The man said that it was something that he would be much more comfortable discussing with a male pharmacist.

The female pharmacist assured him that she was completely professional and whatever it was that he needed to discuss, he could be confident that she would treat him with the highest level of professionalism.

The man agreed and began by saying, “This is tough for me to discuss, but I have a permanent erection. It causes me a lot of problems and severe embarrassment. So I was wondering what you could give me for it?”

The pharmacist said, “Just a minute, I’ll go talk to my sister.”

When she returned, she said, “We discussed it at length and the absolute best we can do is, 1/3 ownership in the store, a company car, and $3000 a month living expenses.

“John,” the new guy replied.

The manager scowled, “Look, I don’t know what kind of a namby-pamby place you worked at before, but I don’t call anyone by their first name. It breeds familiarity and that leads to a breakdown in authority. I refer to my employees by their last name only – Smith, Jones, Baker – that’s all. I am to be referred to only as Mr. Robertson. Now that we got that straight, what is your last name?”

The new guy sighed and said, “Darling. My name is John Darling.”

I lost my job on February 11th, I interviewed for the job I have now on March 11th, and I started that job on April 11th.

So, it’ll take me a couple of months to work out my finances and get everything stabilized, but I have a job.

What a relief!

So, first order of business Monday morning will be to call everybody I pay money out to that I’ve not already called and either try to work something out or cancel them. If they are not essential, then I will be canceling them. I’ve already cut Cox cable TV along with Tivo, and reduced my internet speed. I still need to call my mortgage company and try to work out some kind of reduced payment until I get a job. Then it will be the credit cards, same deal. If they won’t work with me, they won’t get paid. Then utilities. I need to write a letter to my term life insurance and terminate the policy. I find it weird that I can only cancel via written notice. I’ll spend this weekend finding the policy number so that I can get the letter written and in the mail by Monday. Then car insurance. I’ve paid for my car, so I think I’ll bump it down to minimum coverage and try to work out a deal for how to pay for it. The car insurance is essential. I can’t drive without it. Next will be cell phones. It will cost me more to just cancel things, so I’ll reduce it down to the absolute minimum and try to work out a reduced payment from there.

After that the only other real expense I’ll have is food. This weekend I’ll need to work out a weekly menu. My goal is to get my entire menu to under $100 a week. I think it’ll be tough, but it’s doable to at least approach that.

After that, I’ll be applying for unemployment and food stamps. That will help. I might try to go for AHCCCS (Arizona Health Care Cost Control System).

Once that is all done, I’ll start to apply for jobs. I’ll spend this weekend also polishing my resume in anticipation for the intensified effort to find work.

I haven’t done my taxes yet, so I’ll do that as well over the next week or so. My return should give me a little more buffer.

On the internet hosting front, I’ve got some cleaning up to do to reduce expenses. The cost reduction will be minimal, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while and this a perfect time to do so. I’ll also have enough free time to actually do it for a change.

When life hands you lemons, use them to make a margarita. I don’t drink, but I like the analogy.

Speaking of which, since I’ll have a fair amount of free time, this is a perfect opportunity for me to launch a new show over at quicksurf.com. I’ve been mulling over doing something new over there, and this will be a good time to do that, so keep any eye out for a new show to go live some time Monday afternoon. I think I’ll call it “Geek Tech Today” or something like that. It will be a daily show. I’ll start it as audio only for the simple fact that I just don’t have the computing horsepower to render a daily video show at any resolution. I have enough trouble getting my other two weekly shows rendered that doing a daily video show is out of the question right now. So we’ll start as audio only, do the usual online exposure push and see what happens.

I view this as good. It’s giving me a chance to reset my financial baseline with no questions asked, which is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now. Expenses have a habit of creeping up on you and it’s not until you’re treading water that you even realize that’s the case. It’s time to clean the money house and I’m going to do so ruthlessly. I have no choice.

I’ll also spend this weekend taking care of me. The reality is that I did just suddenly lose my job, and there’s very little difference between that loss and any other sudden major loss in life. I’ll be needing to do some house cleaning in my noggin so that I can keep moving forward in life, because life does keep going on.

From here, it’s a simple matter of hoping I get a job before I lose my house.

Many of you who know me in person know that I’m not a big guy. I’m 5’11″, and weigh 125 pounds on average.

Well, my goal for 2011 is to put on some weight. I want to put 25 pounds on by the end of the year and weigh about 150 pounds. Obviously, I don’t want this to be fat, so it will have to be muscle.

I’m starting by supplementing my diet with high protein drinks like what is pictured above. From there, I’ll need to come up with an exercise/workout plan. I’ll need to average putting on 2 pounds a month, which should be doable.

I’ve always struggled with putting weight on, so we’ll see how this experiment goes.

I’m now 35. I meant to do a version 3.5 post, but life has just gotten in the way.

My older sister’s tumor is roaring back with a vengeance.  She’s been doing Chemo therapy.  It’s too early to tell what’s going on with it.

My work status is uncertain at this point.  I’ve basically spent the last nearly 4 months not being sure if I’m going to have a job or not.  Of course I’ve been actively looking for work to cover my risks, but it’s still been really sparse out there in job land.

I’ve moved this blog to a wordpress.com hosted blog.  Squarespace is nice, but costs money every month.  Wordpress.com doesn’t.  Given my job situation, I think that’s fair.

That’s really about it.  I’m really stressed, but trying to keep it under control.  I’ll continue to back-fill some of my archive posts from quicksurf.com as I have the time.  It should be a lot easier than doing it with squarespace.com

I have bad news. My older sister has a tumor growing in her spinal cord. I can’t really go into details for her privacy’s sake, but she will be going to Barrows Neurological Institute here in Phoenix Arizona. Strangely enough, Barrows happens to be the only place her health insurance pays for when it comes to this type of thing, even though she doesn’t actually live here in Arizona.

So, this is actually going to happen pretty fast, like in the next few weeks, which is good for her, because she is experiencing an inhuman amount of pain and is maxed out and can’t take any more pain medication without seriously risking her life.

Unfortunately, this is also a very high risk surgery. So much so that it has been put off as long as possible due to the potential consequences of the surgery. There is an excellent chance that she will not be walking, or have much lower body function/control after the surgery. Barrows is the best in the United States for this, but the nature of what’s going on with her is going to make it extremely difficult to remove the tumor without doing major damage to her spinal cord.

The effect on the family has been fairly devastating. She’s the oldest sibling of the children in our family, and one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and doesn’t deserve any of this, and yet has taken it all in stride. Almost as if it where happening to someone else and not to her. For the rest of us, it’s been very nerve wracking. Literally. Seeing her with her struggles to do the simplest of things, and knowing it’s being caused by a cancer in her back that you can’t do anything about makes me feel sick to my stomach.

All I want to do is crawl into a little hole and hide, but, I can’t. I’m her younger brother. The guy who has a house in Phoenix Arizona located less than 10 minutes from Barrows. The guy who’s making a room available to her in his house while she’s not in the hospital. The guy who’s going to pretty much see this whole thing go down in a very up close an personal fashion. The guy whose going to be right there helping her with whatever she needs because she probably won’t be able to do it herself. I’m scared to death, and I’m not the sick one, she is. Fortunately, I’m not alone. Phoenix is home to most of our extended family, including our parents, so I will have a fair amount of help. But still. I’m scared. I’m scared for her.

Oh, I’ve done things, and lived life, but much of it is routine stuff, like going to work, going grocery shopping, etc. etc.  The stuff I’ve covered on Twitter.

I’ve also done things worth blogging about if I were inclined to completely throw the notion of privacy out the window, however, I like my privacy, and much of what I do is off limits anyway simply because it involves other people that aren’t keen about being blogged.  Since I’m not keen to damage and/or burn bridges, that is off limits.

Did I just say that?!? You mean I have a life outside of the online persona that the rest of the world sees?!?

Yes, I do.  And in fact, this may come as a shock, but I’m a pretty busy guy offline.  I do my best to provide appropriate exposure to what may be interesting, but there’s a lot that will remain in real life simply because it will.

So, for all intents and purposes, the viewpoint my audience sees is I didn’t do anything interesting or worth blogging about.

Why am I blogging again? Till next time.

My power company, SRP, seems to have some faulty equipment in my area that they aren’t going to replace until it completely dies and won’t come back online, because every time there is any kind of weather that is worse than no rain and no wind, the power goes out for at least a few hours, so with the storm that was currently rolling through, I had no doubt that the power was going to go out.

I went to bed, and fell asleep.  I woke up to a giant buzzing sound outside just in time to see all the electronics that generate some form of illumination go black. “Great, the power just went out”. I grab my phone, and use it as a flashlight to get my flashlight.  I look out my windows, “Yep, it’s not just me”. Call SRP’s outage hotline.  It’s in my phones address book, that’s how often I use it.  I report the outage, stumble around to light a few candles so it’s not completely pitch black (it makes taking bathroom breaks much easier, I generally have a night light in the bathroom for nocturnal usage), and go back to bed knowing that it’s going to take a few hours for SRP to respond.  This was at about midnight.

I next wake up to the dogs barking wildly at the SRP truck outside.  It’s 3 something in the morning.  Thank goodness.  I’m frigid… “Why is it so cold? I have gas heat.”  Then it hits me, I might have gas heat, but with no electricity to turn the blower motor, the heat will never kick on. I’m really shivering at this point.  I stumble into the kitchen and look at the wall mounted thermometer.  The air temp in the house is 58 degrees Fahrenheit, a solid 10+ degrees colder than the coldest setting I’d ever let the house get. “SRP is here, the power should come back soon”.

I bundle up and get back in bed.

After much tossing and turning, I next wake up to the sound of silence and uncontrollable shivering.  The SRP truck is gone.  I still don’t have power.  I look outside across the street.  Their porch light is on.  It’s almost 5 in the morning.  I check the temp.  It’s 51 degrees in the house and 41 outside.  I can’t seem to warm up.  I call the outage hotline again.  They know I still don’t have power, they’re troubleshooting. There’s a small cluster of houses down my alley that still don’t have power.  I’ll get a call when it should be back on.  I’m exhausted and can’t stay awake.

I next wake up to my alarm on my phone.  It’s 6 am.  Still no power.  It’s overcast outside and really dark.  I consider taking a shower so that I can just go into work, but realize that it would be kind of difficult to do with no lights.  I consider making a cup of coffee, but realize that I can’t because my coffee maker won’t work without power.  I am still uncontrollably shivering… I layer on more clothes, trying to warm up.  It’s now 48 degrees in the house.  I decide to go back to bed, so I reset my phone’s alarm to 7:30 am, in hopes that it will be light enough outside to shine in my bathroom’s window and make taking a shower easier, either that, or the power will come back before then.  I turn my bedroom light on so that when the power comes back, it’ll wake me up.

I pass out.  My alarm goes off.  I am uncontrollably shaking.  All I want to do is go back to sleep. Still no power.  It’s light outside, so I go into the bathroom and start the hot water.  One of the beauties of having a gas hot water heater, is it uses no electricity.  It’s entirely self contained, save the gas line, and water pipes.  It has a pilot light (which didn’t blow out with the storm, thank goodness, it’s outside in a water shed), and as long as it’s lit, regulates the water temperature to whatever it’s supposed to be at.

The hot water starts.  I switch the water flow to the shower head, and start turning up the cold water until the temp is within the non-scalding range, which considering how cold I was, probably wasn’t that warm to begin with.  I get in, and over the next few minutes, start turning down the cold water flow until I can barely stand the hot water.  Despite all this, I still feel frigid.  I feel my outer limbs starting to warm up, but at my core, feel extremely cold.  Since I still don’t have power, my bathroom fan isn’t running, and I have to say, it’s amazing at how foggy a bathroom can get when you have no fan to suck out the freshly moistened air, from the fairly hot water streaming out of the shower head. I go through my usual shower routine to get clean, then just stand there under the shower head trying to warm up.  Every minute or two, I turn down the cold water a bit, and suck up the warmth.  Not much times goes by and the cold water is shut off completely.  The hot water temp has plateaued.  A few more minutes, and it’s starting to cool down.  I shut the water off and get out and dry off as quickly as possible.  I throw 4 layers of clothes on because I’m still freezing cold, and head into work.  Outside, it’s soaking wet, and freezing cold (for Phoenix).

I get to work, and it’s freezing there as well.  Apparently, there was some power loss and no heat over night.  I’m really glad I put so many layers of clothes on.

At almost 9 am, I get a phone call from SRP, the power should be back.  I breath a sigh of relief.  I just have to get through the day.  I can’t seem to warm up.

I struggle through the afternoon to stay awake.  The crappy night’s sleep is really starting to take it’s pound of flesh.

5 pm rolls around. Even though I got to work a little late, I decide to make the time up later in the week, and go home, hoping that the power really is back on.

I get home.  The porch light is on, I breath a sigh of relief.  I go inside.  It’s a cozy 72 degrees inside.  I sit down on my couch.  The next thing I know, it’s almost 9 pm.

I eat some dinner, jump on the internets, check my email, watch a few YouTube videos of some of my subscriptions, and decide to write this blog post.

I think I’ll go take another nice warm shower simply because I still feel a little chilled at the core, then go to bed because I’m still really tired.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Alice Grayson was to bake a cake for the Baptist Church Ladies’ Group in Tuscaloosa, but forgot to do it until the last minute. She remembered it the morning of the bake sale and after rummaging through cabinets, found an angel food cake mix & quickly made it while drying her hair, dressing, and helping her son pack up for Scout camp. 

When she took the cake from the oven, the center had dropped flat and the cake was horribly disfigured and she exclaimed, “Oh dear, there is not time to bake another cake!” This cake was important to Alice because she did so want to fit in at her new church, and in her new community of friends. So, being inventive, she looked around the house for something to build up the center of The cake. She found it in the bathroom – a roll of toilet paper. She plunked it in and then covered it with icing. Not only did the finished product look beautiful, it looked perfect. 

Before she left the house to drop the cake by the church and head for work, Alice woke her daughter and gave her some money and specific instructions to be at the bake sale the moment it opened at 9:30 and to buy the cake and bring it home. When the daughter arrived at the sale, she found the attractive, perfect cake had already been sold. Amanda grabbed her cell phone & called her mom. Alice was horrified-she was beside herself! Everyone would know! What would they think? She would be ostracized, talked about, ridiculed! All night, Alice lay awake in bed thinking about people pointing fingers at her and talking about her behind her back. 

The next day, Alice promised herself she would try not to think about the cake and would attend the fancy luncheon/bridal shower at the home of a fellow church member and try to have a good time. She did not really want to attend because the hostess was a snob who more than once had looked down her nose at the fact that Alice was a single parent and not from the founding families of Tuscaloosa, but having already RSVP’d, she couldn’t think of a believable excuse to stay home. The meal was elegant, the company was definitely upper crust old south and to Alice’s horror, the cake in question was presented for dessert! Alice felt the blood drain from her body when she saw the cake! She started out of her chair to tell the hostess all about it, but before she could get to her feet, the Mayor’s wife said, “what a beautiful cake!” Alice, still stunned, sat back in her chair when she heard the hostess (who was a prominent church member) say, “Thank you, I baked it myself.” 

Alice smiled and thought to herself, “God is good.”

The teacher looked at little Larry’s records and told him to please take his seat.

Not five minutes passed when little Larry stood up again and said, “I don’t belong here, I should be in the third grade!”

Larry did this a few more times before the principal came along and the teacher explained Larry’s problem. The principal and the first grade teacher told little Larry that if he could answer some questions that they could decide in which grade he belonged. Well, they soon discovered that Larry knew all the state capitals and country capitals that the principal could think of.

The teacher suggested they try some biology questions … “What does a cow have 4 of but a woman has only 2?” asked the teacher.

“Legs!” Larry immediately replied. “What does a man have in his pants that a woman doesn’t?” asked the teacher.

“Pockets!” said Larry.

The teacher looked at the principal, who said, “Maybe he should be in third grade, I missed those last two questions!”

“Now, class, closely observe the worms,” said the professor while putting a worm into the water. 

The worm in the water writhed about, happy as a worm in water could be. He then put the second worm into the whiskey. It curled up and writhed about  painfully, then quickly sank to the bottom, dead as a doornail. 

“Now, what lesson can we learn from this experiment?” the professor asked. 

Johnny, who naturally sits in back, raised his hand and wisely, responded confidently, “Drink whiskey and you won’t get worms.”

I was a little tired feeling, and had a slightly upset stomach, but otherwise didn’t really feel bad. Once at work, I started doing my usual daily routine stuff.

That lasted for about an hour and a half.

I started feeling really green around the gills, and my stomach really started to feel like I had fed it something really bad.  A quick “Hey I gotta go home, not feeling so hot” to the boss man later, and I was on my way home, struggling not to completely lose my cookies in the car.

Once at home, it was a quick change into something not work related, and some praying at the porcelain throne.  I then started to feel the raging head-ache and roiling stomach.

I crawled into bed.  Next thing I knew, it was about 1pm, and I was feeling woozy and surprisingly hungry.  Since my stomach was still feeling a little raw, I decided upon some soup.

 After the soup, I felt a lot better, but still laid back down and passed out.

Next thing I know, Mom is knocking on my door.  She happened to be in the neighborhood and saw my car home in the middle of the day, so decided to check in.

We talked for a good couple of hours about stuff, dad, things going on, life, etc.  It was actually quite good.

After that, I piddled around the house for a little bit, had a really light dinner, and now, here I am typing this.  I’m not sure if I’m going to go to work tomorrow simply because I’m still feeling a little raw and have a head-ache, but tomorrow is a new day.

Maybe I’ll go to Australia.

This happened right before I wrote this post.  I had just finished editing the latest version of Linux News Log Season #10 Episode #03, and was running some errands while waiting for my file to finish rendering out.

I had a few items to buy, had them in my cart and was standing in the express check out line, when two guys got in line behind me.  One was talking loudly and referring to everybody as “bro”.  I was attempting to ignore them, since I was in a hurry.

The loud guy said “I should get my I.D. out and have it ready”, which he proceeded to do, and laid it down on the conveyor belt.  The guy he was with said “That’s a terrible picture of you.”  The loud guy said “That’s nothing bro, check this out!”  He then proceeded to pull out his Arizona Department of Corrections Released Offender Identification Card and showed it to his friend.  He then stuck it in my face.  ”Check that out bro!”

I am instantly off-put, irritated, and angry.  Loud guy is acting like it’s a badge of honor, like it is his “I’m a badass, I’ve been to jail” card, and that we should all worship him at his feet.

I do my best to act neutral and un-interested despite my near overwhelming urge to punch him as hard as I can for so overtly invading and violating my space.  It suddenly completely strikes me how into himself this guy is and how completely oblivious he is to his surroundings and the effect he’s having on others.  You’ve been to jail.  Congratulations.  I hope we never see each other again in my lifetime. I hope some day you get the better of whatever disease is now your Dark Sith Lord and Master, because if you don’t, it will kill you.  Believe me, I know from up close and personal experience.

I proceed to go through the check out process and leave Walmart as quickly as possible so I can try to slow down the seething anger and rage that I’m on the verge of losing control over.  Little does loud guy know that he’s acting like a bad ass to somebody who knows way more about the inner workings of the jail system in Arizona that your average person…  He thinks it’s impressive, but in reality, there is nothing impressive about it. Even though I’ve never been in jail, I am a son to someone who has, and despite way more therapy and treatment than I’m willing to publicly admit to, my childhood still deeply affects me in ways that sometimes prove to be volatile and unpredictable.

It all happened when I was in 2nd through 5th grade.  Dad was succumbing to his disease, there were five of us kids.  One night, dad didn’t come home.  He got busted.  I won’t go into specifics here, but suffice it to say that his offense was way more than just drinking and driving.  After that night, for the next few years, the only time I saw my dad was when Mom took me down to the Madison Street Jail here in Phoenix for visitation.  He wrote a lot of letters to us kids.  I still have them. I still vividly remember the screening process that the security guards at the jail followed to make sure you weren’t trying to smuggle something into the jail.  As a child, it was really scary.  Then once we got through the screening process and got to the room where I could actually see my dad, we weren’t allowed to come within three feet of each other and there was a big guard right there to make sure that nothing happened.  Unfortunately, it was enough of a disconnect that nothing really did happen.  During those years, Mom did what she could, but never really did make ends meet.  Despite all the assistance programs out there, when you have 5 kids, its never enough.  We spent a lot of time on the street while Mom was trying to make ends meet.  Even after Dad was released, he was not allowed to be within 100 yards of us kids without a court appointed supervisor present.  This went on for quite some time.  It wasn’t until I was entering into Junior High that dad was finally allowed to stay at home and be with us kids without a supervisor.  That whole thing is a giant source of anger and rage for me. It still pokes it’s head up from time to time like this evening when Loud Guy shoved his badge of dishonor into my face.

Fortunately, the judge and prosecutor had good enough judgement to order the entire family into treatment.  If it had not been for that, I would be much worse off today than I am now, and for that I am thankful.

Dad did eventually clean up his life.  All through my Junior High and High School years as well as early 20s, he was clean and sober and doing really good.  I cherish those years.  He was a dad.  He was my dad, and he was actually there and present and involved.  Life was great.

Then, he had a heart attack.  He had lots of heart muscle damage and had triple bypass heart surgery.  He never got the chance to ever fully recover from that, because shortly thereafter, his mother passed away.  Since then, he’s suffered a bit of a relapse and is back in his disease of addiction.  He’s also since had a multitude of heart and health issues over the past several years.  Even worse, he doesn’t seem to want to get better.  Of all things, that is the most painful.  As a child, I knew what I wanted from him, but never really got to experience what I had missed, and now that I have, it hurts even more and has had the effect of throwing fuel on the fire of my own problems.

All the other kids have moved out of state, perhaps in hopes of escaping the inherent addiction chaos and starting anew.  I am the last remaining hold out so to speak… I see to it that I at least see or do something with him every week in hopes of encouraging him to get better.  My hope is that one of these days, Dad will once again be the dad he was when things were good, so he can then be a great dad to his children, and a grand-dad to his children’s children.

Unfortunately, I fear that my time to help is nearing an end, as his condition hasn’t done anything but get progressively worse.

I can only hope that he soon decides to best his Dark Sith Lord and Master, and when he does, I’ll be right there to support and help in any way that I can be of service.

General Characteristics

Adrian is a seemingly inexhaustible investigator of facts, and will pursue all possible avenues for a solution to a problem. While he may not be a perfectionist with all things, he has certain activities that will always be done with the same high standards in mind. To some people, Adrian may appear to be analytical. He wants to have contact with a variety of individuals within an environment that is both pressure and results-oriented. In the long run, he prefers quality over quantity. The new and the unusual attract him, if they also represent high quality. He likes to work behind the scene and be seen as someone who is organized and has his life in order. He is able to focus on projects with a vision that often results in penetrating insights. Adrian is alert and sensitive to his errors and mistakes. He constantly seeks to avoid errors in his work. Precision and accuracy are important to him. Adrian takes pride in his competence or his ability to understand all the facts of a situation. He is good at concentrating on data while looking for the best method of solving the problem. Others may see him as vacillating on decisions, but he is only attempting to make the right decision the first time around. He, capable of making daily decisions routinely, usually becomes cautious about the bigger decisions; he wants to be absolutely certain his decision is correct. He prefers to study and analyze a problem before responding. He wants to feel that his response is the correct one. Adrian follows company policy, if aware of it. He is a critical and systematic thinker, and this strength may not be easily recognized by others. He tends to become bogged down in details. He may accumulate so much data that the details overwhelm him. He can be seen as a thinker whose intuitive talents can bring divergent ideas to the forefront. Adrian likes to know what is expected of him in a working relationship, and have the duties and responsibilities of others who will be involved explained. Communication is accomplished best by well-defined avenues. He enjoys analyzing the motives of others. This allows him to develop his intuitive skills. When Adrian is deeply involved in thinking through a project, he may appear to be cool and distant. Adrian’s logical, methodical way of gathering data is demonstrated by his ability to ask the right questions at the right time. Adrian can be outgoing at times. Basically introverted, he will engage in social conversation when the occasion warrants. He is intuitive and is able to ask good questions in order to get the critical, complete information he seeks. He likes to ask questions to clarify the communications. He gathers data in order to be certain he is correct in his work, communications or decision making. He prefers meetings that start and finish on time. He may get upset with people who do not adhere to rules and how things “should be done.” I’d say this is a frighteningly accurate assessment of me. I’m that way almost to a fault.

Value To The Organization

• Accurate and intuitive
• Suspicious of people with shallow ideas
• Tough-minded
• Proficient and skilled in his technical specialty
• Always concerned about quality work
• Objective–”The anchor of reality.”
• Excellent troubleshooter
• Conscientious and steady
• Objective and realistic

I’d say this about accurate. I’m not into bullshit, and I don’t like my time being wasted by others who aren’t keeping it real.

Areas for Improvement

Adrian has a tendency to:

• Hesitate to act without precedent
• Be defensive when threatened and use the errors and mistakes of others to defend his position
• Fail to tell others where he stands on an issue
• Lean on supervisors if information and direction is not clear
• Tell ideas as opposed to sell ideas
• Appear somewhat aloof and cool to the emotional appeal of others
• Be suspicious and pessimistic of any new project. Wants more support than is necessary

Clearly, I have some amount of improvement to work on. I’m a little peeved about the telling ideas as opposed to selling ideas… I can’t stand people who try to sell me on stuff because they are basically asking me to trust them, and trust is to be earned, not taken for granted. As a result, I try not to sell ideas, I just tell about an idea I have an let the other person decide if they like it. If it’s a good idea, I shouldn’t have to sell it.

Other Notes of Interest

There are do’s and don’ts listed for communicating with me, I’ll provide a brief summary: Do’s: Show some respect, be prepared, and stick to business. Don’ts: Don’t invade my body space, don’t say “trust me” – you must earn it, don’t be redundant, disorganized, or vague. Don’t pretend to be an expert if you are not – I am frighteningly good at weeding out the posers, so just keep it real and you’ll be fine.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of data that I’ve not yet parsed/analyzed so I may update this as I have more. Obviously, this is all speaking in generalities, and I’m not going to do one big copy/paste, but it’s some pretty interesting stuff. They also included some worksheets and self improvement exercises for the areas where I need to improve, so I’ll be going through some of that and practicing that at work over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, I won’t get too bogged down with all the information.

It’s all been a huge learning experience, which makes for a nicely aging Adrian.

So, what’s in store between now and when I turn 34 next year? I don’t know. I’ve got some personal projects that I want to work on, and a couple of issues I’ve yet to work out.

Given what’s transpired this past year, I wouldn’t mind a bit if I had some “breathe” time to just process.

I’ve just done a whole post talking about the past year without specifically mentioning anything… Well if you know me in real life, you’ll know what I’m talking about, otherwise, you’ll need to get to know me in real life because that’s just how it is.

For some of the stuff I’m working on, you’ll hear more about it later when I’ve got it closer to being ready to publicly talk about.

Till then, watch this space.

I was reading a post (via GeekNews) about Apple hardware, and it just hit me that Apple does have a huge gaping hole in their product line-up (at least they do from my perspective).

The Missing Mac

They need to sell a desktop system between the iMac and the Mac Pro. Right now, they don’t really have an in-between system. You’re either a home user and an iMac will do you just fine, or you’re a Professional and you get the Pro products. What about a Home Power User? Some one at home that would use some fairly major league computer horsepower?

Since I’ve purchased my Macbook Pro and started using it as my main computer for web, email, pictures, video stuff, and other things I’ve come to the realization that it’s fine for all that, but more often than not, I end up leaving it home in the mornings because the night before I started it working on some big video encoding job, or something similar to that kind of usage (I’ll talk about that when I’m ready to) and it wasn’t finished yet, and I had no easy of of pausing it long enough for me to put it to sleep and start it back up when I got to work.

I have a need for dedicated 24x7x52 processing power at home to work on big jobs. In my mind, an iMac does not cut it for such a need. At home, I do a LOT of video work, audio work outside of just my podcasts, programming, and other stuff that most people would consider high performance computing at a crazy level. I’m talking big processing guns, like several 8 core Mac Pros at least.

What I want to do with all that processing power is fodder for another post (if you know me at a personal level at all, you’ll know that I’m as hardcore of a geek as they get, and the programs I write for me at home are hard for a lot of people to understand at a technical level), but several years ago, I had several personal projects I was working on that at a computational and mathmatical level had entered the realm of brain busting. I put them to rest because I decided that then modern computing power was not sufficient for what I was trying to accomplish. Fast forward to now, I still don’t think modern computing power is sufficient, but I’ve gotten some new ideas and want to try them out.

This is the problem. Mac Pros would be great, but because this is a personal project, I just can’t justify spending that kind of cash. Even if I scaled my hardware needs way back (at the expense of execution time), the entry level Mac Pro is out of my budget.

What I need (and I Apple hope fills) is a desktop that sits right between the iMac and the Mac Pro. Something where I have a box that I can stuff 3 or 4 hard drives in, put in my choice of PCI Express video card in, put a Core 2 Duo or a Core 2 Quad (or the extreme variety) and for $1500 to $2000 have a dual or quad core Mac desktop based on the Core 2 Desktop processors.

Apple could take their existing Mac Pro case, put an Intel desktop motherboard in it, and give us the choice of video cards, processors, ram, and storage. That would probably cut a solid $800 or so right out of the cost, and I’d get something relatively affordable and relatively high performance enough to quench my processing needs for my personal projects.

Alas, Apple is not likely to do that, so I’ve been finding myself at Newegg.com scouring the site for parts to build myself a desktop computer that I can dedicate to long term processing projects. I would love to run OS X with this, but alas, that won’t be the case either if I build it myself…

I can either get the Mac Pro and stay with OS X, or go with a Windows box and save several hundred dollars.

I wish it didn’t have to come down to that.

Initial Impressions

So lets talk about my initial impressions of the site. First off, there is a lot packed into the home page, but it’s very manageable and not overly busy. The thing that struck me the most was the production quality of the imagery and the content. It had been a while since I’ve actually read the printed version of the magazine, so I don’t know if the content on the website is also in the print version or not, but either way, the pictures and overall look and feel of what you see is almost spellbinding. It looks like the vast majority of the content is contained within several sub-sections of the site, and there is a list of links to each one running down the left hand side of the home page and subsequent sub-section pages. I’ll talk about each sub-section individually below.

Animals

If you’re an animal lover, this is the place to be. You can spend hours in this sub-section alone. The sub-section has a list of links running across the top that further breaks down by animal type and also gives you the option of browsing A-Z style if you like. There are lots of very well done pictures as well as Feature articles for most animal types. Again, lots of content, and a great resource of information for quite a bit of the known animal universe.

Daily News

This is the section I originally stumbled upon. It’s sub-divided into Animal News, Ancient World, Environment News, Cultures News, Space/Tech News, and a section simply called “Weird”. From what I’ve seen of it thus far, it’s updated pretty regularly and it’s obvious that they put some effort into everything they post there. Pretty top notch stuff.

Green Guide

This sub-section is very quickly becoming my favorite place to hang out. It offers a green buying guide, a bunch of blog content, tips & tools, green living information, and a lot more. There’s a lot of content in this section that is well done, well organized, and easy to use.

History

This sub-section is probably the most sparse of the sections. There is more news content here than any information, however, there is quite a bit in the way of pictures and video that I’ve not perused. I’m not much of a history buff, so I don’t have much else to say other than it’s still worth checking out.

Kids

This actually leads to whole other site (kids.nationalgeographic.com), and I’m amazed at how much content is actually here that’s geared towards kids. It’s clear that a lot of effort to get the younger generations engaged and interested is being invested here, which is a good thing. If you’ve got kids, this is a kid friendly place for your young ones to hang out and get their learn on. Totally worth checking out.

Maps

This is more like another site and not a sub-section. I’m not a mapping guy, but if you’re into maps, this looks like a pretty neat place to hang out. One item to note: The mapping machine is pretty cool, it lets you go to just about any place on the planet, then search for and print historical, weather, population, and other maps of the area of your interest. All in all, pretty neat stuff, and if you travel a lot, is pretty useful for checking out places where you may (or may not) be heading.

Music

This section was actually un-expected, but there’s quite a bit of world music in this sub-section. The tag-line for it is: “listen to the world”, and while I’ve never heard of most of the artists featured here, this is definitely worth doing some exploring. It will be at least a horizon expanding journey. From the precursory look I’ve taken at it so far, it doesn’t look like you can actually download any free music from here, but you can listen to and buy music.

Photography

Back in the old days when National Geographic was just a print magazine, much of what made it so great was their eye popping photos. They were never short of really great pictures. Well, I’m glad to say that this sub-section proudly continues that tradition of providing a lot of really awesome photos. You can spend hours here and still not see it all. And the best part of it all is the Print Store, where you can buy prints of many of the best photos in sizes ranging from a 10″ gallery print to a 30″ gallery print either framed or un-framed. Obviously the prices for the framed photos can range into the several hundred dollar range, but most un-framed prints can be had for less than $100.

Science & Space

This sub-section really appeals to my inner geek. There is quite a bit of quality content and a nice A-Z browser that lets you troll through it by subject. It’s almost like a scientific encyclopedia, there’s a lot here and most of it looks like it’s kept fresh.

Travel & Cultures

If you want to see places around the world, this is the sub-section to go to. I’m not much of a traveler and I still was impressed with what was here, for example, on the continents area, all of the major continents are listed out and as you drill down into each one, there are loads of facts and figures and photos. If you’re a travel buff, there is a lot of great information here.

Video

This sub-section looks like it’s just a collection point for all the videos on the web site. There is a lot here covering a pretty wide range of subjects, and from the looks of it, the production quality is pretty high. A pretty good place to spend a few hours watching what they’ve got here.

So all in all, I think there is a recurring theme when it comes to National Geographic’s website. They have really high quality content, and lots of it. If you like the magazine, then you’ll undoubtedly like the website. I’m bookmarking it and I’ve added the news sections RSS feed to my feed reader.