BLOGS FOR OCTOBER 2008

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Week ending October 26th, 2008
Finally, a FULL relaxing week!

This was a nice change. Work was relatively easy this week. Not really that much going on other than jamming on a few projects. This was the last week for my good friend Jason. He has moved on to greener pastures. It will be a bummer as him and I often carpooled and hung out after work. I definitely wish him well and I know that we'll keep in touch. I am sure the team is going to miss the banana bread Mondays :)

We did take Jason out after work on Thursday and had a good, fun crowd. We even watched a World Series game (halfway paying attention) in the process. The place we go to has some of the best burgers, just watch out for the owner and her paddle, lol. "None for me, Lady! I've been a good boy!" hahaha.

I signed up for Facebook a few months ago after some encouragement from friends and ended up touching base with a lot of my high school friends. In the process I bumped into my first love/crush. Haha. It is good to see her doing well with her life and her great family. It's neat to see people after many years having a fun, successful life and I'd like to think that I am no different. While I don't have a family I can safely say that I've accomplished much over the years and have no regrets. Life is definitely good and I'm as happy as I can be. I think my appetite speaks for that too, haha.

Speaking of which if all goes well I should bust my heaviest weight this week. I've really stuck with the shakes even though sometimes I am sick of drinking them. It has, however, paid off in a big way and seeing the gains as well as the increased weights on the bench in rewarding. I'll be glad when I reach my goal and can stop drinking them though. haha.

Church was excellent Saturday night as always. Bob finished up his series that started with Husband/Fathers, Wives/Mothers, Children and now work. It put a lot of things into perspective, as his sermons usually do and definitely keeps me on track.

Speaking of "track", haha, the RR is sold. I am delivering the bike to the new owner on Sunday. It will be sad to see the bike go but hey, that's life. You do your thing and then you move on to the next. Kind of like with me and music. I did my 10 years or so performing around the Country and when it ran it's course, I moved on to racing. Now that the racing bit is done I am looking forward to life's next great challenge. We'll see what that is in the coming months.

John's wedding is this Saturday so I am looking forward to that. It should be a hoot. Still trying to figure out if I should wear a suit or go more casual. Bah, I probably should wear a suit just in case. I can always take the jacket off later.

Well that's about it for this week. I think I am going to chill in front of the TV for a while and catch up on some of my reading then hit the sack. It's been a long week but a rewarding one. We'll check in with you next week and hopefully I will have some pictures to post on the web site of the wedding.

Have a great week!

Week ending October 19th, 2008
I'm beat *snore* lol. Sleepy :)

Well as relaxing as this week was, I'm really tired. I went to John's bachelor party yesterday and we had a lot of fun. The food was good that's for sure. Then we all went to a cigar bar but I did not partake, lol. Cigars give me a headache so I split time between the room and outside. I even went to the sushi bar next door and pigged out. haha. John's boss, who's a pretty cool guy, wants to start getting some group rides together and I am down for that. Just need to slap some new tires on the Bandit.

After the party I headed home, changed and then headed out to the Hard Rock Hotel to hang out with my friend Jen. That was pretty interesting. A lot of her friends are from work and I know them so we all hung out and went dancing (yeah, I danced again! haha). I didn't get home until late but when I did the power was out! They were changing the transformers so the entire block was out of power. Have you ever tried to brush your teeth without being able to see? haha. Quite interesting.

All of last week I took a Symantec class from home. It's called "Virtual Academy" where you wear headsets and interact with the instructor online. It actually worked pretty well. I was able to sit in PJs and drink coffee while taking the class. Then we had labs to do which was even easier as they were VMWare boxes so we could connect easily. I got all my labs done and everything working and really learned a lot.

Oh! The RR is now sold. The guy who bought it is going to pick it up this coming weekend. So now I will pay off a few bills and then consider what to do about the Bandit. I can keep it or I can sell it and buy a 1000RR. I still have yet to decide. Once I pay some of these bills off I'll be looking pretty good financially to start looking at a house.

My friends are asking me why I am not racing anymore. It comes down simply to one thing: MONEY! haha. It costs a LOT to race (to the tune of about $1,500.00 per race weekend. And because it costs so much I ended up skipping a lot of practice time which in turn didn't help me be any faster. In fact, all it did was set me back. Before I broke my collar bone I was making a lot of strides getting faster and faster each session but then I had to take 6 months off. The doctor did not piece my shoulder back together so it took a lot longer to heal.

Either way, I am OK with not racing. As fun as it was, it really was a huge drain on my finances. There are many other things I could be doing with my money -- more productive things! LOL.

Anyway, not too much of an update. It's Sunday and I just finish watching the MotoGP race. Nicky did good. Almost took 4th, just a hair off. He'll get em next time.

I hope you had a great week and we'll talk to you later.

Life is good, keep smiling! Later Gators :)

Week ending October 12th, 2008
What a week, lol!

Wednesday things kind of hit the fan at work. One of my solutions isn't working in production and of course all fingers point to me. They should though, it is my solution. Pouring over the docs the field support people think I overlooked something. So Thursday and Friday morning I am busting my tail trying to figure out what's wrong. On Friday morning both the vendor and the field support people call me. The vendor says "Our docs are missing some instructions" and the Field Support person calls to say "You didn't miss it, the docs are wrong!" Vindication :) So I worked late on Friday and 10 hours on Saturday to figure out what the problem was and correct it. So today I am going to finish up the changes to the documents and hopefully that will be the end of the issue.

This week should be much more relaxing considering some of the things going on at work -- but it's really nothing I can't handle. All I have to say is life's too short to sweat the SMALL stuff. Leave it God to handle and move on! That is what I am doing. Life is good, I'm smiling and the future is so bright I've gotta wear shades! LOL :)

I am taking a web-based training class so I'll be home all this week -- a much needed break, too. Nothing like being in class wearing PJs, a warm cup of coffee at my side, pen in hand and headset blaring the teacher. That should be fun. The class is on Archiving which is one of my big projects at the moment and will hopefully boost my career as well.

Ok now on the big announcement. I'm done racing and doing track days. I had been thinking about this for some time. I haven't raced in over a year now and don't really miss it. Track days are fun but they're still expensive. So on Thursday night I posted the trailer and the bike for sale on Craigslist. The first person to come look at the trailer after work on Friday bought it on the spot for what I was asking for! So that's $120.00 a month saved in storage fees and some cash to pay off the bills. When I sell the RR, that will leave me with just the Bandit and the Dirt Bike. And that's fine by me. Racing was a great experience. I can say I did it and survived :) I competed against some really talented people and though I didn't win anything and my best placement was 6th, I really did meet some great people and had a lot of fun. Life goes on and without change their is no growth. I'm ready for life's next challenge.

So what is next? I haven't really decided. It won't be music or racing, lol. I really want to get some of my last bills paid off so I can put together a down payment for a house. I haven't thought too much about where I want to live but right now is really a good time to buy a house, so we'll see what happens.

On Tuesday I had Jury duty (boooo! lol). I managed to delay it because they had two long trials coming up and I just can not be on a 3 week or 8 week trial with so much going on at work. I got them to delay service until near Christmas. Hopefully it will be nice and slow then :)

Well really that is about it for this week. Nothing too special going on due to all the extra hours I have put in at work. I am going to meet a friend later today for dinner and to watch the game. My other friend wanted me to go join her downtown on Friday but since I worked late and had to work the next day I decided to pass.

I am making plans to head to Florida next month, maybe for two weeks. I haven't really decided but it will be good to hang out with the family over Thanksgiving.

Saturday is John's bachelor party. From what I understand it's going to be PG rated, lol, so that should be fine. We're going out to eat and then I think a cigar bar and then the aircraft hanger to check out the planes his boss has. I think they have an F-4 Phantom! That should be a hoot. Haven't seen one since I was in the Marines.

I hope you have a good rest of your week and stay out of trouble. I know I am -- haha, sort of! *wink*

Week ending October 5th, 2008
I trust your week went well! Mine was great, as always :) Hope you got a chance to watch the Pyromania Promo Video I made when I was in the band. It's really good!

This week I got a lot accomplished at work and given that I have training a week from Monday and Jury Duty this Tuesday, that's a good thing. The two new guys we hired are doing really well. I've been trying to help them along with the processes here so that they aren't in the dark when it comes to "what's next" with their solutions.

This week, personally, was nice and quiet. I actually took some time to get rid of the last of the major boxes and stuff from the move that I didn't empty. It's amazing the amount of "junk" I have collected over the years! Guitar and motorcycle mags, bill summaries (I was holding them to destroy later, I never throw out bills with account numbers!), etc. Heh, I found my Christmas decorations so this year's tree is going to look "proper" :) After that I got the patio cleaned up and threw out the plants I bought over the summer. Apparently they weren't the kind of plants that thrive in the sun even though the clerk told me they would. I watered them regularly but they died anyway. I will eventually get some furniture and also run a chain of white lights to decorate a tad.

Church was great on Saturday. Pastor Bob is in Hawaii on a marriage retreat so we had a guest speaker. His name? Butterworth! So you know how he introduced his wife, right? The lovely Mrs. Butterworth! He had everyone laughing. He was a good speaker and the message was very clear too on how to handle adversity. The key point is give it up to God but don't sit around either. Like, if you lose your job and pray over it, you still need to get your resume out there! God isn't going to do your resume for you, haha.

After that I met some friends and we headed to the Gas Lamp district. Now you know me, I'm not a big party guy. They wanted to meet up to watch the UFC fight which lasted I think, 20 seconds. After that we went to the place next door that had a cover band where, several times the girls got oogled. I for one have very little patience for rude people and twice had to tell the guys to back off and leave them alone. It's amazing how a little alcohol can make guys act with no regard to anyone else's personal space. We did end up meeting some cool people from Canada who are here for the Miramar Air Show.

Speaking of the Air Show, I'm not going. John can't make it down and I have a friend showing up here in about an hour from Palm Springs. We're going to watch the game and her and I are going to get some dinner. Oh and the MotoGP race is on today as well. I saw that Nicky is on the front row. Let's hope that he can stay with the fast guys. I know he's worried about the Michelins but it doesn't seem to bother Lorenzo.

Oh one quick story. Yesterday my neighbor was out with her dog. She has this 75lb lab/rot mix and he's a handful. She has a choke collar but the dog wasn't responding to it. Another neighbor had her dog out and the lab/rot mix nearly pulled her arm off trying to get to him. So I took at look at the collar and she had it rigged wrong. The spikes are supposed to dig into his neck (it doesn't hurt too bad, don't worry) but because she rigged it wrong, they weren't working. I showed her how to rig it correctly and when the dog acted up the next time she grabbed the collar and BOOM, the dog instantly behaved. He doesn't like those spikes in his neck but they work :) She thanked me for the help because she had been struggling to keep the dog under control for some time.

Well that's about it for this week. As I said, pretty quiet and nothing too unusual. You know me though, haha. I talk about a lot of things but not EVERY thing :)

Hope the rest of your week goes well and we'll talk to you next Sunday!