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pls excuse my typing, i like to save kystrokes, nor do i hv time to deal with spellchk. i apologize for the inconvenience. Blog 51 8:36 PM 12/30/2003 merry christmas! happy new year! this is the end of 2003. what a year. i became a business owner this year. went to puerto vallarta, san fran, chicago, new jersey and paris. went to the WORLD SERIES! started blogging. watched the country go to war, and saw saddam hussein get caught in a hole in the ground. its been a long year, but just the beginning of a project thats going to take up the rest of my life. its awesome to be able to get up from your desk and go golfing at anytime you like. it really puts a cherry on top of your sundae. or caramel in my case. ahhh life. i think i was regifted this xmas. i think it happened twice too! but its the thought that counts. right? i did get some great gifts for my friends though. dvd players for everyone! and everyone seemed to be so impressed. theyr not even $50, how could you go wrong? got a bbq gas grill for the torres family. they were totally blown away. i love giving really good stuff to people. even homeless people. i like giving them a dollar or two. i like seeing my dollar go into the persons hand that i intend to help. giving to a charity seems like a lost cause. did u know that if ur the president of a charity, you can decide your own salary? thats right, whatever you want, you get. i feel like starting a charity, but i just dont hv the nerve to be such a scumbag. theyrs plenty to go around anyway. well i wish everyone a happy new year and good luck! its gonna be a wild ride! nite. Blog 50 11:08 PM 12/23/2003 i lay in bed at night, and as i think about work i picture a huge monitor on my ceiling. i develop my software product on it like a canvas. i wave my hands back and forth in a mad rage of development, like gustav mahler conducting the vienna orchestra. last night i saw flames swirling from my hands as i drew the plans for the next version of our management software. it is so awesome having the power to create. that sense of achievement and the ability to affect thousands of people. making someone elses day easier, is so fulfilling. gosh darn, their aint nuttin like it. less maybe listnin to zeppelin. happy 50th blog becker! nite all. Blog 49 8:40 PM 12/18/2003 my letter in blog 48 prompted the president of Advanced Cable to call me. he said he never responds to email but my letter was so overwhelming that it made him change protocol at his company. he apologized and gave us a free month of internet. and said he grilled thomas and the other tech involved in our issue. if i ever become a congressman i promise that i will make two laws that will resolve two of my biggest beefs, that just eat at my ass, and at this point my ass is killin me. 1. the toll booth. i've driven thru toll booths in seattle, phoenix, fargo, boston, florida and every city and state in between. 99% of the time there isnt a sign that tells you how much the toll is, until you are actually in the toll booth itself. the sign is ON the door of the toll booth. you cant even see it if ur second in line. sometimes theres a sign at the 500ft mark, but if u miss that sign you will not see the amount until you are in the booth. there shud be huge sign on the top of every toll plaza that posts the toll amount. i dont want to dig for change when i get to the booth, nor do i want to wait for anyone else to. i think thats a simple enough request that would make EVERYBODYS day less stressful. 2. the first one was easy. this one is pure insanity. in all those places i've driven, i've had to follow directions to a clients business location. i have an address on a piece of paper. to find that address i need to see other addresses on the same street to figure out where i am. i would be willing to bet that if you did a study to see how many businesses have an address posted on the front of the building, you would find less than 5-10% have them. and it happened again today. i couldnt find an address for almost a mile today at the critical point at which i needed one in order to gauge my location. this is,(excuse me) bullshit. there needs to be a law that every business must post an address visible from 80 feet away. i cant imagine what it must be like to be in the delivery business. it must be so stressful that you're driven to beat your wife and kids when u get home. enough griping for today. happy hannukah tomorrow! Blog 48 12:50 PM 12/15/2003 Letter to Advanced Cable Good morning, My name is John Becker, President and CEO of Aventurine software products, dba Computer Outfitters of Coral Springs. I contacted tech support last week regarding our email issue. Our email had not been working for the entire week prior. Email is the foundation of our business, it's how we stay in contact with our customers, and it's the medium we use to support many of them, which helps us keep the phone lines open. The first contact we had with your tech support team was useless to say the least. He was a young black man that seemed to be reading a script and was in a hurry to get off the phone. He tried his standard troubleshooting routine, and when it didn't work he told us that the problem had to be on our end. He simply said, 'I can't help you and hung up.' We called back the next day and spoke to a very nice older gentleman that troubleshooted the issue logically and we found out that the issue lied within the router. A computer connected directly to the cable internet could send, but connected through the router you received an error. Unfortunately I rushed to the conclusion that disonnecting all computers, hub, and router and restarting everything would fix the problem. He did volunteer to stay on the phone to make sure it was the issue stating, 'If that doesn't fix the problem then I have something else I would like to try.' In my haste we disconnected. And of course the fix I had attempted was not the fix we needed. We called the next day again. I spoke to a Thomas Hagel? I explained the situation, and revealed too much information to Thomas regarding the previous call disclosing the router issue. Thomas said, 'The problem is on your end. I cannot help you. We cannot troubleshoot this issue. This is not our responsibility.' I explained that all I wanted to do was speak to the last gentlemen being he said he had an idea of how to approach the issue. Thomas said the previous person was Derek, and that we are not allowed to speak to him and that he was going to reprimand him for suggesting such an idea to us. He said, 'If you need to speak to a manager, I am the manager. And if you want my bosses name here it is. You're not going to get help from us, this is not our problem.' I was extremely disappointed in his attitude and his poor communication skills. If he was an employee of Computer Outfitters he would be removed immediately. Our clients rely on us to keep their businesses up and running, we have amiable relationships and speak to each other on a first name basis. The 407 clients that we have across the U.S have faith in us to respond to their needs and trust in us to never end a phone call without a resolution. Thomas sounds like he worked for TAG in Pompano Beach. We hired one of 'those people' once. Once. They're unprofessional, they lack computer knowledge, and they have no communication skills whatsoever. I should know I worked there for three months doing support for Compaq Computers. They groomed you to 'turn the call'. Hang up as quickly as possible. If you have to tell the customer, 'Run a scandisk and a defrag then call us back if it still doesn't work', then do it. Just flip the call. Thomas and the first young black man that dealt with our issue surely worked at TAG. If you run your business like TAG then my email is meaningless. But the final point I need to make is that we called again the next day. The person we spoke to troubleshooted the issue, recognized the error(554), and handed us off to Junior. Junior fixed our problem in less than 3 minutes. Bottom line? Junior is what all employees should aspire to be. Junior is the definition of tech support. I know you don't have personal relationships with your clients, everyone is more or less a number, but good tech support yields happy customers and it also yields revenue. I hope someone speaks to Thomas, and teaches him how to communicate. He sucks. Have a wonderful holiday season. Blog 47 11:24 PM 12/14/2003 if i was told i'd hv to watch a fashion show every night for the rest of my life after i get married, i might'v thought twice. its like clockwork every night as i get into bed and turn on the news or golf channel. my wife begins her nightly fashion show. she parades 4 outfits on and i hv to vote yes or no on each then when decided i need to vote on the shoes. "do these look better or these?" if i dont give an answer, i get yelled at. loudly. if i give my answers too fast, i get 'YOU DIDNT EVEN LOOK!" do all guys go thru this? if they do, we need to take a stand. no more fashion shows! Blog 46 8:10 PM 12/14/2003 so we caught saddam. and we can all say we remember that day. if you were in NY you will remember it was snowing. me? i'll remember the jets won that day, and the bar exploded in applause as they announced saddams capture. if i had a brain i wouldv gone to tikrit and knocked door to door, telling the locals that 'the american soldiers are coming, theyr gonna kill all of you, give me saddam and i'll give you a million dollars, and you'll all be saved' i wouldv cashed in on 25 mil. what an ass i am. and now what r we going to do with him anyway? we shud let him hang out in the same cell as noriega and give them RISK. they can play all day everyday. and for that matter i've always said we shudv gone into bagdad the same way we did panama. we caught noriega in a matter of hours not months. we've lost over 500 soldiers so far. when will we declare victory? when will this be over? oh yeah i forgot about the democrats. you know theyr pissed off. they we hoping they might oust bush on grounds of his unsuccessful campaign in iraq. but that game plan is out the door. i actually feel sorry for those guys. Blog 45 4:40 PM 12/13/2003 well we made it to paris. first class. every seat had its own tv. i watched terminator 3 and a few other shows. the seats reclined to an almost level position, so you were able to get a good sleep in after the 18 course meal. roasted nuts and wine to start. a stuffed salmon appetizer. then a salad plate. followed by vegetable lasagna. more merlot. crackers and cheese. more merlot. a fruit plate. then my favorite. the sundae cart. two scoops vanilla ice cream with caramel and whipped cream. choise of nuts sprinkles, pecans, choclate syrup, and much much more. then the nap. we landed at 7am, at charles de gaulle airport. took out a cash advance for some euros and we were off to the taxi stand. our taxi driver didnt speak any english but i managed to get my destination understood. it was a long drive at 7am across paris. they hv rush hour over there too. we were staying at a holiday inn, in clichy.(pronounced cleeshy) we were 2 blocks from the town center, a nice square with lots of restaurants. the holiday inn was very formal. tucked away on a side street with a local pub on the corner. lots of business men were in the lobby getting ready for the day ahead. i approached the front desk manned by a black man and a young frenchman. i gave them my name and the black man looked earnestly for my reservation, through stacks of papers. to no avail. i had made the reservation over the priority club line the previous night only minutes before boarding the plane in newark. so i would assume it didnt make it to their front desk in time to be setup for the early morning checkin. so they searched. and searched. i explained that i made the res over the priority line. he didnt seem to care. i showed him a piece of paper that i had written the names of 3 hotels on. one of them was their hotel. they decided that i most likely made the reservation at one of the other two hotels. they wanted to call them to see if that theory was true. never did they chk their computers. it seemed like the last thing they ever wanted to do was chk the computer. so we stood around for 15 minutes until the young frenchman decided to finally check that computer. lo and behold he found the reservation. then they said we should sit down while they arrange the room. another 20 minutes went by. we waited patiently in the lobby. finally another young very white frenchman, very gay, called us up to the front desk. he was very very french. abrupt, quick tempered, and aggravated that i was wearing bright white sneakers in his lobby. he quickly handed us our keys and snuffed us off on our way. we slept till 2pm to get some energy for a long day in paris. off we went, taking the train to the eiffel tower. we took the tour to the top of the tower. if it was 52 degrees on the ground it was 35 at the top. a brisk wind blew and it was very cloudy. the highlight of the tour was writing our names on one of the girders. as i finished, a mexican man and his wife asked to borrow the pen to do the same. they wrote their names and Mexico underneath. we walked around the top level and took in the views. then the same mexican fellow walked up to me and said 'ven' and waved me over. my proper spanish wouldv been 'venga aqui' but after he said 'ven' three times i followed. we went back to the spot where we signed our names and he pulled out a big thick blue marker. he wrote their names again in very large letters. then handed me the marker and i obliged. john and lisa 2003 USA. we then walked across the street to the palace and i managed to take lots of great pics. we walked to the pier in front of the eiffel tower and bought tickets for the boat tour, we decided not to take the tour but kept the tickets for the next day. we headed back to clichy and ate at an italian restaurant. the next day i experienced one of the the most bizarre encounters of my entire life. let me preface this with a question. if you werent allowed into a store, but you had to have something in that store. how much money would you trust someone with, someone off the street, to go in and get that item for you? put a number in your head. we were walking down the champs elysses towards the arc of triomph. two
japanese women approach us and one says 'excuse me, do you speak english?'
as she bows apologetically. we reply yes. we walked off to louies place. walked in the double doors past the security
guards and approached the first counter we saw. there was a young asian
woman being helped by a french sales woman. we stood behind the asian
woman viewing the bags behind the counter. we browsed the wallets and
made quick decisions as to what we were going to pick out. we wanted to
get this transaction over as quickly as possible, and quickly found out
that getting a sales persons attention was not going to be easy if not
impossible. the sales woman we were waiting on vanished and each one we
approached wanted nothing to do with us. lisa waited again at a counter
as i walked off and browsed. i approached a black sales woman 'do you
have the NILA bag?' she replied,'yes but you need to wait over there,
in line.' i walked towards where she pointed and found a line of about
20 people. i immediately found lisa, showed her the line and said, 'we're
only here 2 days, i'm not spending 2 hours in this store to get a handbag.'
she agreed and we left the store. as we left i noticed one of the salepeople
walking with a persons passport. i figured out that the reason the japanese
woman told us that we would only get 'one service' was because they take
your passport and attch ur passport # to the transaction. you can only
make one purchase per person. i assume louie is afraid you're going to
take 3 handbags back home and sell them for twice the price. anyway we
left and gave the money back and went on our way. had a wonderful 2 days
in paris and came back to america first class. a fabulous thanksgiving
to be remembered forever. Blog 44 9:08 PM 11/25/2003 going to try to go to paris tomorrw. leave weds return sat. a thanksgiving in paris. imagine that. i'll count the turkeys i see while i'm there. last night was the joe millionaire2 finale. i didnt watch this series too much. joe was just too dumb for me to handle. i could only last 30 seconds then i'd hv to chg channels. it was embarassing to listen to him talk. he was dumbr than a box of rocks. dumbr than a bag of nails. dumber than a cowboy. and he is a cowboy! but the finale was wonderful. hopeful. it was so uplifting. to make a long story short, he lost the girl but got her back in the end. and also got a 90 acre ranch and a home for the two of them to live in. this guy was as down and out as a guy could possibly be. then the world, us, thats right all of us, blew away the clouds and brought him his angel, and gave him a chance at happiness. all i can say is i wish them the best, and hope they stay together forever. out of all these crazy tv shows involving couples, they'll be the ones to make it. i went golfing today with steve. it took me three years to be able to beat steve in golf. and this year i've beaten him 12 of 14 times. i have his number. i had a chance to shoot 79 today. i had to par the last 3 holes. i hv a small problem though. whenever i say out loud, 'i might shoot 79 today' i instantly fall apart and blow the entire round. and i did it again this time. i told myself i wouldnt say it out loud. but today i said to myself, the only way to beat the monkey is to play the monkey. so i said, 'i can shoot 79 today if i par the next three holes' to steve and mark. and the next hole i shot a double bogey, which all but guaranteed that i wouldnt shoot 79. then i followed with a bogey and triple bogey. someday i'm going to beat that monkey. its just a matter of time. have a happy thanksgiving everyone. Blog 43 11:50 PM 11/19/2003 tonight there are photographers, news paper reporters, tv reporters and lawmen, waiting at santa barbara airport. they are going to arrest michael jackson. and tonight he will be handcuffed, booked, photographed and fingerprinted, then thrown in a jailcell. surely the end of the world is coming. this just cant be. i thought the end was coming when mark mcguire broke roger maris's home run record. i thought the end was coming when i heard 'freedom' by jimi hendrix as the background music to a tv commercial?! then i was sure the end was coming when the mets met the yankees in the world series! but the day michael jackson goes to jail is surely a bad day. there is no happiness in neverland. i really feel nervous, sad and ashamed. that both mike did something stupid and by the fact that we are going to treat him like an animal. the police officers that take him into custody tonight are going to relish this night forever. this is the highlight of their careers. and michaels life will change forever. oh boy, he aint gonna like this, one bit! prepare for armageddon! the next pope is the last! so it has been written! the end cometh! Blog 42 10:12 PM 11/11/2003 everything can be solved mathematically. everything is mathematical. everything has a solution. i've delivered newspapers. THE N.Y. DAILY NEWS. and there was definitly a way to deliver them faster, and over time i figured out the best route. i was a landscaper. and theres defintly a mathematical solution to mowing a lawn that will definitly get u finishd faster. i was a busboy. and mathematically ther was a way to figure out how many dishes and glasses, stacked correctly, could be fit into one buspan. i was a lotman. and there was a mathematical solution to the distance and path i took to the car wash, to wash the most cars in a day. i was a delivery person. and theres no doubt that mathematically i figured out what was the best route to drive, to complete my deliveries quickly, so i could hang out at the university cafeteria. i was a draftsman. and i mathematically figured out how to approach my hollow metal renovation of the manhattan supreme courthouse. and it was awesome. working at the airport, i always calculated how many people i could help per hour in order to guarantee that everyone was on time. i would try to figure out how many people i myself could help per hour, in order to reduce the length of the line. i am now programming and there isnt much more mathematical than this. advice is mathematical. homework is math. and like i said, 'everything is math'. business. daily activities. cleaning. shopping. everything. and my whole point is that medicine is mathematical. csi is all math. and that means that the cure to cancer is mathematical. and if my math is correct, that means that there is a solution to cancer. now all we need is someone really good in math. Blog 41 10:34PM 11/03/2003 this is where i want to go. and this will be me. it looks like u could stay there for eternity. "Legend has it that this is the place where Adam and Eve had their Garden of Eden." they say everything gets old and grey,.... people, places, and things. but i could hang out right there for a reeeeeal long time. ahhhhhh..... the new jersey nets will be going to another nba championship this year. with alonzo mourning. and this time they'll take it to 7 games. a few weeks ago i walked out to chk the springkler timer early in the morning before going golfing. i passed my hose nozzles as i walkd around the side of the house. i said to myself, 'how did that get there? did it come off when i pulled the hose back after spraying down the possum poop? i guess so.' i set the timer. put the nozzle back on and drove off. as i drove away i wondered, 'did someone try to steal my nozzle?' two days later it was gone. i thought about it. left the hose there the entire week. i was imagining hanging a little sign in the window that said gotcha! with my x10 camera sitting in the window. but i didnt. last weekend i was sleping in the guest bedroom because the wife was sick. 2 weeks sick. i was sticking with my multi vitamin, vitamin C, and echinacea. 2am i hear a squeak squeek, err eee err eee. i sprang out of bed and darted to the window where i spread the blinds, and lo and behold there was that son of a bitch! sprawled on the ground under the window, cautiously removing the hose, is a young black kid whose only features i can remember are half of his white underwear glaring in the moonlight. i'm sure that wont be of any help during the lineup. anyway i looked him in the eye, and yelled my loudest and fiercest hulk imitation, that shook the walls. my first instinct was to jump through the window and catch him right there, i wanted him in my hands so badly. as he yelped and jumped to his feet i turned and ran out the bedroom door towards the front of the house. i burst out the front door in my boxers and shouted, 'i'm going to catch you! you son of a bitch!' he was already heading around the end of the block. that kid was fast. i mean really fast. i came back to the house and found that he had the hose fully disconnected. i foiled the burglar. oh so close. the hose is now behind the fence. rotten kids. gnite. Blog 40 12:10AM 10/18/2003 YEAH! GO MARLINS! SKEWER THOSE YANKEES! game one an incredible win by the marlins. i say the yankees played like the oakland raiders did last year against tampa bay. they went in thinking they were destined to win, and never showed up to the game. tampa kicked their ass. if the yankees dont get off their butts theyr gonna lose this world series. never the less, this year will be more remembered for chicago and bostons failure to win a world series. again, for the 200th time. we have TICKETS to game four! the WORLD SERIES! YEAH! GO MARLINS! my mets lost to the yankees but this year i really believe the marlins are going to win. the mets had a chance and failed, but the marlins are taking advantage of winning in nyc. and great managing by mckeon removing the pitchers and bringing in relief to stop the bleeding. that was the only thing he could do after boston made the critical mistake of leaving pedro martinez in, only to lose game 7 to the yankees. he couldnt make the same mistake. we have tickets to game four! i'm going to my first world series. 38 years old. i think everyone should get at least one chance. i have one extra ticket, i'm bringing alfredo. a good friend that i've known since we came to florida. a YANKEE fan! we're gonna have a blast! now i have someone to rub it into! ha ha ha ! goooooo Marlins! Blog 39 10:10PM 10/12/2003 i have concluded that i was abducted or went thru a time warp. i cant get it out of my head as i go to taco bell and pick up three tacos. but somehow i forget it before i return to the office. my coworker had left at the same time but in the opposite direction. she was to travel almost twice the distance i had to. i was picking up a sign and she was picking up custom made pens with our logo. upon returning with the sign i found that she had already arrived at the office. i figured my trip to taco bell was the reason i had not beatn her back. when i told her the story a few days later, she mentioned, 'yeah i was wondring how i beat you back, because i had also stopped at the post office, and had to wait behind 5 people. it was a nightmare....' i was completly blown away at that moment. as she came out of her post office story, she said, 'i think you went thru a time warp.' my eyes widened and i said, 'holy shipwreck. i think you'r right!' i thought about it for another second, and said, 'i must have been abducted! but they put me back 2 minutes later than they shudv! i mightv been gone for a hundred years!' lets do the math right now. Blog 38 9:52AM 10/12/2003 i'm sitting in the next to last row on a plane. right now. listening to al jolson and cab calloway singing 'i love to singa!' possibly the happiest song i've ever heard. i think if i was in a coma and u playd that song for me, i might wake up. anyway i just came out of the lavatory with a revelation. i stood in the lav and stretched a bit, then glanced at the turlet. i said to myself, 'hey this might be the best seat in the house.' i put the top down on the turlet and sat for a moment. kicked back. stretched out my arms and said, 'i shudda brought a book. i can hang here all day. plenty of room to stretch, water at my fingertips. nobody crowding me in. what a seat!' so i hung out for a while. then i had to drop a tuna. didnt hv to go anywhere, just flip up the lid and let her rip! ahhh what a life. this is better than first class. i felt like opening the door and telling the stewardess to pass me a sandwich. i'm returning from chicago. we had a convention. i hv to say, 'chicago sucks!' i really dont wanna say it that way, but the traffic is so overwhelming that it overrode the fun of the trip. no matter where you drove the traffic was a nightmare. i am definitly not interested in traffic anymore. when i lived in jersey and had a commute to hoboken i guess it was just a daily routine that you got used to. but those days are definitly over. i cant stand traffic. i hvnt driven in traffic since before 9/11 when i was working at the airport and had to drive 95 to get to work. now my commute is 5 miles, i turn left, left, right and left and i'm there. 10 minutes. i dont think i'll ever be a city person again. i'm a suburbanite forever! so we went to the florida marlins playoff game against the san fransisco
giants. what a game, what an ending. boy those playoffs are exciting when
you'r there in real life. if its exciting on tv its multiplied 100 times
when you're actually there. anyway we packed lots of food and beer for
the pregame in the parking lot. when we were ready to head for the stadium
we packed a backpack. as we walked towards the stadium, this is the conversation
that took place. Blog 37 9:44PM 9/30/2003 i went to tire kingdom for an oil change. i brought the 6.99 coupon.
dropped it off at 11:30am, was told to come back at 4pm. a little long
for an oil chg, but who cares. i have plenty to do anyway. when i returned
to pick up the car, i noticed a grinding noise when i started the car.
i watched the thermostat to see if it would rise quickly. 'did they not
put oil in the engine? now, would that have been done purposely or accidentally?'
i drove off and wondered, but nothing happened, engine seemed fine. on
monday morning i started the car again, and heard the same noise. i shut
it off then tried again. something was definitly wrong. i headed for the
office, drove one mile, then said 'this is bullship, i'm not going to
just wait till my starter dies. sounds like they killed it anyway. this
cant happen. i'm going there right now, and have them check it out.' so
i turned around and headed for tire kingdom. walked in and spoke to abuddh. looking back. i'm sure if i let the starter continue to rattle, it wouldv
died within a week. it wouldv needed replacement and i mightv gone back
to tire kingdom for the repair. then i figured if all repair shops do
intentionally boobie trap ur car, they probly dont care if you go back
to them for the repair. because they know the guys from the next shop
screwed up someone elses car and that person will be coming to him for
the repair. so theyr generating business for the industry as a whole and
sharing the profits evenly. sons o'bitches! i'm john e becker, be well.
hv a good nite. Blog 36 9:46 PM 9/29/2003 well dad dropped into town and i put my hand in possum poop. what a great weekend! two weeks ago when we tore up the palms out front, we cracked the springler system pipe. of course i used the standard temporary fix-it....duct tape. well i finally got around to fixing it this weekend. but before i get to that, the weekend we pulled up the palms i noticed small 3inch diameter holes dug in my nice lawn. as if someone shoved a metal pipe in the ground then pulled it up. jim said it was a raccoon digging for grubs. a few days later i went out at 11pm to turn off the sprinkler system and i shined the flashlight towards switchbox, and there he was. a small scrawny, definitley hungry, possum. he was frozen solid with his teeth glaring, staring into my flashlight. i slowly walked around him to shut off the sprinklers and as long as i kept the light on him he didnt move. then i slowly moved the light away, and back and forth to shove him away. well he went away. i went back into the house and told lisa about the possum. so thats what was digging the holes. saturday morning i went out to the sprinkler pipe with the duct tape and looked into the hole, now half filled with still moist sand. and low and behold is a possum dump, right on the pipe. nice and wet. then, like an idiot i wash it into the sand with the garden hose. why is that idiocy? because two hours from now i'm going to be installing the replacement pipe and i'll be digging thru that possum poop filled sand. oh well, thats what i did. heres a picture of the end result. i also made some shelves out of the white board at home depot. and i caught lisa messing with her hair. check these action shots of her being caught red haireded. my weekend with dad was great until we went golfing. i shot a 42 on the front then missed a 1 footer. and the day was over. i never recouped. shot 51 on the back and slugged at the ball like i was john belushi. i was sick to my stomach. and i'm having nightmares of turning into chip beck. never being able to play decent golf again. ughhh. i gotta lay down. gnite. Blog 35 7:29 PM 9/21/2003 i know this ranks as one of the stupidest arguments of all time, but
its a typical argument that only pops up between a married couple. i i
guarantee this happens a thousand times a day all over the country if
not the world. we went to pick up her car on sunday. we left it at west
palm beach airport on friday. before we leave she asks me 'is my car near
the entrance?' this all started ystrdy. we were driving to a restaurant with the in laws. we spotted it on the right side of the road. we quickly pull in and miss the second turn, we're forced to drive past the front of the restaurant and circle it completely to get to the parking lot. after dad in law has made 3 right turns and we are entering the parking lot to the restaurant, mom in law says, 'it's right here honey.' i was waiting for him to say, 'will you shut up!' and whats even worse, she pats him on the leg as if to gesture, 'look here honey it's on the right'. at this point he was looking to the left to find a parking space. but there was no reason to look towards the restaurant anymore. WE JUST PASSED THE FRONT OF THE RESTAURANT. HAVING MADE THREE RIGHT TURNS, MATHEMATICALLY, WE HAVE JUST SURROUNDED THE RESTAURANT! how could it possibly have crossed her mind that he did not realize that the restaurant was 20ft away on our right! we were never more than 20-30 ft away from it, throughout the last 3 right turns! if ur not relating to the story, picture this. you're cooking. a dish that you've made a thousand times. lets say pasta, and your husband walks up to you and says, 'you need to start the sauce. ok?' and he actually says it as your taking the jar out of the fridge, or for those of u that make it fresh, u'r taking the can of tomatoe paste out of the cabinet. there's no doubt in my mind that you would look at him like, 'you've gotta be kidding me'. do u get it now? if you dont at this point, then ur in another world that i am not in touch with, just as much as ur not in touch with mine. and the twain shall never meet. we might as well leave it at that. then tonight as i drive home. i want pizza. i stop at luv'n oven. as
i get out of my car. i ponder to myself, 'hmmm its sunday. 6:38pm. i'll
bet ya they tell me they dont serve slices. maybe i shud sit down and
order two from the waitress. then just pay for them and leave. no i'll
just order two slices at the counter. and now. 3 hours later, i'm going to give in and order a pie. and what shud i say when i walk in? i'll tell you tomorrw. gnite Blog 34 04:16 PM 9/16/2003 a letter i wrote to a programmer that we hired to take up some projects for us. we hired him for $65hr, and thank God we didnt let me START any projects. martel, this time you've sent me for a loop. when u first had the hard drive and i mentioned that u might have to flash your bios to get it up and running, you said you didnt understand me. that told me you dont know anything about computers. i was always under the assumption that if ur a programmer then u know how to build ur own computer. i took it with a grain of salt. maybe he's just a programmer. i can live with that. when i sent u my list if items to be addressed in tools, i gave u an educated guess as to how much time it might take to complete each one. you said were totally against making any estimates of cost. in the list of those items i allocated 1 hr per item, a total of 10 hrs. in 4 hours with mark we managed to get 9 items completed. bonnie and i cant imagine how much you wouldv charged for fixing the same items. the membership card program opens fine in delphi 2, i've made label changes already and it has compiled fine and operates just fine. u have us completely baffled by your responses to lots of our issues. i'm sure your an expert at what you do but we're definitely not on the same page. your statement "since the DPR file looks like it has a Delphi-5 logo" is what blew me out of the water. that sentence tells me that you dont know anything about program associations in windows. ALL dpr files on that hard drive have a delphi 5 icon because delphi 5 was installed on the machine, when installed, windows updated the .dpr extension and linked it solely to D5. i cant believe that you dont know that. maybe its just me, i'm a utility guy, i learn everything. i develop websites, set up peer to peer networks, or NT/2000 networks, build computers from scratch, i'm an expert in word, pagemaker, paint shop pro, photoshop, act, excel, flash 5, corel draw, autocad, html, dreamweaver, front page, and i know windows inside and out, from windows 3.0 up to xp pro. i just enjoy learning everything. and now i'm making half of the fixes in tools by myself. (i know its hard to believe, but the program is so much better with the little changes i've already made. i hv 2 clients acting as test facilities now and they cant stop the accolades) the suggestion to advise my customer to shell out $2600 is absolutley absurd. ur in a completely different universe. we have a hard time getting $70 out of our clients. $2600 is more than what they paid for the entire tools software package. i respect you for the experience you have, but ur used to dealing with multi million dollar corporations. thats just not us. we dont hv that kind of capital. i was hoping to create an amiable relationship with you back in my first email, asking and hoping that you might help us by slightly dropping ur rate to maybe $50hr or even $55, but you shot us down like clowns. you were very shrewd and pompous. i've helped so many people for free over the past 10 years i cant count, if it makes me a poor businessman then so be it. but i hv so many excellent relationships with people that know they can count on me, and thats what makes me feel good when i go to bed. the relationships we'v created already, with people that WANT to help us get on our feet and be successful are invaluable. and as far as i can tell, those are the only types of relationships that will last. your personality is very much like the person that originally designed tools. 'this is the way it has to be done. and thats the only way' he is also responsible for destroying tools. and uv testified to that urself. 6 programmers have tried to fix his 'cludge', and its still ongoing. i'm sorry things didnt work out, but good luck in ur future endeavors martel. pls fwd any and all items that are property of computer outfitters/tools to the florida office. ur wlcm to use the UPS # we provided u earlier. if u ever need anything from me, dont hesitate to call. i'll do it for free. need a website? http://www.johnebecker.com/ hv a grt dy John E. Becker Blog 33 07:16 PM 9/15/2003 my letter to Microsoft last week if i ventured a guess, i would say the people that wrote win98 are not the same people that wrote winxp. u'v chgd simple items that now affect every other software company in the world. when u change the simplest of items, like chging FIND to SEARCH, every single tutorial and help menu ever written must now be rewritten. these simple changes dont seem important to YOU but they are extremely important to software developers like myself. YOU are incurring costs to every business out there, for redevelopment and retraining. the real issue is your 'changing' windows instead of 'enhancing/upgrading' windows. in my opinion programmers are not developers. i dont let my programmers do any developing, because screens and functions that are perfectly logical to them, are totally incomprehensible to the average knucklehead sitting in front of the computer. programmers have their own logic that doesnt work in the real world. programmers are what i call 'oversmart'. the bottom line is 'your killin us!' last but not least. u had a great function in win98 that i cant seem to find in xp. my computer, properties, performance, the system resources are listed there. is there any way to find my system resources any more? meaning 'how low is myi on memory?' without that, i now hv to wait till i crash before i realize that i'm about to run out of memory. now that i think about it, to get to the function i'm asking you for, will probably take 18 more clicks than it did previously. just like everything else in win xp. good luck. Blog 32 10:49 PM 9/14/2003 earl nightengale said, 'a successful life can simply be achieved by stringing together a certain number of successful days.' well i had one successful weekend. saturday i got up at 8am and dug up the palm trees out front. there was an obnoxious cluster of trees out front that desperately needed to be thinned out. before. after. my neighbor jim said that we should save them and plant them at the chirch. i said ok by me. so i started at 8am. he left cardboard out front to pile dirt on. so we dug the south side up, three plants were there that we could move. then we hit the sprinkler system. it was completely wrapped around one of them. we had to give up. that was such a waste of effort. so we tried the north side. i broke out the chain saw, we were tired of digging. the trees were growing in a cluster so i cut right into the ground. we separated 4 plants safely, cutting thru the ground we were able to cut out portions of stump with plenty of roots. we transported 5 plants altogether. we vanned them to the church and planted them in 3 holes outside. they look so awesome. jim dug 3 holes the night before. and we planted 2, one and two. they looked so nice we couldnt stop smiling. but it was hot as hell out there. we were done by 12 noon. then i hit the golf course and shot an 81. that was from the white tees, so in my mind it doesnt really count. shud always play the back tees otherwise your just cheating urself. but i'll take the 81 anyway. when i got home i noticed my cell phone was missing, then i remembered i had put it on the golf bag. went out to the car and checked the trunk. as i walked out i rememberd that i put it on the golf bag two weeks ago and that day it fell off. i happened to notice it in the back of the cart. i was thinking that it may have happnd again. no cell phone in the trunk. i asked alfredo to check his trunk for a cell phone. no phone. the course was closed, so i had to wait to call the course in the morning. i decided to try out my new edger and that lawn came out great. oh yeah i forgot that between removing the plants and transporting them, the bug guy came over and checked out the house for ants. spent 30 mins with him scouting out ants. then got on the plan. after i edged, we went to eat mexican. the fajitas were mouth watering, so was the guacamole. sunday morning i hired a programmer to do some work on our product and we spent from 10am to 4pm getting some important items finished off. everything turnd out fabulous. very encouraging, the project is moving forward precisely on schedule. when i got home i remembered the phone, i had called in the morning and the guy at the front desk said there was no phone. i had asked him if i might be able to use a cart to drive around the course and look for the phone. he said sure. so after leaving mark, i decided to go over there. i didnt bother calling, i figured if they dont hv it, i'll hv to get a cart and search for it anyway to why bother calling. on the drive over i pictured the person behind the counter telling me that they couldnt just me a cart, and that i'd hv to pay for it. then i figured i might as well not argue, i'll just play 9 holes and search while playing. it mustv fallen off within the first couple holes anyway. when i got there i asked the lady behind the counter if they had found a phone. holy cow, they found the phone. someone turned it in. i had tears in my eyes i was so happy. i held her hands and said thank you. then she proceeded to tell me how she is lucky that she has never lost her phone, but she's dropped it so many times that its cracked and chipped. i said thanks, went home and screwed in a few lightbulbs. did the wash. cooked a sausage pepper and onion sandwhich. and now that i think of it i forgot the damn muzzeralla cheese. i knew i had forgotten something. and two things top off the weekend, making it a complete success;checking our return thru houston next sunday coming back from lisas friends wedding in chicago, we stop in houston for 8 1/2 hrs. i said lets see a houston astros baseball game, then i checked the houston texans and theyr playing the kansas city chiefs. and we're goin baby! nothin like live football! it'll probly be the perfect weather. awesome! and last but not least the aerator on the kitchen sink wasnt working right, and i found the old one we previously had with the swivel head. now i have a swivel head aerator connected to the water filter! thats awesome! i know i've mentioned that having a swivel head aerator is possibly the most valuable purchase i've ever made. i still stand by that quote today. last sunday we went to sids 80th bday party. we met many of his lifelong
friends. a war buddy, his son in law, his lawyer, his accountant and his
financial advisor. it was a great time. he has mentored a young man since
he was 12yrs old. that young man is now an exec at home depot and was
on THE VIEW recently because he had triplets born thru a surrogate mother.
sid is very proud of this young man and he flew in to speak at sids brunch.
he told the story of how he met sid and how he has helped him over the
past 20 years. its an inspiring story. as for the brunch it was delicious,
gin and tonics, shrimp ooover doovers, chicken almondine, bday cacke for
desert. being there was about a crowd of 60, it was a prefect setting
for sids magic show. and he performed as usual. when his portion of the
show started i headed for the throne. i've seen all his tricks anyway,
he tries them all out for us every month. so after i was finished on the
throne i headed to the bar to check the football score. and have a gin
and tonic. when i headed back to the brunch on the other side of the building
sid was just wrapping up his act. the entire afternoon was a success,
sid even mentioned my name as he was making his speech, he thanked me
for making the invitations. we even
found out from the lawyer that sid has said that i'm his adopted son.
i need to keep that thought in the back of my head. anyway i called sid
2 days later to say how wonderful his bday brunch was. he thanked me.
Retry Blog 31 10:39 PM 9/11/2003 today should be a holiday. everyone should stay home. not a soul working, or a car rumbling. no tv. no radio. 1 day of peace and quiet, to ponder life. Retry Blog 30 9:42 PM 9/8/2003 i just remembered i dont know what number 1 and number 2 are. i was never raised on that....lingo? mom always said, go poo poo or go pee. later it was shit and pee, but for the most part i was raisd on poo poo and pee. i was at my friends house and he said 'mom i'm gotta go number 2!' i said to myself, 'what is that?' then he went into the bathroom. i thought to myself 'number 2? bathroom? it must mean poo poo. or pee? 1 and 2? poo poo and pee? or pee and poo poo?' i've never asked since. and i've never picked up a clear line on which one is which. i've tried to manufacture an answer by maybe saying, 'i'm gonna go number 2.' then i'll unzip as if to take a wiz. but every time i try, whether i say 1 or 2, people always raise their eyebrow like i'm doing the wrong thing. so screw all of you! keep ur little secret! i can poo poo, and pee forever! i was driving to work. it was raining. 9am. driving down a lonely road. 40mph speed limit. up ahead i could see the light was green. i stepped on the gas to assure making the light. i was about a block away. i got up to 43 mph and sustained. as i got to within 100ft i let off the gas. i would coast thru the light easily. immediatly a police car came blaring from the right side of the intersection. he stopped in the center of the intersection. directly in front of me. i stepped on the brake, and headed directly for his car door. i said to myself, 'holy shit. this has to be the worst possible thing that could happen to me in my whole life. why is this about to happen to me?' i stared at his profile as a second police car drove around behind him and turned down the road i just came from. he was oblivious that i was about to slam into him. he was focused on the cars in front of him. i was skidding. fast. probably 25mph. my fingers are embedded into the steering wheel. on the right i now see .....a house? coming around the bend. obviously being escorted by these two state troopers. i skid right up to the police car, i stop at about 1 ft away if not less. the cop turns towards me and begins to go into a rage, as if i DID hit him. he looks like he wants to tear me to pieces. screaming at the top of his lungs, pointing at me as if i'm a dead man. for a split second i hallucinate that he steps out of the car, comes over to my door and drags me out. then he beats the hell out of me. then i realize he's yelling at me to back up. 'you stupid idiot! backup! what the hell's wrong with you?! BACKUP!!! NOW!!!' so i begin to backup as the house approaches the intersection. then i look at him again and he has pulled just past the intersection and has stepped out of his car. standing in the rain. screaming at the top of his lungs, waiving his arms and hands. he is yelling at me AGAIN! now he's telling me to go THRU the intersection. he doesnt think the house can get around me. so i pull up, and he looks like he's going to tear me to shreds. as i pass him screaming and yelling, waiving his arms, i turn towards the house with a big dopey smile. i cant look him in the eye. for sure he'll shoot me. i make it thru, trembling and drained. my hearts pounding. i feel like i just ran the kentucky derby. and won. hv a grt dy Blog 30 10:36 PM 9/11/2003 i just lost two of the best blogs of all time. 30 and 31. i dont know what the hell i did but theyr gone. now i'm breaking into a sweat and i want to bash my head into the wall. Blog 29 08:38 PM 9/6/2003 the world trade center destruction shook the world. shook the shit out of me, i can say that much anyway. my story is completely meaningless among the millions of stories of that day. i was stranded in albany for two days, took a train to nyc and a bus to florida. thats a story in itself, but 3 days later i just remember falling into the deepest depression i've ever experienced in my life. and if there are people out there that live in depression like that every day, i guess i can understand why they take drugs to control it. i remember watching oprah and people were having the same symptoms. just feeling as if there was no hope. i was just so down, i felt that life was of no worth being it could be taken so quickly without you controlling it. i like being in control of everything i do, walking, driving, working, biking, four wheeling. i'm more in control of the next second, than sitting on a plane lets say. or on a bus, or train. three situations where you're really not in control of your life. someone else is. holy shit i stopped on cops for a second and watched 12 cops pounce on one guy, as he held his hands up in surrender. they grabbed him ferociously. just abusing the shit out of him. i cant understand how they can do that with abandon. its like theyr 17yr old kids in a rumble. its pathetic. Blog 28 10:01PM 9/3/2003 i say 'when are we going to get rid of some of these comforters. we buy
an average of one a year. how long have we been together? 7 years? theres
7 comforters in this closet!' my only statement was 'you counted the comforters!' dont try to explain what you were doing. the more logical thing to say is 'so what if i am?' but dont try to say you werent counting them. you just counted them out loud. how could u say u 'DIDN'T WALK IN THE ROOM TO COUNT THE COMFORTERS!' ok then. we could alter the event by saying you went in the room to see how full the closet was, but just happened to count the comforters while you were doing so. but that still gets us back to the fact that you 'counted the comforters'. and thats my only point. Blog 27 10:17PM 8/26/2003 i dont know, but theres something about that mr. rourke that just hypnotizes me. i changd channels and stopped at fantasy island and i couldnt get away. its like ricardo montalban makes you believe he's actually mr. rourke, and the show is about a real fantasy island. the guy is so smooth hes like a hypnotist. i was riveted. i think when i was a kid i always wondered what i would do if i were on fantasy island. hey as a matter of fact .....ahhh forget it, stupid idea. whats funny is, when u picture urself on fantasy island, you picture urself on a real fantasy island not on the tv show. one last thing on that little league world series. it was an awesome game, boynton beach against japan. the U.S. started going down in the fourth inning, but it was lotsa fun. high fiving the other team when they got a hit, sportsmanship at its best, unlike any professional sport. but at the end of the game when japan won, they of course ran towards the pitchers mound celebrating. then they all ran into center field and jumped up in the air and all fell to the ground. 5 seconds later the entire U.S. team from boynton beach fl. ran out to meet them, and they all jumped and celebrated together. they were all so happy and had so much fun, it was uplifting watching them celebrate. but ABC couldnt let us watch TOO much of that! they cut that celebration off after 30 seconds! it was a quarter till 9 or 10 and they cut right to the middle of 'whose line is that anyway?'. i much wouldv rather watch those kids celebrate, it was the biggest game of the year! the REAL world series! and they had to cut to a tv show?! .....damn communists! gnite Blog 26 8:56PM 8/23/2003 little leaguers shake hands after the game. thats so important. why dont all sports do that? i mean, hockey gave in, why doesnt everyone else? i'd call that rude or obnoxious, or even disrespectful. the bad calls in this world series need to go. does tie go to the runner? is that an actual rule in baseball? i'm finally able to really root for a team. boynton beach fl. is right up the road. we actually rented an apartment there. FL against MA. the coach for MA goes out to talk to his picther, he says "this kid is the best little league hitter i've ever seen, i dont know how to get him out. pitch him high, dont let it go low. lets do this." and that boy from boynton beach fl., hit a home run. i'm in tears. this kid is awesome. devon travis. lets see if he makes the big leagues. this kid is exciting. i really think barry bonds could break hank arrons record. and i think alex rodriguez will break his record. i've heard people say he is the greatest baseball player and i think theyr right. babe ruth held over 100 diff records. some still need to be broken. alex rodriguez will only come second to the babe when it comes to most 1st place records held or set. its the 5th inning. FL is 6 outs away from going to the world series against japan. MA just lead off with a single. next pitch catcher bobbles the ball and the runner goes to second. the next pitch is another hit. first and third. the next batter hits one into short left, the shortstop(also pitcher that hit a home run to advance the team earlier in the series), comes up with the catch in shallow left field. one run scores on the next fielders choice to short. and the next batter makes 3 outs. boynton beach is now 3 outs away from playing japan. japan won earlier today in the international championship again the Antilles. holy cow! the shortstop/pitcher hit another home run! holy cow dejesus homers too! were goin to the world series! Wahoo! yeah baby yeah! 9-2. the rest is history folks. i'm sure(cross my fingersXX). we'll come back with hightlights of japan against florida tomorrow. shot 85 today at sabal palm. missed the last putt to tie. a 2 footer. what a jerk i am. thats like letting go hanging from a cliff. u do have a chance to go on, its all under your control. you have the last shot. michael jordan took the game winning shot i think 36 times and missed them all. of course he made some too. but he missed 36 times. i do wonder how many he made. wonder if its more than 36, that'd be funny if it wasnt.gnite Blog 25- 11:56PM 8/22/2003 the little league world series is awesome. did u see that game between TX and MA? incredible come from behind victory....almost. TX down 10-2, they stayed in it and tied it finally in the last (6th) inning. the pitcher that kept them in it for the last 4 innings came up to bat in the top of the 7th and hit a homerun to put them up by 3 runs. then he pitched the bottom of the 7th and walked the bases loaded. that kid mustv been so nervous, the reading would go off the scale. then the coach took him out and switched him with the third baseman. the kid went from hero to loser in a matter of 5 minutes. the next kid let up 3 runs. tied at 13-13. man on third. two outs. the next batter hit a grounder to the third baseman(pitcher) and he had to make the play to first to save the game and came up short. game over. run scored. theyr not going to the world series. that kid will never ever forget that and will have nightmares forever. replaying the last play over and over and over. holy shipwreck i hate it when that happens. it was incredible. made me remember when i was on the little league all star team and balled my eyes out when we lost to bergenfield nj. we had won two games, against dumont and demerest. i thought we were going to the world series. and some kid hit a homerun off us and i was devastated. but it was fun while it lasted. gnite oh yeah LL baseball is fun because theres about 10 seconds between pitches. not 45-60. and theres only six innings. time is much more critical and u can stay focused. pure excitement on every pitch. Blog 24- 8:36PM 8/18/2003 forgot to tell you about the birthday surprise i pulled off when we were
on our catskill trip. the same weekend of that trip was lisa's(my wife)
birthday, and staceys bday also. a week before the trip i called nj, and
told stacey so now i have to get a cake for stacey. and pretend i dont know about
each others cake to each of them. both stacey and lisa. friday morning
i got up at 7am to go to the nj motor vehicle office up in englewood.
its an old town in nj with a classic downtown strip that runs into a traffic
circle. its buzzing at 7am. lots of people waiting for buses in the morning.
looked like alot of guys standing around looking for work too. i think
they were mexicans. i've been to 42 states in this coutry, and i've run
into mexicans in every one of them. like i always say, the end of the
world will be made up of two groups of people. hispanic and gay. i give
it 50 years. anyway i made my way around the circle and turned around
the block and found the dmv. it was closed for another 40 mins. so i decided
to get a bagel. nj has the best bagels. i walk into the deli. owner,"good
morning. how are you?" so we mill around the house for 10-15mins. the ladies are getting ready.
staceys sister in law drops by with her two kids. i head downstairs and
run into lisa. the gals head to the bday party. jims still at work. i'm all alone at the ryebread house. i take the cake from under the deck and put it in the basement fridge. i find a nice spot on the bottom "nobody will find it there." and keep the box wrapped in the grocerybag, just so lisa and stacey cant actually see thru the clear plastic top and see their names on the cake. so i sit around and put together baby jims first bed. i finish and place it in the corner of the room. i'm watching Crime School, humphrey bogart and the bowery boys. good movie. humphrey is the good guy. "i need beer" i chk the fridge. no beer. "i cant sit here for the next 3 hours without beer!"... "i'll just go get beer" so i walk to the liquor store. its hot today in nj. i pass a few guys working in the yard. kids on bikes. lotsa traffic at 11am on a hot summer friday in nj. but i know i'll find a bar that sells packaged goods if i just walk long enough. and there it is. the steel wheel. two old guys at the each end of the bar having their nooner. i get my heinies and i'm outta there. get back to the house. jump in the hot tub, with my heineken. in the shade. ahhhhh. when i get out of the HOT tub it actually feels much cooler out. with a nice breeze it feels great. i sit in the middle of the backyard reading Angelas Ashes. possibly the best book ever written. its about growing up. poor as a toad. in ireland. eating a boars head for xmas. a leftover from the churches handouts. i've been reading it for 3 years now. i try to read only a few pages a month. its so sad, and also uplifting. i dont want it to ever end. but just by the name, Angelas Ashes, thats mom. u can obviously tell mom must die at the end of the book. i feel so afraid for these three very young brothers, that pick crumbs from the neighbors garbage to eat. i may have grown up on foodstamps, but i never had to pick crumbs out of the dumpster. ahhh ya just gotta read that book. 12 year old frankie mccourt. heres an excerpt. (he fell on his bike delivering a telegram out in the country, the crazy
girl on the farm invites him in) of course it turns out to be frankies first fling with a girl. thats
the first few lines of that interlude but the next two paragraphs are
hysterically funny. the whole book is funny. sad and funny. awesome book.
so anyway i sit down to my book in the backyad. in the middle of the lawn.
on a lawnchair. i read and drink another heineken. i'm dozing. i lay in
the grass and stare at the clouds, until i fall asleep, on a hot summer
friday in nj. wake up 2 hours later. get back in the hot tub. the ladies
are back. soon enough jim gets back. time to pack for the catskills. the
truck gets packed. almost ready to go. stacy asks "james are we bringing
any food? " "i dont know" i follow stacy downstairs, and
she walks right to the fridge. moves stuff around, the hamburgers, the
chicken, then she goes right for the cake. just as i'm about to grab her
hand, she stops, impatiently giving up on the grocery bag wrapped around
the cake box. "Whew!" she gets the hamburgers and the chicken
and heads upstairs. jim and i go out back to put the cover back on the
hot tub. j and john on quads constructing the bed Lisa on quad Tornado J and baby on quad stacey and lisa and cake
Blog 23- 9:44PM 8/10/2003 if you could bottle up the excitement at a little league game, u'd be peter piper. it brings you to tears. if you've never seen a mariachi band. you should. go to mexico city. you feel like you've been thrown back 200 years and the music is so perfect and clean and full of feeling. you just wanna jump up and yell olé! Blog 22- 8:47PM 8/4/2003 I met my best friend. we became blood brothers. i loved and trusted him more than anyone in my entire life. we had the best of times. then one day i came home. dave was shot. fifteen feet from my doorstep. i ran to his door in disbelief, but the police officer held me back. he said 'you cant go in there. this is a murder scene' i floated away, in a dream. i sat and watched as they took him away in a body bag. i just couldnt comprehend why. how could this possibly happen? dave could make a friend while standing on the line at the grocery store. EVERYBODY loved dave. then as i held his hand, as he lay in the casket, i cried harder and longer than i have ever cried in my entire life. i dont ever want to feel that much pain again. as long as i live. goodbye dave. Blog 21- 11:27PM 7/30/2003 i'll never make it to 96 years old. my feet are killin me, my knees are killin me, my back is killin me, my left elbow is killin me, and my right shoulder is killin me. i'll be sure to break down before then. so i forgot to tell u about james and stacy's, baby james at dinner. nice restaurant. and Blog 20- 10:08PM 7/29/2003 well the trip to the catskills was great. very relaxing. sat around the fire, met lots of good people from the nj/ny area, road the quads, went swimming, drank beer, had filet and lobster. lotsa lotsa fun. the drive was the most excruciating part of the trip though. it was supposed to be a 2 hour drive, but jims wife was driving. now i cant complain because she got us there without a hitch, but about 6 years ago i came up with a theory about staceys driving. if the drive normally takes 20 minutes to get there, stacey will get u there in 30 mins. she adds 10 mins onto every 20 mins of driving. for whatever reason she refuses to drive the speed limit. and i know if she ever read this she would say 'i have a child in the car'. thats good reasoning but the child is 1yrs old. shes been driving like this for the 9 yrs that i've known her. anyway, i decided i would count how many cars passed us on the way to the catskills. at the end of the trip we were passed by a total of 104 cars, and, stacey passed 5 cars altogether. two of the five cars passed her back a few minutes later, and one of the cars she managed to pass twice. so that means if we were in a race with 109 cars, we wouldv finished 107th! now if that isnt a good reason for a divorce i dont kow what is. only kidding, pipe down. hey the trip was great, i got to hold a shotgun, and being i left my camera in the truck in nj, i dont hv any pictures to show u. so u'll hv to wait until whenever. was that british open one of the most exciting golf tournaments ever? i was riveted! i was howling at the top of my lungs. that was the more exciting than ice cream! i was going to say any superbowl, but the giants win over the bills was pretty damn exciting if i say so myself. but the british open was an awesome open, the best i've seen yet. the talent challenging to win over the last 9 holes cant be matched. oh a quickie that we'll excerpt from a newpaper article that my mother in law sent me. golf is an honorable game. golfers dont hv some of their players in jail every week. golfers dont kick dirt, or throw bottles at other people. golfers are compensated in direct proportion to how well they play. golfers dont hold out for more money because of another players deal. it costs $25 to watch the best golfers in the world compete all day long. nosebleeds at the superbowl cost $300. when golfers make a mistake theres nobody there to back them up. you dont hear a steady stream of four letter words when your at a golf tournament. you hear birds chirping. hv a grt dy....take some time to golf Blog 19- 7:46 PM 7/22/2003 forgot to tell u the name of the movie. the out-of-towners 1970, with jack lemmon and some dingbat as his wife. she verifies a lot of stuff for him. the movie was remade with steve martin and goldie hawn in the 90's. i'd like to see the kind of character that steve martin creates, he probably goes way over the top. but i'm gonna rent that before friday cause we're headn for the hills this wknd paw. the catskills that is. three days in dem dare mountins. hee haw. and that reminds me i hv a bear story to tell from the last trip up there. damnit i need to finish that. great great story. hv a gnite. Blog 18- 10:14 PM 7/21/2003 i'm watching the most stomach churning movie of all time. jack lemmon plays the most annoying character i've ever seen in my life. i was expecting to laugh my ass off, but instead he turned his trip into a severe hernia. i was sliding down my easy chair in pain. i got my first laugh at the 30 min mark, then it went right back to the root canal. i feel an aneurism coming on. .........hour later.........now that was one sick movie. i'm all tuckered out. there is/was a small piece of me in that character. that 'come on hurry up. what are you doing? arent you ready yet? i cant believe u take so long!' personality. but i'll say one thing, i will NEVER behave like that again. that was pure punishment. i felt like malcolm mcdowell in 'a clockwork orange'. my eyes held wide open with eye opening devices and the like. i'll nevah behave loik dat again! nightmares tonight. chat later gnite Blog 17- 9:17 PM 7/17/2003 heros. someone mentioned heroes today. many definitions and many people can pop into ur head. caeser, eli whitney, albert einstein, john glenn, and babe ruth. but the first person that came to my mind was dan jansen. only because what he did, has had me baffled ever since i seen him do it. he's a speed skater. 1988 winter olympics. i've always been into the long jump, that ski jump off that huge ramp that it seems only wile e. coyote would try? and also speed skating. i remember watching a lot of talk about dan jansen. world cup holder, world record holder, who was surely going to win gold. surely 2 gold medals. the 500m and 1000m. u can go back to the 1984 olympics, where he was world record holder and finished 4th. then at the 1988 olympics, on the morning of the 500m race, his sister died of leukemia. he skated and fell. skated again in the 1000m and fell again. i remember watching that and saying to myself. wow this guy waited and practiced 4 more years, just to fall. not once, but twice.but then he tried again 4 years later! 1992, finished 26th in the 1000m, and 4th in the 500m. over an eight year span, always the favorite he lost all 6 times. and the son of a bitch even tried again. and heres how it was called in 1994. "Jansen was the overwhelming favourite at 500m, but he slipped in the 4th turn and finished eighth. His last chance was the 1,000m, a distance at which six of his opponents had better times. Jansen was on world record pace when he slipped during the penultimate turn. Incredibly, he steadied himself and powered on to set a world record (1:12.43) and win a gold medal at last!" i just cant imagine working that hard, for that long. i mean i've worked 80hr work weeks, i did it for 3 months and took off only one day each month. but that was a long time ago. when i was a kid. but this guy tried as hard as he could, every single day for 10 years! i think the man is insane! but what a guy! go man go! the point is i just seem to respect him so much for the effort and the patience it took for him to get that medal. and i guess i really cant believe it, because i'm sure i wouldv given up. you're a hero dan. a real hero. Blog 16- 9:59 PM 7/16/2003 gee it looks like i blew up last night. excuse me. the insanity that plagues this country just blows my mind sometimes. i wont even mention the things we've all seen. would a tv show that only broadcast good news stories ever make it? just good news all of the time. a cnn of good news only. actually as i read this again, it rolls off my tongue like dry cardboard. but then again there really would always be an audience of some kind. i mean come on, somebody's gotta wanna hear good news out there. i know i'd tune in. hv a grt day. british open tomorw. yahoo! Blog 15- 7:07 PM 7/15/2003 short story. we're at the bagel stop. walk in. dad-in-law makes his way over to the coffee stand to help himself to some coffee before sitting down. i notice the waitress behind him is looking at him with disdain as he helps himself to coffee. the bubble over her head says "who the hell are you to help yourself to my coffee!" we sit down. my wife attempts to place her order, (same waitress). can i have 2 eggs, one scrambled, one over medium, home fries, orange...."excuse me mam. we cant make two eggs like that. its either two scrambled or two over medium. cant do it" my head exploded. i dont understand u freaks! whats wrong with this country! its a God damn egg already! give me a break! make one scrambled and one over medium. why is that so impossible?! oh God that would throw the kitchen into a whirlwind! the chef may have a heart attack! we've never done that before! sometimes i wish we just couldv picked a specific group of people to be in the world trade center on 9/11, and get rid of some of the dead weight in this country. its people like her that contagiously spread bad attitudes. ever walk up to a counter, ANYWHERE, and the person behind the counter pretends ur not there? and you wait and wait and wait? well i have a breakthrough for that one. as soon as you walk up, say, "hi! how are you today?!" theyr forced to answer immediately, and then of course, help you. no more waiting for them to pay attn to the fact that ur there. why am i constantly hving to battle the DMV, the bank, or the return line at target, or the line at the airport, or someone that just loves to say, "oh no we cant do that" to the simplest of requests. if everyone just spoke to the next person as if they were ur best friend, everyone would get along. we're all neighbors, no matter how u look at it. people talk about the big wigs at enron, like their aliens. people say THEY. theyr not aliens, theyr from here, probably live a few miles away. they r us. shop at the same stores we all do. yet they laid off people that they walk by on the street, they destroyed the life savings of people they see everyday. they did that to their own neighbors. we're all in this together. this is a team effort. ahhh but who gives a shit. nobody. hv a grt dy. Blog 14- 9:59 PM 7/13/2003 golf 54 and 43. horrible, but an acceptable comeback. i made a birthday invitation(162Kb) for Sid, a very good friend of mine. my mentor. a nice young man. 79 yrs old. oh yeah and i might as well add the brochure(2Mb) that we made for Sid's magic and motivational speaking presentations. he's a grt man. he was the building commissioner in ny back in the 70's. he also owned a gold mine. grt story behind it. and he lost everything. a local biggy like enron knocked him, and the whole business off the block. bike ride time was 32:06. the goal is 30. gnite. Blog 13- 9:20 PM 7/11/2003 i'm just going to write this verbatim as it was written sitting in the backyard. I'm just waiting to die. its inevitable. we're all just waiting around for the ineveitable. you can sit and wait, or you can do something while you're waiting. i do hv a theory though. 2 years ago i figured that if i live till i'm 96, i might be able to live forever. at least till my batteries run out. i say by the time i'm 96 they shud be able to transplant brains into machines. the brain is about the last organ left to be transplanted. so if i just make it to 96, which is 2061, then i'll be able to become captain pike. but i feel 2061 is going to be the problm, not me being 96. at the current rate, i feel the world will surely come to an end before then. i love my house so much i dont think i can live anywhere else. i always said i could live anywhere, and always wanted to live in nyc for a yr. but sitting here right now, life is so peaceful in my backyd that i dont think i could live anywhere else. peace has become the only thing i really want out of life. PEACE. and quiet. or is quiet included in peace. hv to look that up. you can live forever, just sitting around listening to Led Zeppelin. just me and my plant in the backyd. oh and the cactus sprouted an arm. it took 6 months, and everyone said it was dead. what r u thinking right now, at this very moment. when i was 12 my friend told me that his uncle said, if you stop thinking, the Devil will jump into ur head. i've always been afraid ever since. i used to sit in my apt yrs ago and stare at the ceiling counting seconds. cherishing every second of life. burt bacharach has to be the best songwriter of all time. yes i'm just rambling here. i cant stand american english. at least the spelling i cant stand. no uniformity, no continuity. totally lawlessness. thats why i try to type in newspeak. do u remembr that word from 1984. the book i mean. newspeak was like shorthand except universally accepted as the better more efficient way of communicating. words were combined or shortened to make the written word more efficient. and damn if i dont think its a grt idea. so for those of u that think i cant spell 'shud' , i just hate the o and the l. a waste of kystrokes, just expediting my arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome. should is hood with an s. its not pronounced like shoulder so why spell it like shoulder? who was the knucklehead behind this language anyway? last but not least. (long blog. sorry.) walter cronkite said on larry king that george bush is making the gravest mistake in the history of the presidency, but only the history books will tell. that sounded pretty serious. before the war, i figured if we bomb iraq to smithereens, we're only gonna get hit again with a far worse event than the wtc. NOW, TODAY, looking at the situation over there, i am sure we're doomed. remember how people here spoke about the la riots over rodney king. now imagine how many millions of arabs are talking about how anarchy has taken over iraq. they must talk about it all day everyday. waiting for something to be done. if u thought terrorists were going to get angry because we bombed iraq then you cant imagine how angry they are for leaving their country in ruins, homes destroyed, businesses looted, familys without food. its one thing to kill saddam but its a whole nother ball game when u destroy an entire country. we are doomed. i predict a nuclear reactor explosion or a nuclear bomb before 2010. guaranteed. thats why i'm in florida, easy ocean acces, i can get outta here quickly if necessary. good luck. hv a grt dy! Blog 12- 10:25 PM 7/7/2003 lets preface this story. my mother is a psycho. keep that posted on the bulletin board. my mother calls, and knowingly knows that i've been a software technician for 3 years, knows i've been running my own computer repair business for 4 years, and knows that i majored in computer science in college 14 years ago. her first words are "Do you know anything about computers?" is that an insult or just forgetfulness? somebody please tell me! Blog 11- 5:27 PM 7/7/2003 the ceiling is finished. that means all house projects for the next 90 days are put on hold. i'm coming home and sitting on the couch and thats it. yard work on the weekend and nothing else. maybe i can get some golf in if i'm lucky. work on my game. i shot a 38 on the back nine the other day, the first time i broke 40 on 9 holes. only took me 21 years to accomplish that. see what u can do if u never give up? gee... heres a nice tip for you. dont offer hot dogs to people visiting your house. i mean you know how when people visit, you offer them a drink? "would you like something to drink?" well my wife had some of her friends over from work, and all of a sudden i hear "would you ladies like some hot dogs?" i almost had a heart attack. now i could see offering a hot dog to a friend that i know eats hot dogs all the time. and those people you know really good, cause knowing someone eats a lot of hot dogs is kinda personal. i mean offering hot dogs might make a great saturday night live skit, but in general i dont think its a good practice to offer hot dogs in replacement of beverages. hv a grt dy Blog 10- 11:07 PM 7/2/2003 wouldnt it be nice to play golf for a living? for that matter, wouldnt it be nice to PLAY anything for a living! "awww gee steve i gotta go play baseball again." oh i'm sorry man, thats too bad. i wish you could come roofing with me! i'll watch ya tonight on tv though! "oh alright, guess i'll go put my uneeform on. see ya buddy" Blog 9- 11:19 PM 7/1/2003 do u think who you become, determines your moral behavior? we all supposedly have the same ideals, but they vary slightly, does that slightness come from the lifestyle you live? or was that predetermined by the time ur 5 yrs old or even before ur born? this is s stupid question, i'm sure if i read a damn book i'd find the answer. Blog 8- 09:55 PM 7/1/2003 you should always say hi to everyone. i thinks its just a nice thing to do. Blog 7- 10:01 PM 6/25/2003 get a glass, or plexiglass cutting board with rubber bumpers on the bottom. keep it right next to the sink. easy to clean, and always ready for use. no more reaching for the wooden cutting board, then scrubbing it clean. remove 18 points off the stress gauge. hv to fix the ceiling this weekend. getting appraisal. refinancing. need more cherries.
Blog 6 - 9:37 PM 6/24/2003 i know i just made an entry, but i had to come back. the internet. hey.... its a great place. but the advertising is becoming..... insane? we all get the penis enlargement ads(i dont, because i know how to lock down that email address baby!) but some of us do. i guess its an ad for penis enlargement, or some kind of porno something or other. somehow legal, we'll figure that out at some point. but the X10 camera ads are pure insanity! i understand getting a camera for security but why are they showing me a womans legs, and i mean JUST LEGS. is that not telling me? or not instigating me? or advising me to place my camera in a particular position that might allow me to see more womens legs? remember when music lyrics about killing cops came out?, i said to myself "it's just music. just words. people will be able to separate it from reality, nobodys gonna go out and start killin cops" but the X10 ad is an ADVERTISEMENT, which by definition is: 1.a public promotion of some product or service. 2.advice. 3.a notice designed to attract patronage. so the idea is, theyr advising me to set that camera up where i can get great video of women. i call that persuasion. or whadda they call that....ahhhh .....entrapment. there are guys that will fall for that. you see it on the news everyday. cant we stop it? i cant! damnit jim i'm just a doctor! sick sick world we live in. sick and getting sicker. beware the chip transaplants. the special was on last night. a young man had a chip placed inside him, he's a genius, has a phd at 14 yrs old? but he requested the chip. the day will come sooner than u think, when all men and women in the U.S. will be born with chip identity. so close its terrifying. 4 million pets wear chips today. check this out, i made it from pictures that i downloaded. Blog 5- 8:44 PM 6/24/2003 ahhhhh life is good. the wife's outta da house, i'm grillin' lobsta, drinkin' champagny, and eating a bowl o' cherries for dessert. yes life is good. there are so many little things that make life happier, because they make life easier. their like little keys, mysteries of the universe. the first one i discovered, was to me, like disovering the mystery of GOD. when ya go to da battroom in da middle o' da nite, ya turn on da lite, when ya finish, den turn offa da lite, den doncha hate it when ya cant see da bed. i fell and hitta my head againsta da nighta stand. it hurta so so much. i sat and sat, and tried to figure a way to make sure that never happened again. then one day! vÓila! i figured it would be easier to wipe my ass with my right hand than my left. what a freakin idea! only kidding........when you go to the bathroom, before you turn on the light, cover one eye. KEEP it covered. when u exit the bathroom u can open it, and see everything, its just the coolest ding in da woiled. remove 99 points from the stress gauge. heres a nice key to hv. when u put the knives and forks and spoons in the dishwasher. put them together in separate bins. then taking them out is spoon, forks, knives. no need to sort. it takes so much stress out of ur day. mine anyway. remove 22 points from the stress gauge. a key chain holder. i always hated people with the keychain holder and the chalk board. so brady bunch. but i finally gave in, and got one for myself. where are my keys? on the keychain holder. everytime i ask the question, thats where they are. security. happy happy joy joy. remove 16 points from the stress gauge. buy the dam kitty litter machine! score! remove 110 points from the stress gauge. going to the beach. this is the list. chairs, blankets, knapsacks filled with snacks, cooler of food, chocolate chip cookies(substitute your favorite snack), towels, toys, backgammon, a book, an mp3 player, snorkel gear, i leave out the cooler of food and the toys only because i eat at the local restaurants on the beach. but those of you with kids cant go because your kids scream and yell, and are so difficult. its easier to deal with the coldcut sandwiches. but some of you go, you give in and bring the brats, because you cant take it anymore. ya gotta get out! and you ruin uncle gene and aunt harriets dinner. its not that we hate you but its weird, you turn into the ahhh pod people from the body snatchers. and you want us to join and you chase us everywhere! i know its just a matter of time and u'll get me sooner or latr. but for now i'm still running. so anyway, what else? i had a chick say that to me all night once. i finally said "you know what? there IS nothing else, just get out of the car." i wound up walking home. i forgot it wasnt my car. but anyway, the champagny is runnin low. i'm stumblin arown da house now. gotta go. gotta look for more keys. i know theyr out there. hv a grt dy. gnite. Blog 4- 10:24 PM 6/17/2003 i forgot to tell you that i ran into an old college buddy while waiting at the airport, on my trip to nc. john. we called him kraut. he was the cool guy in college. just a downright good guy. it was nice to see him after 10 years? he caught my eye, so i jumped up and bumped him from the side. he stopped, and said as calmly as ever, 'hey buddy do i know you?' then looked at me and said 'HEY MAN I KNOW YOU!' so we chatted for 10 mins. at one point during the conversation he said 'i'm 40. how old are you ...37?' i actually had to think more about how old i was than he did. that 40 came out of his mouth as if he were saying 70. he turned into the grim reaper there for a sec. that was weird. he was saying he lives in his own little world, as he cupped his hands together to demostrate how small it really was. it was his happiness and love for his house, he doesnt ever want to leave. i agreed. MY HOUSE. my own world. my sweat. its just me.....and just right. exactly the way i want it. its my world of comfort. my heaven. ahhhhhh what a life. led zeppelin came out with a new dvd, and broke the all time record for dvd sales, for a music dvd. they just wont go away...will they? magnificent acoustic set on there. earls court. jimmy pages precision finger picking is phenomenal. a must see. hv a grt dy everybody. Blog 3 - 1:04 PM 6/15/2003 well north carolina is nice. a little run down but very colonial. check out this picture. i drove 700 miles all over that damn state. plenty more pictures like that. north carolina seemed just like texas, except texas had a broken down oil well every 5 miles instead of an abandoned home. anyway, it looks like life goes on day after day every where you go. today is the final day of the us open golf championship, i stayed home to watch the entire tournament rather than go to my family reunion. who throws a family reunion during the us open!? so i stayed home, cleaned the driveway, the porch, mowed the lawn, cleaned the leaves from the beds out front and put down new mulch. check it out. cleaned the newe shower for the first time. put up the toilet paper holder and two towel bars. installed the door saddle to the bath, and broke it, right in the middle. son of a bitch. i need to get a new ac filter and a door stop also. refinancing the house this week, hopefully everything goes smoothly. the war continues in israel, and the world goes round and round. hv a grt dy. go nj nets! oh yeah forgot. i ran into a guy and his gal in the middle of nc, theyr from new zealand. they actually live in nc, why i'll never know. he had a tatoo on his arm of an angel praying, at the bottom it said september 11, 2001. imagine that. Blog 2 - 9:45 PM 6/2/2003 monday. dad and bev left yestrdy. we had an aweseome time. lots of jokes and lots of stories. went on the riverfront cruise. today the tile in the shower is finished. complete. that was like an 800lb gorilla on my back. i feel so relieved. took a crystal reports class today at new horizons. i hate sitting thru the first 3 hours of nonsense. i shud always take the advcnd class. tonight the devils play 4th game in the stanely cup. nets and spurs play wed. saw lightening hit a transformer pole today. now thats exciting! threw down 5 bags of topsoil when i got home, during the pouring rain. helps it wash in, right? going to NC wed, be back sat. hv a grt wk...oh forgot... it was mom in laws bday this weekend! Blog 1 - 2:33 PM 5/28/2003 its wednesday. working from home today. not many calls. need to get some time in to put the final touches on the shower. just finished tiling the master bath. need to grout. then seal the grout. registered for a college class and dropped it immediately. class was $492.00 and the books were $397.00. cant afford that right now. it rained all night last night. turned off anything that made a sound and left the french doors to the patio open so we could hear the pouring rain. so soothing.
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