John Burkholder

It seems my truck does not like humidity, fog, and rain. I am still here in the office because, I can't leave. For some reason knowing only to the God Fordian, when it is humid at all, my truck will not start. As soon as the humidity drops below the acceptable level, it turns right over. This is not the only issue Fordian has thrown at me... I also do not have brake lights. This makes driving much more interesting as I really do not want people slamming into the back of my pick-up and adding yet another dent or scratch to the pristine 1994 military-painted white exterior. So of course, I am a thinking man and thought out how exactly to make people think that it really is a stick shift vehicle and I am simply downshifting to slow to a stop. How clever am I? I even bring my arm down from the back of the seat to LOOK like I am reaching for the stick. Seriously, I really think of this stuff. I brake in the typical downshift slow quickly but ease up on the roll matter. I fully realize I

I am broken...but in the process of being fixed. I didn't realize how broken I was until it was to the point that my Queen pointed it out directly. For most of my life I have been fairly unemotional. This was basically my technique of toughening up. Shut off all emotion...all... happiness, sadness, everything. Why? I think it may go all the way back to my birth. I am adopted. Given up by my birthmother. How does this affect my disposition? Well, it is the belief of many that adoptees become one of two type of people: Overachievers and Underachievers. I fall into the overachiever category. Basically they either have something to prove or give up on life. That was strike one. I was adopted by a loving family. At 6 years old, my father committed suicide in the car in the garage. At 12 years old my older brother removed himself from existence by means of shotgun. Upon graduating high school, instead of going to college I joined the Air Force for 4 years. I had scholarships for music bu

I realize it is winter and I normally will blog until my fingers bleed, but I have been busy working and flying and sleeping and flying and working... Needless to say I have racked up the frequent flyer miles. Hmm...I just said it. Too late! Doh. Let's start with the bad news. I am not going to be a Grandpa any time soon. Squirrel girl is not right since it happened. I wish I could help her. I am would love to convince her to go back to school with Shae but I think I would have a better chance of getting the two of them to skydive in a cactus-filled desert. I am trying to get into the holiday spirit. I am actually doing better than most years. We took Ave to the Breakfast with Santa thing and walked for cookies. That was actually a very good time and it started snowing while we were out there. It really doesn't get much better than that. We walked from store to store with our heads facing the sky and our tongues out catching snowflakes in our noses. Money is a bit tight this ye

In my life, I have been called a LOT of names to include Tonto, Kimosabe, Tatonka, John, Johnny, Little Johnny, Dear, Husband, Dad, Asshole, Prick, and many more. But for the first time in my life, I will be called Grandpa. It appears squirrel girl is going to have a squirrelette. I notified my coworkers today and was greeted with "How do you feel?" or "Is this good?" Both are very good questions. Actually and honestly, I don't know how I feel. I am happy for my child to be having a baby. But the thought of me being a sexually-active totally hip and modest grandpa is causing me some pause.Why do I have a problem with this? What is it about being a grandpa? Is it the stigma that grandpas in general are old crotchety farts? Is it the feeling that maybe age is finally catching up to me? Or is it simply that after being a Dad after all of these years, I now will have to LEARN how to be a grandpa? You read that right...learn. I had to learn how to be a father. I had

I have been rather busy working, writing my book, and traveling back and forth. I will get back to blogging when I have a chance to catch up...probably in the Fall. I have some blog entries waiting to be finished.

Ms. Aggers, My name is John and being male, I rarely step into fabric stores. My 16 year old daughter Sydni, is a sewing fiend and has made dresses for her many friends and her own prom dress. She intends to graduate high school next year and attend a Columbia College Chicago. We are very proud of who she is and where she is going. She took her first job ever with Hancock Fabrics in Joliet, IL as a part time inventory person for a short two day stint, May 15 and 16. She worked hard to help finish inventory a day earlier than expected. She worked for 10 hours at $7 per hour. She was thrilled with the job even if it was for a short two days. After coming home exhausted, she had to prepare for school the following day. A week after finishing the inventory job, she called the store to ask about when she would be paid for her work. She was informed that she would be able to pick up her paycheck the Friday after Memorial Day. Today, we went by the store so Sydni could grab her check. My daug

I understand the purpose of a homeowner's association (shaking my head in disagreement). As I understand it, it is to make sure that every house in our subdivision look exactly like every other house in our subdivision. It also provides a community based feel to bring you close to your neighbors. It also provides me my community swimming pool and trash and snow removal services. I pay $53 per month for this over and above my principal, interest, taxes, and insurance of which has gone up nearly $700 per month over the past 3 years. This is due to the taxes part. Where do I start with the homeowner's association? The community swimming pool? Sure. The pool opened a fews months after we moved into our house. I don't swim in it for multiple reason. First, it is packed full of arrogant, inconsiderate, belligerent teenagers. Any time I have stepped foot near the pool it is dirty. The tennis courts / basketball courts are no better. They are combined. You can shoot a net or hit a

The Queen and I went to Clinton on Saturday to look around since my office is going virtual. We miss Clinton. When this opportunity came about, it only made sense since the cost of housing, gas, etc is substantially lower there than it is in Plainfield. We cruised down in the viniman and by the time we arrived, everyone was whining about starvation. I don't really think they were THAT hungry, but they wanted to have some Monical's Pizza. We arrived, sat down and after a few minutes another couple came in with a mother and sat down at the table not far from me. The man looked familiar. After about 20 minutes, he said hello and I responded in kind. This quickly became one of those awkward points in a conversation where you think you know the other person but don't really know the name. So, I am the first to make the awkward situation worse and try to stall for time while I tried to figure out who he was. I asked him if he knew who I was. In the back of my mind, I knew he coul

My company is considering changing our company structure to practice what we preach. We have downsized enough and consolidated applications enough to be able to actually use virtual office. This excites me in multiple ways. First, I can officially work from home full time. Second, it is very good for the environment and for our company financially. No office space means that there isn't a lease cost, utilities, infrastructure costs, or commute costs thus saving money on a personal level. It also means that when we go to hire more people for support, marketing, etc., they can be anywhere in the world. This again saves the company money because a security engineer in Rapid City, SD costs much less than one in Washington, DC. IceWEB creates and markets hosted Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint for companies to reduce their internal costs and not have the headaches of maintaining and monitoring servers that they don't have the expertise to manage. Additionally, the company (big or

My Queen filled the van with gas the day before yesterday. She paid $3.15 per gallon, $60 to fill the tank. Yesterday we drove by the same gas station and the price was $3.30 per gallon. The price of gas has gotten to the point where you have to either take out a second mortgage, or car pool to the grocery store. Somebody came up with the bright idea to boycott the gas stations on May 15. This is not the first boycott (April 1997), but the last one just didn't get much publicity. The last time, the price of gasoline dropped 30 cents. This time, thanks to the internet, people are trying to get the word out. This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one). If everyone who could, refused to pump gas on one day, maybe the record profit making oil companies will finally wake up and stop hiking the price 15 cents per day. If we could show them via mass transport, car pooling, and maximizing trips (combining trips to the grocery, hardware, school, or work), I am sure the oil com

On Monday, April 23, I wrote an email to customer support at Days Inn corporate: I was booked in your hotel by my company. I already planned to stay in Holiday Inn, but my company found a better rate at this hotel. Hotel. I am not intending to go on a tyrade about the word hotel but as for me and many people I know, a hotel is an enclosed building with a restaurant, meeting rooms and stores. This motel (what I consider the proper word for a place with doors facing outdoors) has meeting rooms. As for my room (that I am currently in), the vinyl wallpaper is holding together the wall. I have killed multiple flies, and my non-smoking room smells like smoke. As I was outside my motel room door, another customer was complaining because the room had makeup all over the room assigned to her. I figured I would at least take a bath...nixed that after finding hair (very possibly pubic) still in the tub. When I arrived in the room, there was an overpowering smell of deodorizer. I now understand wh

I managed to get booked in one of the nastiest motels in Maryland. The wall is crumbling behind the vinyl. The ceiling tiles are sagging in the unventilated bathroom. The room is dirty and I am not sure what that dark red spot is in the middle of the room. I hope that is spilled soda behind the bed. Maybe those hairs are embedding in the floor of the shower due to some resurfacing treatment. The hotels around the area are booked solid due to some accordian players convention I would imagine...so I am stuck here. The only saving grace is the Internet connection. As I have been sitting here, I have come to the realization it is time for me to face my demons. No, I am not talking about the small insects flying about the room, I am talking about my abandonment issue. It may be true that my abondonment issue was aggravated by the suicide of my Father when I was 6, the suicide of my Brother when I was 12, the suicide of my Wife and Mother of three of our kids (which I fear will have the same

The other day, I drank so much tea, I barely made it to the urinal without hydroblasting the frontside of my blue jeans. This doesn't happen very often because I have had the unfortunate circumstance of pushing people aside just to get to the toilet. Ref: The Dance . So the other day I was at the point of tears when I made it to the bathroom. Bathroom? Well, in my office there is a shower in our bathroom for the fitness center so I guess it is close enough. Maybe I should call it a showerroom. That looks and sounds funny. Isn't it amazing what part of the body is actually in control? Well...it seems they talked amongst themselves: All the organs of the body were having a meeting, trying to decide who was the one in charge. "I should be in charge, "said the brain, "because I run all the body's systems, so without me nothing would happen." I should be in charge" said the blood, "because I circulate oxygen all over, so without me you'd all was

Another tax day and again the government will continue to bend people over in order to get the money it so seriously deserves. We need to pay for the new infrastructure such as roads for our vehicles and city water services. We need to pay for our health care for the elderly and the very young. We, as a people, need to pay to ensure our defense against the evil tyrrany that threatens our way of life and our personal liberties. We need to pay. And we do pay. But apparently we do not pay enough. Right now, the United States government is running with nearly a $8.9 Trillion deficit. The entire 2007 federal budget is $2.8 Trillion (not including other appropriations for the war effort). How many companies would be permitted to run in a debt of three times the entire budget? Wouldn't they be severly scrutinized for cheating the stockholders like Enron? Or is it OK because they are telling us that we are spending money we don't have? We...yes we. We are paying the government to perfo

Last week, the Harvard School of Public Health released materials to the Motion Picture Association about the impact of smoking in movies on youth and the need to eliminate cigarettes in film. The cliff-notes version of the report is that children do not have the parenting and understanding to know that smoking is unhealthy. Therefore, the motion picture community needs to rectify the issue by demanding that any movie that has someone smoking in it be considered an “R” movie. Petitions have been created to demand the motion picture industry remove smoking. I have but a few unanswered questions about this before I make a comment on the issue. Who did they study? I seriously doubt in this day and time that any of the youth started smoking because they saw Audrey Hepburn smoking in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. How old is the data? 14 years old. What are the demographics of the smoking youth? What types of movies are the youth watching? Are they watching “R” rated movies to begin with? Do the

I am heading to the airport once again today. Unfortunately, I have to transfer in Pittsburg this run since a straight flight was going to cost me considerably more. As I understand it, the airports are already having delays, so this should be an interesting day of people on cell phones. Cell phones. I have three on me at this time. I have my personal cell on the smaller, I-could really-care-less-about-you phone carrier. I have my business PDA with cell phone service from the monster-conglomerate carrier. I have the the on-call Blackberry phone on the carrier that continually asked if I can hear them. What I hate most is the people who have bad receiption. These are the people who for some reason feel that if you begin loosing receiption, you have to talk louder into the phone. As if the increased volume somehow increases the frequency bandwidth of the cell phone and it's carrier. This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one). At what point did someone figure that yelli

So, I have been sorting out ideas of how to make a load of money without a lot of work and of the brain cells decided to jump in and help other people. I would love it if the people in my head would keep to themselves. Anyway, I came up with an idea for a small town that is running a deficit. Instead of having an election for a mayor the next round, they sell it to the highest bidder. It is really no different than actually running for Mayor. The person with the most money wins. So, we are just making it so the city actually benefits instead of having signs plastered all over the roads and people shoving fliers in your face. How much devotion is a mayor going to have when they just spent $1 million of their own money to win? Well, about $1 million of their own money's worth. I know I would want to make it go as far as possible. Why would anyone buy a mayor's seat? Often mayors are bought anyhow, so this cuts down on the collateral damage of the race. The "candidate"

I managed to get all of the system to take the time change change. For my overseas readers, The United States in it's infinite wisdom moved the time change to today, March 11. It was originally scheduled for three weeks from now, but at the last moment, they moved it to today. I have written an entire blog entry about the time change . If figure this little move of the move hascost the United States, and other countries at least $100 million if you take into account the developers, testers and implementers of software...never mind the users. I have said it before, I say it again... Get rid of the time change! Eliminate time zones! It just doesn't make sense! With the development of new aircraft, we will be taking off from New York at 8:00AM and landing at 6:00AM in Los Angeles. Time is far too complicated for some people and there is no real reason we can't all use the same clock. To add to this rant, now my daughter's birthday is an hour short. Avery turns four today.

While surfing to find a new customer service person, I decided to hit Craigslist.com since people are often posting their availability. Craigslist is a website where you can post everything from a job to a car to a pallet of duct tape. It is free which makes it even more appealing than Ebay. The problem is, I left off the "s" in the middle. I don't really have a problem with free enterprise. I have a problem when free enterprise takes me to a place I just don't need to go while I am at work. Craigslist is not the first. In the days when Bill Clinton made a necktie for Monica Lewinski, the White House also had a one-off problem. One-off is a term used for grabbing a common domain and buying the domain that may have a spelling error or a common domain root. The White House website is www.whitehouse.gov . In the days of "defining sex" in the White House, www.whitehouse.com was a porno site. So all of the schoolkids managed to get a free show for going to the w

This psuedo-holiday has me a bit baffled. Most women expect something today as a token of love. This is the perceived meaning of Valentine's Day. Men on the other hand think of today as well, they day they forgot, and they need to run to CVS or Target and get something fast. But what do we really know about Saint Valentine and Valentine's Day? Valentine's Day (February 14) was created as a Roman Catholic feast for Valentine. The day was observed by the Roman Catholic church until 1969. Valentine was a martyr for the Romans. Just to make sure everyone is on the same page, we made a martyr's holiday into a holiday for love and gifts. Um...OK. As many of you are aware, Roman Catholics took holidays and converted them for their own. This is but another example. On the ancient Athens calendar, the period between mid-January and mid-February was the month of Gamelion, dedicated to the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera. In Ancient Rome, February 15 was Lupercalia. Lupercalia, o

I received an email today courtesy of Classmates.com. An old high school friend made contact with me after not hearing a word from him for about hanumuun years (can't give away too much). It was great to hear from him and discover that he is still alive. It was he that created one of the few good memories in my high school life. Personally, I was not a big fan of high school. I hated the social aspects of it all and I tended to hang out with the misfits more often than not. I had a car, so the friends I had tended to stay with me. I never got arrested, but it wasn't like there wasn't cause to arrest me. As a teenage male, I tended to do stupid things. I am sure my Mother knew about most of it, and never mentioned many. There were some cases where she had no idea. A good childhood friend (Red) and I were cruising around testing out the new camera flash I had while driving in my car (I said we did stupid things). On one of the main roads in our small town, the car we ended up

I just finished watching "The MC Hammer Story" on VH1 Classics. I think it was made quite a while back, but it definitely shows the essence and the lessons of life. I fully understand immersing oneself into your work and ignoring the things that are going on around you. I have and at times still do the same thing. It is that insatiable need to do your best and be the best. As my Queen constantly informs me, I am very competitive. For all of the nostalgic readers, I have had and continue to have a link to MC Hammer's blog. The blog actually delves into his personal life more than I expected which is actually quite refreshing for a celebrity. He touches on his spirituality, his family and his music. He often treats the blog as a photoblog and will post events such as birthdays, funerals, and Nascar racing (a recent discovery that Hammer seemed to like). The only thing I wonder about is he feels he is in his life. He doesn't often write about his struggles plans, and goa

For the past few weeks, I have been driving a truck without brakes. Basically, they have worn down to the point where when I depress the brakes, you can hear the worn metal rubbing on the worn metal. Luckily I have not had to stop with any required amount of force. I end up being the guy who starts slowing down about a mile before the stop light. To make things worse, I drive in the fast lane. Yes, I am one of those guys that is now driving in the fast lane and slowing down way before arriving at the stopped cars. I have not been honked at or given the finger, so I must make it look like no big deal. I don't have a spinner pin to tell me the brakes were going bad before they did, otherwise, I would have replaced the brakes already. For now, I will continue to drive without brakes much in the same way I have lived my life. I have made decisions in the past that are without brakes. I kept scanning the horizon and looking for other options rather than coming to a complete stop. I have

Nirek requested information about my experience with Windows Vista. I have been running Vista for about a month now. There is a commercial that raps it up pretty well. I have been working with bleeding edge technology for years. I worked as Beta tester for Windows 95 in 1993. I worked with Citrix Metaframe when it was still on AS-400 boxes. Fact is, my first actual PC was a Commodore 64 with the cassette tape storage option. The first hard drive I had the pleasure of working on was a 20MB platter drive that required 2 people to move it only after parking the drive. This may sound a bit like a dinosaur talking about the good ole days, but I have to say, things were actually easier. We didn't have any features, so of course it was easier. Everything was text. You actually had to type. The "mouse" was the squeek of the 5 1/4" floppy disk. There were drawbacks...pictures were non-existent. People often walked away from their computers and walked directly into walls becau

Well, well, well. This is indeed a deep subject. I checked in on iNina today to see her pictures from her trip to Greece. It looks like a great time. She mentioned one word in her blog entry about toiletseeing. Of course, this made my blood pump. Just the thought of toiletseeing sounded like something right down my alley. My first thought was to of course use the toilet. But after that, I was thinking of the travel industry and how an entire industry could be created with toiletseeing tours. Hundreds of people lined up in rows waiting to approach the toilet. Visitors leaving with the toilet paper firmly grasping on the shoes. You could have different kinds of tours. The men's tour. The women's tour. The walk into the other sex bathroom tour. The golden plunger tour (only the best toilets are featured). The photo opportunities are too numerous to mention. Women standing in front of urinals. Men using a bidet. Men looking at the tampon dispenser. Women looking at the condom vend

I am really not sure if it is due to my looks or my insatiable need for duct tape and toilet paper, but for some reason, I can't manage to get an Internet connection to work in my temp-a-house. So, today I "worked from home" to be here when the rent-a-cable-guy arrived at the door at 10:00. He came...he drilled a hole in my exterior wall...he blamed it not working on inside service...he left. I called inside service and the call went something like this: "Hello, the technician informed me I need to call you all to turn on my modem." I thought I stated clearly. "Have you plugged in your computer?" the technician asks. "Indeed I have. I have been assigned an IP address and I can see on the modem's web interface that it is not communicating with you. I have rebooted it and have the same result." "Can you go ahead and unplug the modem and turn off your computer?" the technician asks. "Not a problem." 45 seconds later, she

It is Super Bowl Monday and the game is over. First, I would like to thank the Chicago Bears for a great season. I personally feel the team as a whole played with skill and precision. Unfortunately, Indianapolis played better and won the game. Congrats to the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts simply out-played the Bears. Though the first quarter of the game definitely had the landmark Bears style of play with the special teams touchdown run off the kickoff. What a way to open a Super Bowl game. Honestly, I am just happy the Bears made it to the Super Bowl. As much criticism as Rex Grossman has had, he helped put the team in the Super Bowl, and he didn't receive any credit for it. Sportmanship is as important as the game itself. When Coach Lovie Smith was interviewed after the game, you could see he was disappointed from defeat, but he held his head up high and applauded his friend for a good game. That is honor among Warriors. This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one). W

This is actually a post I started back in July that I decided to drag up since (once again) the issue has raised it's head. I have been mistaken for a celebrity. This doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. "Who" you ask? Paul Simon most commonly. Personally, I don't see the resemblance, but I guess that I am suppose to be a younger version of him. I guess it is possible that I am his illegitimate son. After all, I was adopted and I really don't know who my birth father was. But I seriously doubt it. I have also been mistaken for other local people. When I was in the Air Force, I attended a church. The first day of attending, EVERYBODY walked up to me and started talking to me asking when I came back. They all swore I was this other guy. The way I stood. The way I talked. Some people even argued with me about who I am. How frustrating do you think it would be to argue with someone about who you are? After showing military ID and drivers license to sever

I have started reading a site that Mickerdoo turned me on to. Cave Canum ( cavecanum.com ) is a place where you can anonymously post and read other people's secrets. If I am absolutely bored because all of the people performing the upgrade to our system is in Russia, I will pull up the page and read the secrets. Most of them are just people dealing with love or relationships like 22856: if your goal lastnight was to make me change my mind about you and everything, i think you would be pleased to know you succeeded. Some, are people who are frustrated with politics, police, lack of toilet paper or any other problems life has thrown their way. 22847 made me laugh: i wash my comforter about once a year. i keep it quite clean. These (22818) are the ones that make me go...huh? I shave my chest and nipples and im a girl This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one). Go ahead. Post a secret. But when you are reading all of the other posts, don't start thinking you may kno

I think I have gained control of my life again. Granted it did take the help of some drugs, a shrink, and my family, but I think I have gained some perspective on some things. First, I am not my job title. This is actually a big turning point for me. My wife has always considered me the overacheiver. She claims that the fact I am adopted, my father committed suicide, my brother committed suicide, and lastly my first wife committed suicide, that I have abandonment issues. So, for my entire life, I have fought and pushed myself to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. What do I mean? Well, I am a Native American male without a college education that grew up in a rather poor family. Even in school, I always pushed to be the best. I was in theater as the Artful Dodger. I was in Music (Band and Chorus) and received the Illinois Outstanding Soloist award and the National Music Honor Award. After receiving scholarship opportunities for music, I determined that music was not a career and j

I woke up this morning and performed my usual ritual of peeing, showering, drying, brushing my teeth, shaving and dressing. I happen to be running a little bit late this morning because I hit the snooze bar two or three too many times. I find the best is the most comfortable when I first crawl into it...and when I first wake up in the morning and the rest of the room is a bit cool. I do my best to not wake up my "roommate" as she calls it. She is really my mother-in-law. Mother of my Queen. Closer in age to me than I am to her daughter, there doesn't seem to be any issues with this living arrangement. She arrive home from work so late, I say about 10 words to her before I retire to my room. I buy a good majority of the food in the house. I eat...she doesn't. When she does, it tends to be chips and salsa (or guac) or something I may have bought for myself knowing she would also eat it such as lunch meats or ramen noodles. One day last week, I decided to buy myself som

Last weekend, a friend of the family came over to the house and the big topic of conversation was the Bears game. She informed us that since all of the people in the bayou are doing their voodoo to win the Bears vs. Saints game, that a news station had a news story about how Chicago fans could use voodoo of their own. Apparently, we had to write "Saints" on a piece of paper and stick it in the freezer thereby "freezing" the Saints. OK. Why not? The following morning (game day) the Queen, Avery and I went out for breakfast to find snow covering the viniman. I looked at the Queen and smiled. What is it that New Orleans does NOT have? Cold...and Snow. I knew this was going to be a great advantage for Chicago. Wind, Cold, Snow, Home field...all of these are good. It paid off. Chicago Bears managed to withstand the cold and snow to beat the Saints 39-14. They are heading to the Super Bowl to play against Indianapolis. It should be an excellent game. I am sure High Priest

Off to the airport again. Tonight I fly back to Chicago to visit my family and cheer on the cheerleader. I am actually becoming old hat at flying and getting through airports. Of course, I have never taken any international flights, but you never know. I want to travel internationally, I just haven't taken the initiative to complete the process. Next question would be...where to go? Well, Europe would be nice to visit. Asia as well. The language barrier may be an issue, but I can muddle through. I love to travel. This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one). Is the toilet paper the same overseas as it is in America? Is it all bodets? I really don't want to wipe my butt with a cloth towel. That just seems wrong on so many levels. What does someone do with the towel after they have properly wiped out the Klingons? Do you zap it with your phaser? Lastly, who is the pour soul that has to wash the towels? What did people do before toilet paper? These are the questions th

Wow, that was a long break from blogging. I am not really sure what happened, but it can't be good. I came back today to find a message at the top of my dashboard. "Make the switch now." Okey dokey! I have made the switch and they managed to keep all of my pieces and parts in tact. Very refreshing considering how much time I have sunk into this blog. The only bug spotted thus far is one of my titles in my "N8ivFavorites" section seems to be messed up. But that is really no big deal. Where have I been? What have I been doing? Nothing except working. Really, my life has become rather boring. I wake at 6:00AM Monday through Friday to go to work and arrive back around 8:00PM to have dinner and go to bed. Saturdays and Sundays are often spent doing chores (laundry, truck fixes, grocery shopping) or catching a movie. Last weekend I caught "Curse of the Golden Flower" While typing this blog, I received a phone call from a recruiter for a position back in Chic

I have just been busy at work. I should be fully caught up tomorrow.

UPDATE: A young lady from Circuit City called me today to first apologize for the bad service, and second to get more details as to how my shopping experience should be improved. A ray of light. I still have not heard a word from Mr. Phil Schoonover or Circuit City so I would imagine they just don't care. Big surprise there. At that rate, they will be filing for bankruptcy within the year. I know Circuit City personnel have read my blog because my site couter saw them on the entry for 16 minutes. So the fact they have not responded is not very customer saavy. Last Saturday, I went to cash my second job paycheck for $76 and change at PNC Bank (the bank the check was written on) in Woodbridge. I walked into the bank, signed the paycheck, provided my two forms of out of state identification and asked them to cash my check. I would have deposited the check in my bank, but there aren't any within 700 miles of here. After the teller begins processing the check, he looks at me and in

The last entry left a nice residual. Did a little research on a fart competition and found nothing real. I found some funny clips but nothing about a real competition. So, in honor of National Passing Gas day on January 7 (thank you High Priestess), I hereby create the first international fart competition to be held in Chicago, Illinois, United States on January 7, 2008. I just don't have time to pull off 100,000 people in 3 days. To compete, it will cost you a meager $5.00 US per entry. Once entered, you can compete for one of the following categories per entry: Longest Fart Loudest Fart Funniest Fart Most Odiferous Fart Team Fart (Creativity included) The competition location is yet to be determined, but you can guarantee it will be in a location that contains alcohol, fire extinguishers, and good ventilation. The pot will be a 50/50. 50% to the contestants, and the other 50% for the ref, bar and whatever other expenses. Here are the rules: When called, each competitor will grip

I have been asked how I come up with the blog topics for my blog. Actually, this is fairly simple. I will either be researching something that came up in conversation, or walking my pet sheep and I will think to myself "how odd is that?" Then I take this idea and without any real direction, start writing...or typing as the case may be. Then, about 2 minutes into being seated comfortably in my chair in front of the keyboard, I realize I need to go to the bathroom. Be right back. ... OK, much better. What usually happens is I start with a small idea of what to write about and from there I end up with diarrhea of the fingers. I will sit here and write and write about absolutely nothing while at the same time try to come up with a point to the message I deliver in the form that I am currently delivering it. I will scratch my head (get your mind out of the gutter), pause for a drink of water, loosen up my fingers and begin. My topics may range from toilet paper to cell phones but