Musings and Meanderings

15 days later and what do you have to show for it? Umm well not much... We can do little blurbs. How's that? Alex has been in NH all week with Sunny and Poppa. Brought him out on Saturday last and stayed overnight, did the Country Club, church and a talk about the Middle East to the "adult forum" at their church. I certainly had a great time. One of the ladies from Christmas was there, always nice to meet her. Been spending much more time on the phone than out cold canvassing last 15 days, seems to be paying off. I've got three more appointments this week, new ones. Last week I did a second visit (this business is at least a two if not three visit close) and got a few pre paid labor hours. Also had a first appointment and sold a "site survey" which is our entree into a business. Started working out again on Monday the 21st. Right now I'm doing 15 min on the cross trainer and 15 min on the bike machine. Then I do two sets of upper body weight machi...

Fun with Computers Ok I'm putting my geek hat on for a moment here. Remember those great games I told you about a week or so ago? Back after I installed them I noticed that for no apparent reason, they would occasionally lock the computer up solid, so I had to cold reboot. Now with XP this is fairly unheard of as you know. Talked to Brother Greg (my compliment in computer knowledge, btw the two of us we know a lot). He suggested a few things to stop this but the one that made the most sense was to put the "clock" back on the AMD processor to its correct 1.1Ghz speed instead of the 1.4Ghz speed it was over clocked at. Apparently this is how AMD does things. So I did that, and everything worked perfect. No freeze ups. Fast forward to today, I got a refurbished HD from work, fresh and not needed (80Gig). So I swapped out the old "f" drive and swapped in the new one. And then I formatted it at NTSF, as the old one was still FAT32. Lightenting struck! What if...

Edwards still has "it". This is from a speech by John Edwards on Feb 05 of this year. A nice clear concise telling I think: You know all these political experts out there question what you and I and the Democratic Party believe in. They say that we don't believe in anything. That we don't stand for anything. Well, tonight I want to talk about what we believe. We believe in hope over despair, possibilities over problems, optimism over cynicism. We believe in doing what is right even when others say it can't be done. And we believe in fighting desperately for people who don't have a voice. That's what the Democratic Party has always believed in and that's what we will always believe in. That's what you and I believe in. What more could I possibly add

Try saying this outloud fast "Reports that say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knows; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know" -Don Rumsfeld Problem is Rummy, you think that you are catagory one, but usually you are catagory three.

Some Great PC Games Cheap Ever since brother Greg gifted us with a newly built computer running with an Athelon Chip (1.1Ghz) and a hoopy motherboard (along with a great Video Card donated by sister Laurie) I have been exploring what it's like to be in the 21st Century of computing. The previous incarnation of the family computer was a P2 Celeron running at 450 Mhz so it is quite an improvement. I was at Electronic Boutique recently and I grabbed to great games very cheap. Because the movies are over and new titles have been published the EA Game Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is out there for $9.95. Once I got the right drivers running for 3d rendering I discovered that this game is really amazing. The graphics are astounding, and there are some neat interviews and other quick bonus' that you unlock as you progress through the game. I also picked up the 7th Anniversary version of Ultima Online (the most recent code is called " Age of Shadows ...

Another Great post from SJG This story describes how 75% of the students currently in high school don't even know what the First Amendment is; many think that the government should be able to censor publishers; and almost half think it already can censor the net. The full findings are here. Be very afraid - and support student media in your local schools, because there's nothing like BEING a publisher to teach you about the rights . . . and responsibilities . . . that go with First Amendment protection. Administrators need training too. For instance, 99% of high school principals agree with the general idea that people should be able to express unpopular opinion, but fewer than half think that student media should be able to report freely on controversial issues.

Breaking news Am at work now, just got out of the monthly employee meeting. Walked in this am, Bill's dest was empty of all personal possessions. Apparently he gave two week notice yesterday, and his services were no longer required so he was done as of yesterday. Problem solved I guess. Now we just find someone who actually wants to be a telemarketer....

Some Updates Work Had a long and what I feel final conversation with the aforementioned Bill the "telemarketer" on Friday in order to clear the air between us. I feel it went well in that we were able to lay out on the table how each felt about the job, each other, etc. Privately it was very clear to me that he was not understanding what Randy had said to him on that week's Monday Sales meeting. This Monday's sales meeting went quickly and I explained privately to Randy that I felt that Bill was not really on the program. To say that Randy is setting up Bill to fail as an outside sales person is a bit harsh, in that I think Randy would of course be happy if he was able to reach his quota's. But I know too that Randy does not think he is capable of meeting his quota's. He feels it will get the situation out of Bill's system and allow him to concentrate on making the appointments. It would be nice if this "crisis" had been resolved ...