at my house on Saturday. I sent out a couple of emails, but I hijacked some lists of emails to do so. That means that I have more than likely forgotten a few. That doesn't mean I don't like you and it doesn't mean you can't come. Just call me on my cell phone and ask about how to get there (and I just might give you the actual directions).

For now please ignore the phone number that I sent out with the first email...they have disabled our phone and will re-enable it soon with a new number. Apparently we got some Denny's number and we were getting calls all day long about it. When we complained they said they didn't think our number was supposed to be activated yet. Anyway...

7:00 PM, Saturday May 13th, My new house. Oh oh, let me give Kelly a hand with food by saying this: "You are permitted to bring some food if you would like to". Anyway, just remember that we don't have a yard so this will be indoors only (and the house is not exactly HUGE).

And I'll Cry If I Want To

2006-05-02T12:35:00.000-05:00

It was my birthday yesterday.

26. What an uneventful day. 26 sounds "old". I mean, I don't feel old. Also, 26 is fairly young. But, I was thinking about what I thought "old" was when I was eleven. When I was eleven 26 was officially an old age.

At 26 you have passed some invisible threshold. See, at eleven you are looking forward to most of your birthdays. At 26 you can look forward to a few milestones (30, 40, 50, whatever-birthday-gets-you-senior-discounts). But, for the most part, you can only look back at the major birthdays. Twenty five is the last time you get something cool. It brings cheaper insurance rates and the ability to rent a vehicle in every state. After that you don't get anything until the senior discounts. But how much can you look forward to senior discounts when you consider how wrinkly you'll be and that you are now shrinking and growing weaker.

Anyway, 26 arrived with a thunderous silence and will probably be remembered for how forgettable it was. My mother, on the other hand, said she distinctly remembers 26 as being one of her favorite all-time ages. You still have your youthful vigor yet you have shedded that "18 year old immaturity". I've got 364 days left to decide how right she is.

Why I'm Not Posting Very Much

2006-04-21T09:22:00.000-05:00

I have lowered the frequency of new posts due to many parts of my life becoming very stressful and busy. Unfortunately, I'm helping to bring a lot of this on myself. These things are the temporary busy-ness makers:

Brand new house
3 current projects at work
Redesigning my website
Getting back into shape (started Monday, April 17th)
Very frequent obligations between churchy things and family things.

Fortunately, we are pretty well moved into our house. Now it's just a matter of what/when we paint and decorate various rooms. The house comes primed with white, so it's up to us to introduce colors into our abode.

Don't let the 3 projects at work sound "good". I'm actually done with one and the other two should be done in a week or two (and I'm not even close). After that I have 0 projects on the horizon...ie, who's gonna pay me?

I am very slowly redesigning my website ( www.jason-moran.com ). If you've stumbled by there in recent months you will notice it is out of date and completely not maintained any longer. I hope to revamp it and start to use it once again in the coming months.

Getting back into shape will hopefully be easy. I've been consistent at lifting for almost three years now, so the last three months of slacking are probably a fixable oddity. I will admit, however, that it is humbling to have to lift half of the weight and not to be able to run for more than 8 minutes.

Lastly I have had lots of commitments eating up too much of my time. The timing with those was just a pain because we were busy elsewhere.

The end is within site and I should start blogging more frequently by the end of the first week of May (May 1st is my birthday, so that will be yet another busy time period). Oh, and I promise my blogs will not be so boring once I have more time to "waste" on them.

Best Job in America

2006-04-12T10:38:00.000-05:00

This tells all about the best jobs in the country

Top 10 best jobs
MONEY Magazine and Salary.com researched hundreds of jobs, considering their growth, pay, stress-levels and other factors. These careers ranked highest. (more)
1. Software Engineer
2. College professor
3. Financial adviser
4. Human Resources Manager
5. Physician's assistant
6. Market research analyst
7. Computer IT analyst
8. Real Estate Appraiser
9. Pharmacist
10. Psychologist

Oh yizzle. I'm not even 100% a software engineer as far as my job title goes, but based on my college education I'm actually exactly what a software engineer is.

I knew there was a reason why I loved my job ;)

4,8,15,16,23,42

2006-04-04T13:33:00.000-05:00

Holy geez, this is the most freaking cool thing ever. I am a big fan of Lost. Lost is the show where Oceanic Flight 815 breaks apart in the air between Australia and Los Angeles and crashes into an island.

Check out this link (and view it in the world-wide view): Map of the island in Lost

A set of numbers are very important to the story line of the show:
4 8 15 16 23 42

If you combine them into longitude and latitude coordinates (4.815 and 162.342) you will get the following map:

Oh, on a side-note I moved into my new house. I'd show you pictures of the move but we totally forgot to take pictures :(

Keys

2006-03-30T13:29:00.000-05:00

I've been busy today with work, so I haven't gotten to this until now: We have our keys!!

That's really all I have to say, but it's huge to us. Oh, but I do have a cool tidbit. The locks/keys we have on the house are really cool. Stop and wonder about this: What happens when you get a new house? Do the contractors change the locks? Do they give you all of their keys? How do you know if you got all of them? Maybe one of the contractors "lost" a key and now he'll break into your new house...

Our locks/keys take care of that. The contractors have a set of keys which I will call the "contractor keys". Those work great on the locks. Then there are the keys Kelly and I were given yesterday, which I will call the "owner keys". These also work great on the locks. Now I get to the cool part. As soon as I use an "owner key" on a lock it switches a tumbler in the locking mechanism which permanently disables the contractors keys. Now that is some cool technology.

Walkthrough and Paper Signing

2006-03-28T09:52:00.000-05:00

We have a few more items checked off of our list. We had our long walkthrough and paper signing yesterday. The paper signing was boring, but we gave our last certified check over and signed/initialled like 100 pages of stuff.

The walkthrough is your last chance to point out chips, nicks, cracks, crookedness, etc before you get the house. They put pieces of blue tape next to everything you point out and some guy comes in with various mud/tape/fillers/buffers/sanders/screws/paint and removes the pieces of tape as he "fixes" them. At the same time the Ryan Home crew tells you every last detail about what you are getting. They show you how to open your windows and pull out screens and check for blinking lights on your water heater and turn on your dishwasher and stove. A few hours later you know just about everything there is to know about your new house...and you find out some stupid details that you weren't expecting.

For example, I already knew that our driveway is only temporary (we have gravel). We will be getting a driveway and sidewalk during the summer. Our yard doesn't have it's "final grade", so some big vehicle will push dirt to a fairly even level.

What I didn't know is that they will not seal the driveway. So now I will have to get a pourous sealant so the driveway doesn't crack and/or get holes in it. I also didn't know that the garage comes unpainted. You can still see the drywall and tape (and it is not 100% flush with the wall). So, at some point I will have to paint the garage. A "quick fix" way (since it's just a garage) is to make a mix of drywall mud and paint and slop the whole mix on all at once in a single thick coat.

The other thing is that I made a list of restaurants I wanted to go to at least once before we moved. I went to the 2nd last item on the list: The Cheesecake Factory. It was my first time there...pretty good place. On the other hand, going to all of these restaurants has been extremely expensive.

I'm Drowning In Boxes

2006-03-26T21:35:00.000-05:00

We have been very busy getting every last thing in our house boxed up for our big move this coming Saturday (April 1st).

Kelly, the rock hound that she is, has discovered these amazing fossils and precious stones. She has packed these items so we will be able to cash them in for big money when the time is right.

Kelly also has saved this magical slipper. It is strikingly similar to Dorothy's "Ruby Slipper" from the Wizard of Oz...only, this one is black.

Pack Rats

2006-03-20T09:34:00.000-05:00

Kelly and I have been packing like crazy. I can't believe how long it takes to get everything stuffed into boxes. We've been slowly packing for weeks, but now we need to bring our "A" game because the move date is getting dreadfully close. The plan was to pack up 75% of the house over the weekend. I packed exactly as much stuff as I had envisioned I would pack. However, I severely underestimated how much stuff we actually have. I started the weekend out wondering if we would even need to get a Uhaul at all to move our stuff. Now, a couple days later, I wonder if the biggest Uhaul has enough space!

Anyway, you should all see our living room. I pushed the tables up against our windows and I pushed the couches together (leaving almost the entire room open). Since then we have been piling boxes 5 feet high all across the living room. It's a pretty cool sight to see.

On a totally different note I have been deleting things from the internet all willy-nilly for the past few days. I've had my fun...I think I'll give the keys to the internet back to somebody that is a bit more responsible. Unfortunately, I think Al Gore ended up with rightful claim to the internet once again.

Photo Sharing

2006-03-14T10:16:00.000-05:00

I had a bit of a revelation over the weekend. I had an idea which seemed brilliant to me, and hopefully it sounds like a good idea to a bunch of my friends.

You see, I don't like the shrunk-down versions of photos that people share with one another online. If I want to print it out...it won't look as good as the original. That's the reason why I wrote the program for my website after camping...to share full quality pictures. I never really made use of that program...and I've stopped updating my website in favor of my blog as well.

Anyway, on to the idea. I know there are tons of pictures out there that I would love to get my grubby hands on. Pictures of friends kids. Pictures of my wife and I that other people took. The best pictures that other people have of themselves.

So, I want to organize a giant photo trade. This is so much easier than ever before. We have no need to print off doubles. That's because this trade is going to be 100% digital. All that has to be done is throwing a bunch of pictures on to a cd. At the minimum do that once and I (or somebody else) can make more copies for you. At the most find out how many people will be part of the trade and burn that many copies of your picture cd. In the end, each participant should end up with like 6 or 7 new cds of pictures. Of course some of the pictures will seem useless...but I'll guarantee that some real gems will emerge from your new stack of pictures.

House Update: End of February

2006-02-28T06:55:00.000-05:00

As you can see they have (mostly) finished the outside of the house and are well underway on the inside. The only bad thing I have seen so far is that we have a sump pump, which I never wanted if at all possible.

This is dedicated to snowboarding...

2006-02-23T08:54:00.000-05:00

...and the lizards who carve the mountain. SoBe yourself! I didn't know lizards carve mountains on snowboards, but that's what this bottle of SoBe is telling me.

Anyway, I went snowboarding at Peek'n Peak last week. In the grand scheme of snowboarding it sucked. However, it was my only time out this year, so it was still "good". I ride "Normal", which is left foot forward. I have big problems landing 180s (or failed 360s that are somewhere around 270 or so) because I can't ride with my opposite foot forward. If I can get out one more time this year I will alter my board so that it doesn't favor either foot and I will try to learn "Goofy" style, which is right foot forward. If I can get that under control, my trick abilities should get better.

In other news...

Kelly and I are gearing up for our new house. We have dates set on the calendar. We walk through on Monday March 27th, we get the keys on Wednesday March 29th, and we have our BIG MOVE on Saturday April 1st.

I like to research every major purchase I make. Therefore, I have been in stores and online checking out refigerators like it's my job. Kelly doesn't research things in as much detail as I do, so that, of course, drives me crazy. We just bought blinds for every window in the house last night...and it turns out Kelly had the measurements wrong so it is not a perfect fit. More research I have done is on HDTVs and HTPCs (Home Theater PC, also called a Media Center PC). The end result of that research is that they are expensive, and we don't have the money for them. However, when we do have the money, then I will already have much of the leg-work done as far as this research goes. The last thing we are checking out are couches, chairs, and ottomans for the living room. We have found one that is okay, but it is not "perfect", so I'm holding out for a little while. Perhaps until after we move in.

I made a big list of needs/wishes with price ranges, probable prices, expected time frame for purchase (now, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years) and I have decided that I need to start selling my body for money, because we won't even have half of the dinero to get the stuff on the list. Oh, and of course Kelly and I see the prioritization of the list from completely different angles.

Uplifting Story

2006-02-21T11:08:00.000-05:00

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended.

After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:

"When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?"
The audience was stilled by the query. The father continued. "I believe, that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes, in the way other people treat that child." Then he told the following story:

Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?"

Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shay could play, not expecting much. The boy looked around for guidance and a few boys nodded approval, why not? So he took matters into his own hands and said, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning."

Shay struggled over to the team's bench, put on a team shirt with a broad smile and his father had a small tear in his eye and warmth in his heart. The boys saw the father's joy at his son being accepted.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.

At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing the other team putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least be able to make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.

The game would now be over, but the pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game. Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the head of the first baseman, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, "Shay, run to first! Run to first!" Never in his life had Shay ever run that far but he made it to first base.

He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled. Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!" Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to second base.

By the time Shay started towards second base, the right fielder had the ball, the smallest guy on their team, who had a chance to be the hero for his team for the first time. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions, and he too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman's head.

Shay ran toward second base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home. All were screaming, "Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay."

As Shay reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to help him and turned him in the direction of third base, shouting, "Run to third! Shay, run to third."

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams and those watching were on their feet, screaming, "Shay, run home!"

Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the "grand slam" and won the game for his team.

"That day," said the father softly, with tears now rolling down his face, "the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world."

Shay didn't make it to another summer and died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero making his father so happy, and coming home and seeing his mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

Rest Of A Silly Tale, Before Esophagus Expels Food

2006-02-14T12:31:00.000-05:00

After the endoscopy I was very incoherent and tried to figure out the words that were being asked of me. I think I said words back, and hopefully some of them made sense. I sort of remembered being in cardiac care (I got to watch my heartbeat!) where I was on oxygen. I had to get some chest x-rays and do a few barium swallows in order to determine whether things were taken care of. You see, with all of my lurching around, I could have helped tear open my esophagus. My throat felt like it was still blocked, so I asked for some water to ensure an opening existed. They wouldn't do that for me.

Anyway, you have to stand up for the barium swallow x-ray (and drink this very heavy chaulky liquid that responds to x-rays). I yelped "I'm gonna be nauseous!". They brought over some pan and I puked bile into it. Sweat started dripping down my face and I was ghost white. They gave me some cold towels to put on my head and I started to see spots and get extra dizzy. It looked like the various medications and sedatives were too much for me. Anyway, I managed to do the barium swallow once. Luckily, one test was enough to see what they needed.

If the esophagus rips it can cause lots of problems, not excluding paratinitis. Basically if left unfound and untreated, you get gangrenous from the inside out and it's usually not recoverable past a certain stage. I would have needed invasive surgery to sew up my esophagus. What did the x-ray show? Well, since I'm blogging, the answer is that there were no rips and 100% of the barium made it to my stomach.

After more waiting they admitted me some time on Saturday. I was rooming with a 75 year old recovering colon cancer patient with diabetes and other problems. He was hilarious. He hit on every single nurse, and he frequently asked the male PCAs where the female nurses were.

So, when you are on an IV drip for a few days, they take blood every few hours, and you get your blood pressure and temperature checked practically continuously and your roomate snores and yells in triumph at 4:00 AM because he was able to make some farts...you don't sleep well.

On Sunday I had 2 rounds of normal X-rays and a very extensive round of new Barium Swallows. I had 7 large containers of barium. I would probably equate the total quantity I had to ingest to about 13 cups. Meanwhile I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything the whole time (besides barium). Not even ice chips :(

The end of the story is that I got released from the hospital at about 12:41 PM on February 12th, 2006. Why is that significant? Because precisely 25 years before that moment Kelly was born. So, I get to go to the doctor a few more times and probably have more surgeries to get this taken care of. I'm on a liquid diet until further notice.

Prognosis: Sew Mouth Shut

2006-02-13T10:41:00.000-05:00

My weekend was terrible.

It seemed like it was going to be a pretty good one, but it just never happened. On Friday evening Kelly and I got dressed to the nines for a Valentines Banquet for formal dinner and dancing. For whatever reason I felt very awkward that night, for no reason, but I was nervous and agitated. Anyway, I ordered the roast beef au jus, which was taking a long time for many people to get. That's not my complaint, my complaint is that our table of 10 had nine people basically finished eating their food, and I was the only person to not have any food yet. I'm not a fat guy, but perhaps they didn't understand how important food is to me. I was quietly getting pissed at my lack of food, so I finally had to approach a waitress who condescendingly and rudely backed down and decided to deliver my food against her wishes.

I was honestly not hungry anymore. I was fed up with this whole thing and was about to go home. It's one of those moments where it feels like the walls are folding in and the world is about to crash on top of you. Don't ask me why, I just get like this once in a while.

Anyway, I decided to play "catch up" and commenced with wolfing down my food. Mid-swallow of a piece of roast beef Kelly advised me to "make sure you chew your food!". Ooooh, 2 seconds too late. It was lodged. Bo, the guy sitting next to Kelly said "He's choking, isn't he? He can breath, but it's stuck in his esophagus, right? I have the same exact thing". After meeting up with Brian in the bathroom (who was enduring esophagus related problems of his own) I tried every which way to either force it down or throw it back up -- to no avail. Anyway, thanks to the many, many people that tried to lend a hand. I ran into 7 men that had the exact same problem as I had. I received prayer for healing from another group. I had a few nurses see if they could figure out the situation. Nate Rafiani ran to the store to get me some milk (one guy suggested it would help get the roast beef out).

Anyway, off to the emergency room. Hours of waiting later and many room changes later we had some idiot ER doctor take my case. Let's try giving you a tiny dose of this muscle relaxer to see if you are allergic. An hour later... Okay, we'll give you a single dose to see if it will work. Another hour later... Okay, we'll give you a double dose to see if that will work. Meanwhile we told him that this stuff is very lodged and a GI guy should just scope it out while it's not too late too call them. Also, I have to run to the bathroom periodically to yak up all of the saliva that is gathering in my esophagus (NOTHING - and I mean NOTHING - is getting down my throat).

Finally the idiot British doctor decides to refer me to a GI doctor. Thanks, it's been 10 hours. The GI doctor (Pola) decided to immediately endoscope me to get this out. He said, "Too bad I didn't get called in earlier, it would have been easier if this wasn't sitting in your esophagus for so long". Yeah, I would have loved to have you called in earlier, too.

The sedative medication was given at a dose to make me semi-conscious. This sounded like a good idea, except I was so tired that I fell asleep right after the operation was getting underway. Anyway, because I was not completely knocked out my body (beyond my control) was lurching all over and swatting doctor hands away from my face. The effect of that was to bruise and cut me up (from the inside) pretty badly.

This is getting pretty long, so I'll finish the story (I'm almost done) later. Just know that I didn't get out of the hospital until Sunday, and I may not be done with everything yet.

Something About 5s

2006-02-09T10:20:00.000-05:00

10 Years Ago I:
Was in my sophomore year of high school at St. Eds
Was part way through a major personality transition
I drastically changed from introvert to extrovert
Was better than a 4.0 student
Thugged around talking ebonics and sagging my Fubu pants.
Weighed 125 pounds.

5 Years Ago:
Moved to New Jersey after my junior year of college at CWRU
I worked a co-op job at [COMPANY] 50-60 hours a week in Princeton
Visited New York many times
Had lots of friends vacation out to New Jersey to visit me
Frat buddies got me banned from the Princeton campus (although I might have helped)
Realized I was actually really good at a real job (unlike school work)
Gained 25 pounds in 10 months to weigh 195.

1 Year Ago
Was enjoying/dealing with my first year of marriage
Moved to North Olmsted and rented a house
Was working at the CWRU School of Medicine
Weighed 185...but this time I've been lifting and it's mostly muscle

Yesterday
Worked at 4TechWork on the SecuReach project
Lifted at Ballys on my shoulders and back
Ate pasta and salad for dinner
Watched "24" with Kelly
Geared up for our "Pre-Drywall" meeting this week about our new Ryan Home we are building!
Thought about the driveway I would shovel tomorrow (we drove over it too many times to count already).
Weighed 190, but that's because I have winter blubber sitting on my belly.

Now the 5's

5 songs I know all the words to:
Vanilla Ice - Ice, Ice Baby
Wrecks-n-Effects - Rumpshaker
Any grunge-era song (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, STP, etc)
Any Metallica song
Banana Phone (Ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring Banana Phone!)

5 Favorite Books:
Who cares about books? I dunno, I like most fiction books I read. I'll just toss out the last few books I've read: Waking The Dead, Chronicles of Narnia, Wild At Heart, Lord of the Rings, Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, and some book by Larry Tomzak.

5 things I'd buy with a million dollars:
A million dollars is not really all that much...but I could make it work.
1. A nice house with a giant yard. (I want to host get-togethers, play sports, etc)
2. Audi A6 (and a TT for Kelly)
3. Sorry, I'd actually invest most of it...
4. Some charities where I could have some control over the use of my donated money...and my church
5. Some remote controlled mice. (I think I could get it done with a million dollars)

5 Places I'd Run Away to:
Carribean
Great Britain
Australia
Colorado
San Diego

5 Things I'd Never Wear:
This is tough, cuz I mean...never? That rules out pretty much any jewelry, girls clothing, bikini style underwear, and anything obnoxious. So what would I actually NEVER wear?
That lotion that Kelly puts on that makes my eyes burn and makes me sneeze
A dress slip
V-neck undershirt
"Toe socks"
Pre-owned tighty-whities

5 Toys:
Computer, snowboard, Xbox, frisbee, over 50 bouncy balls

5 Hobbies:
Snowboarding, Listening to MASSIVE amounts of music, movie watching (between 5 and 10 a week!), downloading stuff, programming/digital art. Oh, and I enjoy lifting.

5 Greatest Joys:
Jesus, Kelly (wife), my family, my friends, my job

New House Update: February 2

2006-02-02T08:33:00.000-05:00

This house was STARTED 3 weeks ago. I understand that Ryan Homes is in the business of building new homes...so it is in their interest to have an efficient turnaround rate. But, I mean, from a plot of dirt to a roof in three weeks is lightning fast.

Autumn's Tag

2006-01-23T13:28:00.000-05:00

I don't feel like being creative, so instead I'll take a tag and you'll all get to know me a smidgeon better.

Four jobs you have had in your life:
1. The Flat Iron Cafe (First job...lasted over 5 years)
2. CMSD (My first job out of college)
3. CWRU School Of Medicine (Weird having friends use a product I worked on)
4. 4TechWork (Technical contracting work - what I do now)

Four movies you would watch over and over:
1. Office Space
2. Rounders
3. Anchorman
4. Napoleon Dynamite

Four places you have lived:
1. Cleveland, Ohio
2. Princeton/South Brunswick/Middlesex, New Jersey (A co-op job during college)
3. Cleveland Suburbs, Ohio (Lakewood - until I was 1, North Olmsted - now)
4. Florida (we ALMOST moved there permanently when I was 5..but we moved back)

Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. Lost (I love this show!)
2. 24 (Edge of your seat for the entire time)
3. Prison Break (I'm only a few episodes into the season so far)
4. Family Guy
Oh, and I like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Chappelle Show, Simpsons, The Office, etc...

Four places you have been on vacation:
1. Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
2. SoCal and Las Vegas
3. Various parts of Florida (about 15 times)
4. Niagra Falls (about 6-7 times)

Four websites I visit daily:
1. slashdot.org
2. Friends Blogs
3. digg.com
4. Torrent sites

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Chipotle Fajita Burrito (chicken, fajita peppers, black beans, hot AND mild salsa, sour cream, cheese, lettuce)
2. Southwestern Egg Rolls from Chili's (Aut, I was gonna put this, too!)
3. Baked Potato Soup
4. Pizza, tacos, and almost anything with Red Hot on it.

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Cruising in 80 degree weather with a bass-thumping system and the windows down.
2. Drinking a cocktail at dusk at a warm beachside lounge.
3. Snowboarding in Colorado.
4. Moshing at an insanely energetic concert.

New House Update: January

2006-01-17T07:23:00.000-05:00

My Personality, I Guess

2006-01-14T15:59:00.000-05:00

One of those tests. Yet, this one is fairly accurate.

Advanced Global Personality Test Results

Extraversion	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	86%
Stability	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	80%
Orderliness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Accommodation	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Interdependence	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Intellectual	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Mystical	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Artistic	\|\|\|\|\|\|	23%
Religious	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	90%
Hedonism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Materialism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Narcissism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Adventurousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Work ethic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Self absorbed	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Conflict seeking	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Need to dominate	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Romantic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Avoidant	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Anti-authority	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Wealth	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Dependency	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Change averse	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Cautiousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Individuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Sexuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Peter pan complex	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Physical security	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	83%
Physical Fitness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Histrionic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Paranoia	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Vanity	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Hypersensitivity	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Female cliche	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Stability results were high which suggests you are very relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic..

Orderliness results were medium which suggests you are moderately organized, hard working, and reliable while still remaining flexible, efficient, and fun.

Extraversion results were very high which suggests you are overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.

Trait Snapshot:
social, outgoing, worry free, optimistic, upbeat, tough, likes large parties, makes friends easily, rarely irritated, open, enjoys leadership, trusting, dominant, thrill seeker, strong, does not like to be alone, assertive, mind over heart, confident, controlling, feels desirable, likes the spotlight, loves food, social chameleon, hard working, concerned about others

I think this test was mostly accurate, except I don't mind being alone at all. Besides that, everything looks about right.

Eliminate Residency Requirements

2006-01-10T17:26:00.000-05:00

Lots of outdated laws are on the books for a couple of Ohio cities (Cleveland is a prime example) which dictate that once somebody gets a job that is paid for by the city, it is against the law for them to move out of that city. The freedom of those individuals is being oppressed. On Thursday a vote will be made that will help to further the overturning of those laws. They are counting every single phone call and email in support of this bill, so an email to each of these representatives makes a big difference. It only takes a couple of minutes, so why not help out my parents who are directly affected by this (they can't move into the new house they bought!) along with every other oppressed individual.

Short Sample Letter:

Dear Representative,

I am writing requesting your support of SB82. I am grateful for your part in bringing Justice to all the citizens in Ohio.

Respectfully,
[[Name]]
[[City]]

Mike Mitchell district26@ohr.state.oh.us
Peter S. Ujvagi district47@ohr.state.oh.us
Brian G. Williams district41@ohr.state.oh.us
Kenny Yuko district07@ohr.state.oh.us
Jeff Wagner district81@ohr.state.oh.us
Kathleen L. Walcher district58@ohr.state.oh.us
Kathleen Chandler district68@ohr.state.oh.us
John Domenick district95@ohr.state.oh.us
Lorraine M.Fende district62@ohr.state.oh.us
Thom Collier district90@ohr.state.oh.us
David T. Daniels district86@ohr.state.oh.us
Diana M. Fessler district79@ohr.state.oh.us
Jim McGregor district79@ohr.state.oh.us
Joseph W. Uecker district66@ohr.state.oh.us
Larry Wolpert district23@ohr.state.oh.us
Courtney Eric Combs district54@ohr.state.oh.us
Jim Aslanides district94@ohr.state.oh.us
Tom Brinkman, Jr district34@ohr.state.oh.us
Danny R. Bubp district88@ohr.state.oh.us

Better Sample Letter:

Dear Representative ,

My name is [[name]]. I am writing today to ask you to (thank you for your) support SB 82, which is up for a vote in Committee next Thursday. Ohio's outdated residency laws have impacted me and my family by (please give a short -- probably no more than 3 or 4 sentences, description).

As Senator Grendell, Representative Flowers, and the proponents of SB 82 have shown the committee, passing SB 82 is not only the right thing to do, it is fully within the constitutional authority of the Ohio General Assembly to abolish residency. Home rule is an important part of Ohio's legal heritage, but cities cannot rightly argue home rule powers to override the individual rights of Ohio Citizens. Moreover, Article 2, Section 34 of the Ohio Constitution explicitly provides the Legislature to address issues of the public workforce and declares that right superior to any other provision.

For these reasons and many others not listed here, I would respectfully request that you support SB 82 in House Committee and that you urge the Speaker and House Leadership to bring the bill before the entire House of Representatives.

Sincerely,
[[Your name]]
[[Your Contact Information]]

Sex and Intimacy Are NOT Synonyms

2006-01-06T12:10:00.000-05:00

My favorite "arguing about stuff that we never agree on" buddy, Zeke, made a LiveJournal post that can be found here. I actually fully agree with his stream of consciousness that was keyed into the blogosphere.

His thoughts originated with the following quote taken from U2's Bono:

"I just think people loving each other is a kind of miracle. And I think it's against all odds and I think everything in the world conspires against that, from just the humdrum of paying the bills to desire 'cuz sex has been elevated to the ultimate commodity, the one that you can't live without and I'm just amazed when I meet people like that. And this doesn't come from any disappointment myself, I just think it's a remarkable thing to see, and I don't think we should accept it as normal. It's like when you see people getting married because it's that time and you just kind of think, 'Oh no!' Marriage is this grand madness, and I think if people knew that, they would perhaps take it more seriously. The reason why there's operas and novels and pop tunes written about love is because it's such an extraordinary thing, not because it's commonplace, and yet that's what you're told, you grow up with this idea that it's the norm."

So, my thoughts agree with Bono and with my buddy Zeke. If you are "intimate with" somebody, that DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN YOU HAVE SEX WITH THEM! The thing is, as far as present day society is concerned, that is exactly what it means. Any two people cannot express intimacy without it appearing to be sexual any longer. It used to be commonplace for two men to kiss each other, even on the lips. A great example of how we view the present world through artificially tinted glasses is Frodo and Sam from The Lord of the Rings. Most people thought their very close friendship and affection expressed a homosexual relationship. That's not at all what it was intended to be...or even how it was portrayed. I will even admit that I feel odd hugging any other guys, even family. Also, there is a definite line between males and females in which you are "too close". It is the commoditization of the temporary hedonistic elation caused by sex which as created such a line. I fully believe that two people can have extremely intimate moments with each other that are not rooted or even related to sex.

Now, you can't just start sticking your tongue in a buddy's mouth or crossing that proverbial line with girls, but that is more of a response to the status of the society of which we are part rather than the fact that humans are sexual beings. Sounds like a perversion of love to me. Love and intimacy don't have to mean that you get into somebody's pants. Just like chocolate...it'll make you happy for a few minutes, but then you'll want more.

Dude, You Aren't Any Kind Of Funny

2006-01-04T15:43:00.000-05:00

the Cutting Edge
(61% dark, 61% spontaneous, 36% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | DARK

Your humor's mostly innocent and off-the-cuff, but somehow there's something slightly menacing about you. Part of your humor is making people a little uncomfortable, even if the things you say aren't themselves confrontational. You probably have a very dry delivery, or are seriously over-the-top.

Your type is the most likely to appreciate a good insult and/or broken bone and/or very very fat person dancing.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: David Letterman - John Belushi

The 3-Variable Funny Test!
- it rules -

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 72% on darkness
You scored higher than 87% on spontaneity
You scored higher than 47% on vulgarity

Things I Didn't Get For Christmas

2005-12-27T16:17:00.000-05:00

1. iPod Nano.
2. XBox 360.
3. A garden hose (I dunno, I like to water stuff...)
4. Copper gloves.
5. HDTV
6. A remote controlled mouse!!

You can read about it here. The article only mentions remote controlled mice in passing, but how cool would it be to have a remote controlled mouse! What if you had, like, 1000 of them? Even if you broke one of them (ie killed one), you could keep on playing around with it. What fun would it be! You could stand at the edge of an 8-lane busy intersection and play frogger with your little mouse. You could tie a mini-camera to your mouse and have semi-hidden mobile surveillance. Heck, you could send notes to roomates/wives via your RC Mouse! Man, if I could just get my hands on one of these I would be a happy, happy man.

Conspiracies: Government

2005-12-19T10:30:00.000-05:00

DISCLAIMER: I don't buy into most of these ideas. However, that won't prevent me from spreading the ideas around.

Hopefully at least some of you dear readers have heard of the conspiracies surrounding government chemtrails, HAARP, weather warfare, and mind control.

I can't even get very deep into any of these subjects, but just do an internet search and hundreds of thousands of websites describing the dark details will be returned. Many of these are not simply believed in by some crackpot with a feeble mind, many have been analyzed and some very intelligent folks out there attest to these conspiracies.

Chemtrails are what you and I may know as contrails...the white smoke trailing behind various airplanes. This, the most widely believed in government conspiracy today, is actually full of chemicals intended to affect human beings. Some arguments go back and forth over whether it is intended as a nation-wide behavioral test, mind control, passivity-inducing, or a whole slew of other possibilities.

HAARP (High frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is operated jointly by the U.S. Navy, Air Force and several universities and is located in Gakona, eastern Alaska. Nicola Tesla patented weather influencing machinery before 1910, and explained how it could be used to control weather thousands of miles away. One reason HAARP was created was supposedly to communicate with submarines deep in the ocean using ELF radio waves which can penetrate the ocean as well as the earths surface. Some people have heard HAARP is being used to modify the atmosphere, affect the weather, repair the ozone layer or even control the jet-stream. Other people believe there is a world-wide network of HAARP transmitters to send out waves which can affect brain cells and control human behavior. Others believe the HAARP transmitter can emulate terrestrial waves which can produce earthquakes.

How many of you have heard that the recent hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes are actually not natural, but instead creations of the government? Supposedly Hurricane Katrina was an out-of-control test of the weather control system. Others think it was entirely intentional. Some people believe that by sending the proper ELF radio waves through the ionosphere moisture can be brought to or prevented from going to drought-ridden areas. Some also believe that weather terrorism is something to be more fearful of than most have ever even imagined.

I don't personally think the government has any useful control over the weather, but, perhaps that is just the mind control telling me what to think...

Conspiracies: Bands

2005-12-13T13:12:00.000-05:00

I'm a total conspiracy theorist today. What do you really know about most of the mainstream bands of today? Could they be sending subliminal messages to us? Think about the movie Zoolander and how male models have been top secret killing machines for decades. Is it really that crazy of an idea?

Just look at some of the things that have been put into albums. What about when you put Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon up against the movie The Wizard of Oz? Ever tried it? It's uncanny. Alan Parsons produced the Dark Side of the Moon, which is the ONLY album to ever have been "perfectly" produced. Not a single production error can be found on it. If you queue it at the correct moment it acts as a soundtrack for a large portion of the Wizard of Oz.

What about The Matrix and The Prodigy's song called Smack My B*tch Up? This one is ridiculous. When Neo and Trinity shoot up the first floor, blow it up, fly up the elevator shaft, and dodge bullets on the roof in an attempt at rescuing Morpheus it can be very precisely matched up with The Prodigy's song. I wonder who timed it to whom in that case?

AFI has a huge conspiracy around their "Sing the Sorrow" album. Not long beforehand they released an LP called "336". Why? They said it would make sense when "Sing the Sorrow" came out. All of the posters and advertisement had rabbits. The band came out with a short film. Various leads led to fans checking into number theory, chinese astrology, and numerology. Various 777, 333, and 666 type of things... Anyway, Sing the Sorrow came directly after 336, making it 337. Further research showed that AFI's lead singer was born in the year of the rabbit. Rabbits, according to that reincarnation theory, are not able to reincarnate. The front of the album has falling leaves (death, returning to dirt), and the back has water (new life). Anyway, The album begins and ends with a looping sound that is identical when reversed and which loops from the end of the album back to the beginning. Also, the track "Leaving Song Pt. 2" comes before "Leaving Song Pt. 1". Many theories state that the album is supposed to start in the middle and actually loop through then end at "Leaving Song Pt. 2". Finally, 336 is interpreted to mean death while 337 is interpreted to mean reincarnation. Plus, throughout the album is various spanish and latin that gets translated into similar thoughts. AFI is seriously crazy!

This then leads me to question other bands. What about Green Day? I know they are very popular this year, but they have one of the most politically charged albums to hit the mainstream in quite a while. It seems that an older fad sometimes called "Rock Opera" of putting a whole theme/story into an album a la "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is returning. The old days of playing tracks backwards for secret messages and such is on the rise once again!

What conspiracies are out there that I've missed?

Yo Yo Yo, I'm DJ Sounds-Like-Crap

2005-12-12T09:44:00.000-05:00

As usual I put an insane amount of effort into DJing a party to perfection. I was asked to DJ the youth group (they call themselves CD7) at my church's Christmas Banquet. I did this two years ago and I was wildly successful. I don't just show up and play some music...I prepare for weeks and/or months. I'll get back to my preparation later. For now I'll explain what happened.

We set up equipment on Wednesday of last week, but we didn't test things out. For various reasons it never got tested until 20 minutes before the banquet would be starting. Meanwhile I was frantically trying to learn how to use my newly downloaded DJ software, so I didn't really want to spare any time to figure out sound difficulties. The sound guy(s) had other tasks besides making the DJ equipment sound good, so I couldn't depend on them 100%. Anyway, the initial test sounded awful...the volume was at around 10% of normal loudness. I was ready to run up to radio shack for parts when I got word that we could wire it in a different way using the same wires. People were showing up in ties and dresses by this time so we couldn't do extensive testing. The sound guy got the rewiring done about a half hour after people started showing up. The decision was made to play quiet dinner music via a cd player until after everyone was finished eating. We did a quick (30 second) test of audio to make sure the new wiring would work and we heard some audio coming through...so I thought everything would be set. I was finally at ease and ready to go.

A short while later I was "on" and 4 seconds into it I already knew there were problems. I was supposed to start out with a 10 second audio clip leading into a mix that would get danced to by a breakdance squad. The audio clip would not come out of the speakers. The breakdance mix was missing something. I went directly from that into the dance music and I started out with my heaviest hitting bass-filled techno song. I (and everyone else) was completely underwhelmed. We had no bass coming through. Okay, okay, maybe I can deal with this...I'll avoid songs in which the bass is one of the most important sound elements. I have listened through every song a few times...I can figure this out. I decided to put on a few songs that I knew would be crowd favorites. They both bombed because, guess what?, you couldn't hear any of the lyrics. The sound coming out of the speakers was so bad that you could not hear vocals or bass from any song. I tried to switch the music around and I hoped it wasn't the software's fault. After an intermission I switched to iTunes in hopes that it would sound better. Actually I think I sounded worse. Anyway, I never got people dancing, and very luckily they miscalculated my scheduled hour and a half of DJing -- instead there was only a half hour of time available for dancing. Any longer and I would have had a heart attack and died.

In terms of how I prepare:
First of all I simply listen to tons of music to start getting a feel for what will sound good and be dancy. That's really the easy part. With all of those ideas I start to filter for bad language and I pull out songs that I know without any extra listening will be unplayable based on language or content. After that I get to the very long and tedious part... I don't actually know if any of the songs still on my list are clean or not. I have to actually listen from the beginning to the end of almost every song. Well, I used to do that. Now I search for the lyrics online and I find I can read through it much faster than listening through the entire song. Some songs have no lyrics to be found online, so you still have to listen to the whole song.

As a DJ you are supposed to have at least 10 times as much music as you will need. These teens are unpredictable, so I have about 12 times more music than I needed. They also have a very wide range of tastes, so you can't just play one type of music all night. Weeks before the dance I had requests for rap, screamo, Tom Jones, The Ramones, nu-metal, swing, various techno, punk, line dances, and much more. The night of the dance I had requests for country and for Mariah Carey. Needless to say, even with 9 hours of music on my playlist I still did not have enough music to make everybody happy.

Anyway, back to my preparations. Nine hours of "approved" music probably starts out at about 500 hours of music that gets weeded out. While I am removing songs for language and content (no sex or drugs!), I am also trying to put mixes together. Any audio or video editing is extremely tedious and time consuming. I spent hours and hours making interesting song mixes...and I ended up using none of them at the actual dance. Anyway, luckily for me I have saved my playlist this year...so if I have to do this again it will go from a 50+ hour process down to about 5 or 6.

Ugg. I've been depressed all weekend because all of that work ended up sounding like worthless noise. At the end of the night I switched my sound cable with Jake's cable (he had to play a 3 minute video...so he had his own wiring) and everything sounded great. Not my fault, but it was depressing to me nonetheless.

I'm Sort of A Big Deal

2005-12-05T15:36:00.000-05:00

Hi. I'm Jason Moran. I don't know if you've heard of me, I'm sort of a big deal.

Turns out I'm in a movie trailer, check it out!.

I was doing a few thousand bicep curls like I do every day at the gym, maintaining this El Gigante physique, when I overheard some hot babes talking about how much they liked my movie.

I started to tell them about how I was training as a ninja for my next blockbuster when I totally flipped out and chopped off their heads because somebody dropped some weights and totally flipping out is what ninjas do. What you might not know is that ninjas are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

Facts:
1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

Ninjas can kill anyone they want! Ninjas cut off heads ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These guys are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time.

Now that's what I call REAL ULTIMATE POWER!

History Of Jason

2005-12-01T10:12:00.000-05:00

I have no intentions of being funny, but maybe my life is. These are just points chronicalling my formative years.
1. I had 5 chins as a VERY fat baby
2. I used to step on my 1 year old sister to demonstrate my dominance
3. She knocked me unconscious because I stepped on her a few months later
4. I lived in a Lakewood duplex until I was 1
5. I drank my first beer at 2 years old, my second when I was 18
6. My sister could not properly pronounce "Jason" at first
7. She gave me my first nickname instead of Jason - "Bobo"
8. Kelly and I listened to ANY adult, no matter what. One time (about 4 years old) an ice skating rink worker told us to leave and play on the swings while our parents were gone. We did and weren't found until many hours later.
9. I put on a track suit at 3 years of age and looked for my jogging dad in the middle of traffic on Lorain Ave.
10. I peed my pants in Kindergarten because the teacher would not let me go to the bathroom.
11. I cried in 2nd grade because the teacher asked me to stay after class.
12. When I was 3 or 4 my dad taught me to add 1+1 all the way up to 19,342,813,113,834,066,795,298,816 (yes, that is over 19 septillion) by doubling numbers.
13. Yes I was the best kid in math every year.
14. I was the shortest kid in my grade between 3rd grade and 7th grade.
15. I didn't understand the concept of insult come-backs until my sophomore year of high school.
(My clever come back was: "I'm a nerd? N.E.R.D. Never Ending Radical Dude!" or "Oh yeah? You're an intergalactic geek!" Man, I sucked at that come back thing)
16. I was a teacher's pet until 11th grade.
17. I am the only student to get over 100% (perfect scores plus all extra credit) for the entire year of geometry at St. Eds
18. My best friend in grade school, Dan Lemasters, used to pretend he was a giant 4-foot-tall eyeball who was in pain from the hot air blowing on him and said he would explode puss on me if I touched him.
19. Dan and I got into a fist fight in 7th grade over whether it was 4th down or not in a tag football game.
20. He broke 2 fingers on my chin so I won by default.
21. I am very even-tempered and am very slow to anger
22. I can count the number of times I have been MAD on my ten fingers
23. When I get angry I always cry.
24. At times of anger I often black out.
25. I literally tried to kill my sister once while I was angry. I don't remember it.
26. I tried to kill Rachael Stack more than once. I remember one of them.
27. Apparently I'm not good at killing people.
28. My anger can ONLY be triggered by perceived betrayal by somebody in my trust.
29. I was in a shaving cream fight to celebrate graduating from 8th grade.
30. I was the valedictorian of St. Marks when I graduated in 8th grade.
31. I won the "Peace" award in 6th grade
32. A mean kid from down the street threw a fist sized rock from 4 driveways away and hit me in the head as I was running away from him in 2nd grade
33. I was a creative kid
34. We made up games all of the time
35. When I was 5 we melted crayons into sidewalk cracks with magnifying glasses.
36. They stayed there for months until we had to help dig them back out.
37. We invented many hide-and-go-seek and jailbreak hybrid games.
38. One of them involved tying one person up to a pole in my backyard, with that person able to catch people as soon as they could figure a way out of their bindings. We also used to jump from garage to garage in order to get away.
39. I won a hula hoop competition in 4th grade.
40. I was a total thug
41. I actually wore my outfit backwards once like Kris-Kross
42. I could sag with my pants one inch above my knees
43. I was in all honors classes in high school, making me a nerd.
44. I was too nervous to ask girls out in high school.
45. The first girl I asked out was to my senior prom.
46. Most of the other girls I have dated have either been set-up or they were the ones to ask ME out.
47. I'm actually still shy around girls, even if it doesn't look like it
48. I was super-introverted and shy until I did a massive 180 somewhere around 10th grade.
49. I accomplished that feat by pretending I was somebody else
50. The suckers at Lifeline bought it, and I have been that "somebody else" ever since
51. Maybe that "somebody else" is who I really was all along.
52. I had a crush on basically every girl I knew at some point in high school.
5B. I was a missionary to Tijuana, Mexico when I turned 18. (What job did I get? Yes. A clown.)
53. The JKJs (Jessica Kelly and Jason) practiced our "Footloose" dance every day in case we made it to the Arsenio Hall show.
54. I've been cutting my own hair since freshman year of college.
55. I was nicknamed "Sparky" in college because I was like one of those sparky dogs at a toy-store that they set out which jump around and do flips endlessly.
56. I once three-man-sling-shot a mushy orange from a 10 story roof onto a random passerby. He was okay apart from mushy orange stuff all over him.
57. I more than overdid it on my 21st. I had 47 drinks in a 4-hour period. After filling up a 3-gallon garbage can with half of my insides I awoke the next day with no headache, completely aware, feeling like a million bucks, and still completely drunk.
58. I lived in various parts of Middlesex county, New Jersey in 2001.
59. I was within 40 minutes of Manhattan on 9/11. We got the rest of the day off of work. I went shopping at Best Buy.
60. My roomate refused to clean his bathroom toilet. Mushrooms started to grow in it.
61. Our apartment got broken into on our 2nd last day before we moved back to Cleveland. Nothing of mine was taken.
62. I permanently gained 20 pounds my first month of college.
63. I permanently gained 20 pounds in September and October of 2001 (in Jersey).
64. It might be a fluke, but I gained 10 pounds last week.
65. My wife broke up with me during the first year we dated.
66. I was blindsided.
67. She decided breaking up was a bad idea and we got back together a few months later.
68. I used to have two 12s pumping a lot more than 1000 watts of bass out of the trunk of "The Beast"
69. My "system" was stolen from my car, ending my bass coolness forever.
70. My senior year of college I walked into a circle telling lore of "Legends" from the past. Turns out the story being told was about me during my freshman year.
71. I got in trouble from the RIAA for copyright infringement in college.
72. I went from a 4.2 "straight A" GPA in high school to academic probation for bad grades in college. It was from not going to class, not studying, and not doing homework. I decided to do all of that stuff for my senior year of college and I got a 4.0.
73. The story version of all of this can be found here.

Christmas Lights Gone Wild

2005-11-30T13:18:00.000-05:00

Kelly doesn't really understand how cleaning my room can take 27 hours over a 4 day period. She doesn't understand how making a song playlist for a party can take weeks. You see, when I go to do something, I really over do it. That's why I haven't ever tried to put christmas lights outside of my house yet.

Check this light display out

That is an example of "too much free time" and way overdoing it. If you are curious as to how it was done and wish to do it yourself, here are some of the basics:
First visit Light-O-Rama and purchase various controller boxes and the software needed to choreograph the display to music. Hopefully you paid the extra money for the professional version, because if all you did was buy the hobbyist version then you will need to build a control box, run your own power cables, and do a lot of hand wiring. Next, if you watched the video you will have noticed that his lights change colors. This is probably simply multiple sets of lights that were run. Lots, and lots, and lots of sets of lights must be run. The 40-amp controller boxes have 16-channels each, with most decent light displays using 80 channels (5 controller boxes). The cost is easily into the thousands at this point. Finally, you need to have a low-power FM transmitter to broadcast the audio portion of your show to onlookers in their cars so that you don't annoy your neighbors with loud noises coming from your house.

That's it. It's all or nothing. I'm either going all out like this display or else I am not going to do anything at all.

Weight Gain Is Easy!

2005-11-23T13:58:00.000-05:00

Guys will always tell me that weight fluctuations in men are common. However, for seven continuous weeks I have weighed in between 181 and 182, once dropping to 180 and once to 183 during that nearly two month span. Anyway, I was 181 and ten days ago the scale suddenly (after a two day absence from the scales) read 186.

A fluke, right? Nope, the next day it was 187. The next? 188. Two days ago I was 191. Yes, I am telling you that I gained 10 solid pounds in 10 days.

Do I feel fatter? Yes. Are my clothes tighter than they were 10 days ago? Yes, actually they are very snug. Does my stomach look flabbier? It certainly does. I was actually in the process of trying to lose three more pounds. Three weeks ago I was able to run for a half hour at 6.5 miles per hour. I tried that out a couple of days ago and I only made it for 8 minutes (and the fear of death by exhaustion entered my thoughts).

This has to be some sort of a record. Can somebody actually get that out of shape in a 10 day period...all while they have been working out 8 of those 10 days? I'm not any stronger and my muscles are not bigger.

Note: I have been eating double and triple portions and I have been having ice cream AND chips and dip before bed almost every day for two weeks now.

The Best Superpowers

2005-11-17T17:55:00.000-05:00

Would you fly? I mean, if you were superhumanly able to suddenly fly around in the air like Superman, would you? Which superpowers would you want?

If you were able to concentrate and drop 1000 pound iron turds out of your butt, you would stop concentrating so hard, wouldn't you? Super strength? Feet like the Flash? Inpenetrable skin (thus, bulletproof)? What if your power wasn't all that super. Like, maybe your one hand was double the normal size of a hand and made out of stone...but you could still move it.

What about the downside? I mean, a huge hand like that would not fit in a glove. A ring to fit it would have to be specially made and would get all scratched up. That bulletproof skin would probably have severely diminished sensation in order to be consistant. I mean, if most stuff felt the same then how freakin' bad would a gun shot feel? If it didn't hurt that bad, then something like the touch of a rose petal wouldn't create a feeling. If you were really as fast as the Flash, you'd be going through shoes every week and ripping all kinds of pants apart. If you had all kinds of superpowers then you would have to devote the rest of your life to aiding law enforement, military, etc. What if you wanted a vacation and somebody bombed a building? Man, no more vacations for you.

Hey, what if you had to work at your superpower. Like, without working out you didn't have very much super strength. Without proper moisturizing and skin treatment your bullet proof skin would flake off. Without running 500 miles a day you weren't quite as super fast. Maybe it's not like riding a bicycle, and after not flying around for a few weeks you sort of forgot how to do it.

You know what doesn't make almost any sense? Invisibility. That would most likely only effect the pigment of living cells on your body. Therefore, unless you shaved your head and had a really good loofa, you'd still see your thousands of dead skin cells and hair all over your body. Not to mention clothes. If you really wanted to be invisible you'd have to be naked. I don't know about you, but I don't like sneaking around dark alleys and stuff barefoot. Lastly, what about dust and smoke and random particles. Just look at a beam of sunlight coming into a dark room of your house...see all of those floating particles? You would easily see the outline of a person with those in decently lit areas. To me, being invisible would only work under certain optimal circumstances.

I think my favorite ability would be the ability to instantly download information and understanding into my brain like they did in the Matrix. Not only would your brain have access to the information like pages in a book, but you would respond as if you already have fully learned it and your instincts and reflexes respond as if you have always known how to do whatever it is that was downloaded. I would love to devout 10 years to becoming an expert guitar player. Years to be able to skateboard like Tony Hawk. Years to be able to write computer code like an expert. Years to be able to develop my artistic abilities. Years to learn how to be a Mr. Fix-it with cars, homes, yards, machinery, stone masonry, roofing, plumbing, electrical work, networking, accounting, writing poetry... The list goes on.

If life was like Groundhog Day and I had an unlimited time to better myself in every area of my life...that is what I'd truly like. I would like every year of my life to have 10 times more time in it. Maybe that's why some old grandpas will suggest never wasting your life and to make sure that you don't get too caught up in the daily grind. I guess you just have to grab the bull by the horns.

Guide To Passing English

2005-11-15T12:45:00.000-05:00

Do you want to know what I discovered in high school? Wait, before I tell you that, let me explain this greasy little tater-tot of trivia: I HATE English. I think it all started in 2nd grade. I was a very polite and hard-working shrimp who cowered in fear of the almighty Sister Agnus. This cobweb of a lady used to throw kids against lockers and used shock treatment to inflict the fear of proper study habits on 6 and 7 year olds. Come report time I see what I expect: Math-A, Science-A, Reading-A, Gym-A... you get the drift. Further down the report card I see English-C. The troll gave me a "C"? But I is more smarterer than the other kids in this class!

It turns out I sucked at English my whole life. That is...until I discovered the magic that will change your English life around. Okay, first of all I will not help you to spell. I mean, come on, spelling is something you cover in grade school, I don't need to school you on such trivialities at this level. I also won't read books for you. Or the cliff-notes.

What must be learned at an early age in order to maximize English grades without really being all that great at 2/3 of English is this:

B.S.ing.

Master the art that is B.S. and you will never get below a B for the rest of your life. You won't even have to try very hard. Papers that other students spend weeks writing practically write themselves in one day.

Key concepts involved with successfully B.S.ing essays/papers:

Spend your time understanding at least two points very well
Spend the rest of your time understanding the main concept that the teacher wants you to understand.
Open up your vocabulary book and a thesauras (or use dictionary.com or F7 in Word) to use a bunch of pretty big words.
Try to say your sentence out loud
Talk about stuff that you do know as filler even if it is unrelated (and it probably won't be very related).

That's it, now let me explain.

When it comes down to it, your teacher is busy and hates your guts. Okay, he/she may not hate you, but teaching is their job and there's far too much stuff to get done in a day to spend an hour reading what you wrote. So, this is how the grading will go:

Did the students understand the fundamental themes? Check. Did they pay attention to any details? Check and check. Does this report make any sense? (Check - since you are writing in sentences that might be spoken aloud). Lastly, "Whoa, big words, this must be good even though I'm not gonna read the whole thing".

So, now you ask the question: "That's great, but how do I fill up page after page with vocab words and, like, three points?" Easy, with anything. Seriously. Just start to repeat yourself and start to detail an opposing point for far too long before tying the ends together to show that the opposite point actually supports your ideas. Pulling unrelated ideas together doesn't take very much and can easily be done. Just write stuff, it really doesn't matter.

If you manage to get really good at B.S.ing, and I mean really good, then you can start to pull crazy Tony Hawk of B.S.ing maneuvers like a B/S Ollie then Blunt to Fakie and a McTwist. For example, I managed to B.S. an "A" in Advanced Placement Senior English for a book that I didn't even read. This class got me out of college courses after I aced the AP exam.

What Happened Friday?

2005-11-14T11:39:00.000-05:00

Okay, what happened on Friday? This is more than just a normal brainfart. I've been trying to remember all day so far (it's 11:37 AM at this point of my post) and I have no idea. I know I did massive amounts of outdoor work on Saturday followed by Kelly's party (The Majestic)...

Sunday was full of lots of sleep and church and just spending time with my lovely wife. We had plans to get so much housework done...but nothing ever happened and I'm actually glad that we took the lazy route and slugged around with each other all day long. (Oh, we did go grocery shopping, but that was fun because we bought a bunch of junk food that I got to eat last night).

Anyway, what happened on Friday? How come Friday, November 11th is a black hole of memory loss for me? Oh, and Sammon, I don't remember much but I know that I wasn't drinking, so this has nothing to do with Gin and Tonics.

Flaming Flatley

2005-11-11T10:12:00.000-05:00

We saw Flaming-Flute-Playing-Tap-Dancing-Twinkle-Toed Michael Flatley last night. My parents are fans of his and bought some pricey tickets to his new show. What happens AFTER they bought their tickets? They got 8 free tickets. I actually saw Flatley years ago when his Lord of the Dance show came through town.

I like Irish music and I can get into Irish dancing if the mood is right. However, this new Chicago-born-semi-professional-boxer-turned-flutist-and-dancer and his Guinness Record holding 28 taps per second wasn't all Irish...it had lots of other heritage in the show. Gay? Maybe. Entertaining? Yes. Worth the money? Hey, free sounds good to me.

Costumes

2005-11-07T11:24:00.000-05:00

:(
OUCH!!

Glorious Big Daddy Pimp Sammon

Blog Reading Made Easier

2005-11-02T13:55:00.000-05:00

I had an idea a few months back to make this whole blog reading thing easier. I would write a program to grab the blog posts from all of my friends and put them on my website. I started programming it one day back then and forgot about it. Over the weekend I put a little bit more time into it, and you can see the progress here: http://www.jason-moran.com/default.aspx.

So, you can click on somebodies name and it will load their blog's text onto the page. You can click on what I am currently calling the "Load Blogger Posts" link and after it thinks for about 10 seconds you will see the newest headlines (the newest posts) for all of the friends.

If you click on a name and you start reading somebody's post, you can click on the title of the post (in large, bold, white lettering) and it will take you to their post so that you can leave a comment and view the other comments for that post.

The dilemma is that the pictures won't load onto www.jason-moran.com because it is an external site. Now, if you have already viewed the pictures (by going to the actual blog sites at name.blogspot.com you will see the images...but only then. If I can't see how many comments have been left and I can't get the images to load...should I keep on working on this at all? At this point I don't know. I'll let all of you decide whether it's 1.great, 2.okie dokie, 3.eh--not all that.

New Houses For Everyone

2005-10-27T10:10:00.000-05:00

I have even more good news. Not only am I now building a new house (Ryan Homes, Vienna floor plan) in Brunswick Hills, but my buddy Dave Derecskey just bought a 5.88 acre house in Bainbridge. His new house needs things to be replaced and probably updates and additions, but at least he won't be as cramped as I will be on my 0.15 acres.

So, most people won't care much about anything after this point of my post, but I wanted to document the unique specifications we have selected for our house. Egads, this might get boring after the first few that you read.

We have chosen an almond siding with white trim, dark green shutters, and a some indescribable dark burnt-blue door. We chose the same neutral tannish carpet for the entire house. The driveway is on the right side of the house leading to an attached garage. If you go into the front door you can either go up the stairs which will be right in front of you or to your left into the great room. The wood-floored foyer is open through the 2nd floor. If you walk through the great room you will find the morning room to your slight right and the kitchen all the way to your right. The interior comes painted white and any painting must be done on your own. The morning room is the only room we have picked out colors for already. It will probably contain wicker furniture and have a lime green paint to give this already bright room an even more vibrant look. The morning room has a sliding door leading to our tiny backyard. A peninsula island counter separates the morning room from the kitchen. The morning room and kitchen have wood floors as well, and oak cabinets. We went with a dark counter top and we will have all black kitchen appliances (to go with our black toaster and microwave we already have). Upon entering the kitchen there are stairs going downstairs to the basement. If you continue to the end of the kitchen you will find three options: The laundry room, the powder room (a half bathroom), and a door to the two car garage.

If you go up to the 2nd floor you will find the main hall bathroom at the top of the stairs. We upgraded to white cabinets because they look nicer with the other white parts of the bathroom. If you turn to the right the short hallway leads to three bedrooms...nothing special about them. If you turn to the left you get to the master bedroom. This bedroom has it's own bathroom, a walk-in closet and a linen closet (that we'll probably just use for clothes).

If you go down to the basement we have excavated the provided crawl space into a full basement. We opted to not finish it at first, but we plan on doing so after we get resources saved up to do so. I actually can't wait... For now the great room will be the "living area", but eventually I would like to put my big speakers, a big TV, and video games all down in the basement.

Anyway, that's the house. Behind us is a "privacy ridge", but that's only a few feet tall. Over the ridge are the backyards of some slightly nicer homes on a culdasac. We almost bought a lot with a creek in the backyard (and we thought of building a little bridge over it), but that lot cost more and we decided otherwise. They break ground in January and we should be able to move in before May.