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mushy

When You Sleep

Work is well. I’m starting to treat my body better. I stopped eating fast food over a month ago and its now been over 4 months since I quit smoking. I find myself parking further away from the entrance at work to force myself to walk more. This may even lead to me getting a gym membership and actually exercising. *Richie to hell: Is it getting cold down there?*

So if I am doing better, and feeling better, why am i so sleepless? The answer to that is lame, and I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to talk about it here. I have been so transparent in the past, I might as well open up again.

I have lost my connection to the world. I feel cut off. I feel very alone. I feel unloved and not cared about. I doubt many people give much thought to my well being and that is a huge source of discomfort for me. I am sure my family cares, as do some of my close friends. But for now “close friends” means the people I have known for a few years since I moved to Utah, and “family” means the people I pissed off many years ago in California before I came out here.

I think I would sleep better at night if I could know that there was someone who knew me, saw through to the heart of me, and still loved me.

Categories
general

Burn One Down

The mountain north of my work was on fire today. The view from my cushy chair on the 3rd floor of the well air conditioned building left me without a care in the world. Besides, I didn’t see any houses on fire; only grass and bushes and trees. I’m sure there were houses in danger, however, I was protected by my own complacency. The airplanes flew over countless times and dropped water they picked up from the nearby reservoir.

I wanted to tell them that it was ok, that they could stop their mission. *I* was perfectly fine, so there was no need to put out the fire. There is something that I have always found comforting about the flames of a huge fire. Something burned inside me as I watched the mountain set ablaze.

When I drove home from work and pulled into my apartment complex the view changed. The smoke and flames seemed WAY closer to me, and I felt like it could actually be possible for this fire to reach me. My complacency dissipated. I looked for the planes that I had wanted to call off earlier. They were still flying and dropping water. I am glad they didn’t listen to me.

It’s easy to be apathetic or content with evil or mediocrity when it only impacts everyone else. As soon as it has the ability to affect me, I get scared. I guess it is time to fly straight and put out some fires of my own.

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general

Devil’s Dance Floor

Alright, we have a piper who’s down. It’s alright, he’s just pissed. We have a piper down, I repeat, a piper is down!

-So I Married an Axe Murderer

Today, of course was St. Patrick’s day. So in Utah, not unlike anywhere else in the country, everybody was Irish and drunk! Wait… isn’t that redundant?

There was nothing down about the first bar Kevin and I went too. Things were in fact very much alive at Piper Down.

It was so busy that Kevin and I finished off our Killian’s Irish Red and our Irish Car Bomb and bailed.

We then went to a non-irish bar conveniently named O’Shucks, as to not disappoint the spirit of the evening. To top it all off the bar is connected to a sushi bar that served excellent sushi.

Overall, it was an excellent night.

Categories
general

God Gave Rock and Roll To You…

…and put it in the soul of Lasse Gjertsen. I like watching this video. It makes me smile.

Categories
rant

We Didn’t Start the Fire

Just a few days after Christmas my dad and my step mom were in for a surprise. Their RV caught fire, and with the Santa Ana winds in full effect, they could have easily lost the house. With the fast action from the Rialto Fire Department everything ended up ok, except for the RV, which is now in RV heaven. R.I.P.

Let this be a lesson to all smokers. Don’t just throw cigarette butts in a trash can. Always ensure they are no longer smoldering.

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general

Zombie Nation

I had an epiphany the other day. If it was not for computers and the internet I would not be as intelligent. The internet in no way placates my desire to learn, adapt and grow, however, it does add greatly to the sum of my knowledge. The threads of my life have been so interwoven with this Ethernet cable that I can actually feel my I.Q. points dropping as my cable modem loses packets. For the average home internet bystander an internet outage is a minor inconvenience. For me, it is a major catastrophe with detrimental results.

There are so many things that I no longer need to memorize due to the fact that it is at the tip of my fingertips. A couple mouse clicks and a Google search later and I could tell you the factors that led to the great depression, the name of Jack Johnson’s new album, and the actors name in that one movie.

With every day that passes the internet becomes an extension of my conscious mind. If this is true for me now, imagine what it will be like in 10 or 30 or 50 years. Mankind will be so dependant on wireless linkups that a simple software hiccup or power outage will mean that we forget how much that cup of coffee will cost, and where our seat on the plane is. For the brief moments without our connection we will be a nation of zombies, without having purpose, direction, and information.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Categories
mushy

I Walk the Line

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine. Over the years I have been caught off guard and left myself open for attack. Now I keep my eyes wide open, though, not all the time. Admittedly I still slip up and make unwise decisions based on foolhardy emotions. These decisions always come back to haunt me. I either fall for the wrong woman, or I fall for someone whose feelings are not reciprocated. It doesn’t take long to realize that when a woman says “The right woman is out there for you, you are a great guy” what they are thinking is… “I’m not the one for you because I am infatuated with someone more attractive”.

I have been in love. I wouldn’t call it the healthiest relationship, but it was love. And she loved me. It was one of the few times in my life where I felt some sense of completion. God intentionally made us with two missing pieces. The first missing piece of the puzzle can only be replaced by Him who created us, and the second piece, by our spouse. When the puzzle is complete we no longer see our life as fragmented and complicated; we instead see the big picture. We see the beautiful portrait that God has painted; the portrait of our lives.

In my life I have tried to complete the portrait, but with the wrong pieces. I have spent years battling addiction to drugs, cigarettes, food, alcohol and unhealthy relationships. My addiction was an attempt to repeatedly fill a void with the wrong passion. My relationship with God has waned heavily over the years; however He has kept a closer watch on my heart than I have. I am constantly reminded by Him what an intricate role He wants to have in my life, and how He desperately wants me to see the unveiling of His completed masterpiece.

I want to see it too.

Categories
rant work

The Horizon Has Been Defeated

I spend a good majority of my day explaining boundaries to my customers. The vast majority of those that call in for web hosting support, have no idea that there is a difference between building a website, hosting a website and sending an email. Because of this, I get asked a lot of questions that I should have learned to expect by now, but still astonish me. When a customer asks me to make some new installation of a third party e-commerce solution look like the rest of their site, I should learn to not only say “That is not within our realm of support”, but also educate them as to why their question is a farce.

When I first started building websites, over 10 years ago, the internet was not the place it is now. Back then, in order to build a decent website I copied someone else’s website, learned what they did to make it cool and would then deposit some of those elements into my own. Before too long I would end up with a tapestry of patchwork and cross stitching that I could call mine. This forced me to always learn more, evolve my design style, and mature in graphical development. 10 years later, and I am still learning, but I am also now teaching.

Fast forwarding to 2006: Everyone wants a website, and wants it NOW! People do not want to learn how to create. Today’s internet market is composed of consumers, not customers. These people expect to have exactly what they need ready to go, as if we were some sort of psychic fast food chain with their anticipated meals being warmed under a heat lamp. There are two problems with this. The first problem is that nothing is ever exactly what is needed. There is always going to be a missing tomato, or too many onions. The second problem is that even if you do get a product close to what you ordered, it doesn’t change the quality of said product, or the fact that you only spent $3.95 and had it handed to you through the drive through window.

How does one offer this type of education to a customer while sounding sincere and empathetic? I am not sure there is a way, so for now I guess the best way is to simply add the phrase “Please contact the developer of this product for any additional support and configuration”.

How far are we going to digress in the name of convenience?

Categories
general

Hardest Button to Button

Things have been different lately. Sometimes I get so caught up in the daily routine that I forget about the beauty of the mundane. Two weeks ago I started paying close attention to the habits that I have acquired over the years. I witnessed myself performing tasks and going through a routine that I started approximately 6 years ago when I first moved to Utah (albeit, slightly evolved – for example, my dog, Brandy, has added quite a bit to my routine)

As a sort of quasi-social experiment, I decided last week to make intentional adjustments and sometimes downright omissions to the rut I have become so accustomed. I did this thinking that it would put me in a better mood. I figured my brain would treat this as a sort of “vacation from myself”. This wasn’t the case at all. I found that I was more irritable at work and throughout the day in general. As much as we complain about how stagnant our lives are, we are fundamentally dependent on the little things in our life remaining unchanged, or parallel.

I quickly ended my experiment and stopped paying as much attention to my little daily quirks. Routines are not bad. They are a required way to help us handle the big things that come up. I compare it to breathing, blinking swallowing, walking, etc. Our brain doesn’t use a big percentage of its CPU power to do these things. It works on the premise that these tasks are functioning within normal parameters, allowing us to run our word processors, media players and networking tools without any memory leaks or server overloads.

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general

California, Rest in Peace

I hate moving. Since my initial move out of Southern California I have moved 10 additional times. That is WAY too many times, especially considering I only moved out 5 years ago. That is an average of 2 moves per year. Ridiculous.

I just finished my 10th move a couple weeks ago. Pretty much got everything packed, loaded, moved, unloaded and unpacked in 2 days. It is sad how efficient I have become at moving. For someone who hates moving, I have ironically become a master of it. Comcast came out and installed the cable modem and DVRs a couple days ago. It is nice to have internet back. I was starting to have withdrawals. It is hard to realize what an impact the internet has on our lives until it is taken away from us.

I was supposed to come out to California last month to go to Laura’s wedding and hang out with friends. I was really looking forward to it, however moving took precedence. I hope the wedding was lovely.

Hopefully I will be able to come out and visit soon. I miss a lot of people.