Still standing
Posted by swingate | Filed under Work
I’m still here. Not much to say…well, actually lots to say. I just don’t feel like saying it. I got laid off three months ago. I’m okay money-wise so no worries for a while. I’m using the time off to brush up on IT certifications and get in shape.
I’ve been bustin butt in the gym and I’m down about 10lbs since. Hoping to lose another 10 by the time I go back to work. I’m not gettin in as much cycling as I hoped but I’m about to fix that.
Stay tuned!
Adele
Posted by swingate | Filed under General
Okay, I just can’t get back into the long blog thing right now. For the time being my posts will be quite Twitter-esque, i.e. 140 characters or less.
Right now I’m listening to Adele, a young British singer. She really has quite a sultry voice. You should check her out…like soon. Her first album is titled “19″.
Is this thing on?
Posted by swingate | Filed under General
Just testing blogging from my iPod Touch. I love this thing! It’s on, baby!
Time to get back on track
Posted by Steve | Filed under General
I have a few posts I need to jot down. It’s just hard to get motivated to bang out a long post, which is the way I prefer to do it. I might start doing shorter Twitter’ish posts in the future but I’ll try to put up real stories at least a couple time per month.
Last May I had a big trip back to Atlanta scheduled. I planned to see the folks, spend some quality time with Belle, attend a cousin’s wedding and meet up with a bunch of high school friends that I’ve reconnected with on Facebook. I was originally planning to get there on a Saturday. I decided to bump it to Friday in case Mom needed me to work in the yard Saturday morning. Good thing I did.
I got in around 9pm on Friday. My dad had been on the family farm in South Carolina. He was not feeling well so his brother drove him and they arrived around midnight. Dad had a host of old man issues – emphysema, diabetes, high blood pressure, you name it.
The next morning I helped (carried actually) him downstairs so we could take him to see his doctor. I got him downstairs and sat him in his easy chair to rest. My dad is a pretty big guy and I was flat out exhausted from carrying him. He stopped breathing and died right there in front of me, mom and my uncle.
He had been ill for a long while so I was mentally prepared and things were going to be much easier on Mom now. Needless to say the activity schedule was turned on it’s head. I still went to the wedding and a couple of my high school boys stopped by to check on us, which I really appreciated. I didn’t get to see Belle which was very disappointing.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that.
Start the presses!
Posted by Steve | Filed under General
Okay, all three of my remaining readers have been pestering me for updates. I guess I better appease them before they abandon ship too. I have restocked the frig with cheese so here comes the whine to go with it.
Check back soon!
So I had this dream….
Posted by Steve | Filed under Amore & Vita
I had an f’ed up dream last night. Apparently I was some sort of clandestine “guy you go to when you don’t know who to go to” type guy. Some company hired another clandestine dude to perform some operation; he needed to get them a submarine but didn’t know how to do that so he called me in the job. Apparently despite the fact that I was a clandestine “guy you go to when you don’t know who to go to” type guy I didn’t know how much to charge them for my services. It has to be enough to justify becoming a bad guy and live off for a few years til the next job. So we’re going around doing our sneaky stuff and all the while I’m trying to figure whether to bill by the job or by the hour; mileage from my house to their HQ to “the spot”, etc, etc.
Later I ask the company why they called me in on this job and they’re like because if we get caught you’re going to be the scapegoat and go to jail, not us. I’m like crap, now I have to factor the risk of going to jail into my rate. So I’m doing the standard contractor calculations of annual salary divided by 2,080 hours then multiply that by three. Can’t figure out what annual salary to use. Do I bill them upfront for expenses and at the end for my services? Of course we’re doing all our sneaky stuff at night and I’m a single father so I have to figure out how to leave Junior home alone without raising the ire of child protecive services and shit.
How do those guys figure that shit out anyway?
Oh and we showed up at the warehouse one early morning. There’s a ditch out back with a creek running down it with a giant dog sleeping in it. Giant like the dog’s head was the size of a Mini Cooper. He was friendly but still, dogs don’t need to be that big.
I think the dream had to do with the fact that I do tend to get lost in minutiae sometimes when I’m working toward something. Can’t see the forest for the trees.
We’re already Socialists….get over it
Posted by Steve | Filed under Social Issues
The reality of America is that we don’t have the stomach for a pure capitalist system.
We believe a person should earn what they’re worth, but not if it means some Wall street exec makes $50 million/year or some college dropout makes $10 million/year in the NFL.
We want to build homes on flood plains and eroding cliffs that we can’t even get insured but we want government assistance when our life savings burns to the ground, floats down river or slides into the ocean.
We believe in personal fiscal responsibility, but we want a mortgage bailout if OUR home goes into foreclosure.
We don’t believe in government handouts but we want unemployment compensation if we get laid off.
We believe the cream will rise to the top but we support “No child left behind” in schools so our little Johnny won’t sink to the bottom.
We want to see our 401K’s growing 15% annually, but if it goes down 5% we demand to know why we weren’t told about the risk.
we want a free market economy…as long as we’re not the guy on the bottom of the ladder.
Face it, people. Socialism is here already and it’s here to stay…but let’s all act like it’s the fault of a guy who isn’t even in office yet, if ever. I support a flat tax but we won’t see it anytime soon…then again 10 years ago I thought I wouldn’t see a black president in my lifetime.
