Best Looking Guy In Bozeman

No, it is certainly not me.

Last night I am having dinner with my room mate, his g/f, and his brother. It was a fairly tasty dinner with venison steaks, baked potato, salad, and a venison hamburger. Yes, I was stuffed like a big tick.

During the conversation I ask where our other room mate is. His name is Walker....as in Walker Texas Ranger....but he looks nothing like Chuck Norris. He is currently out of town and then when he gets back he is doing a kayaking trip in Africa. Pretty cool stuff. Then someone said his photo shoot went well.

What photo shoot? Walker is a good looking guy, but he's not a model as far as I am aware. There seems to be some running joke about him being the "Best Looking Guy in Bozeman." Maybe it's not a joke after all. Maybe he really was voted this or something because Men's Journal (or Men's Magazine, or something like that) called him up and did a photo shoot of him.

I guess some guys just have all the luck. Fortunately, he's a nice guy. I do not know him well and have never known him to be conceited. He does tend to bring home a lot of chicks, though....

So if the magazine comes out I'll try to get a pic up. The ladies can drool....the men can be jealous.

Quality of Life?

What is quality of life? I guess it depends on who you are and what your values are. I think most of have at least a basic idea of a standard for quality of life. Being able to walk, feed and dress yourself, etc. Almost everyone I know indicates that if they were paralyzed they wouldn't want to live anymore. The same is almost true as we get older and lose our functionality.

But this isn't what I am referring to. That's a little too dramatic. A bit too extreme. Let's bring it down a notch or two and think about quality of life in reference to where and how you live. The largest argument I keep hearing from people to move to Bozeman is for the quality of life. I also understand that Bozeman is now in the top 10 dream places (#1?) to live. The question is why?

How about the fact that yesterday I played golf int he morning with a friend of mine and the temp was in the 70's. It had warmed to 82 by the time we were done and then I rode motorcycles and never saw the temp climb above 85. This is in August and it's over 100+ back home and has been for over 20 days.

You can walk out of your door and camp, hike, bike, kayak, do river floats, fish, base jump, climb, and that's just in the summer. In the winter you have tons of winter sports such as skiing, boarding, tubing, snowmobiling, etc. It is truly an outdoor person's paradise.

But nothing comes without consequences. It's VERY expensive to live here as I have indicated over and over again. So most of the arguments I hear are that you have to give up something to live here but it's worth it.

For me, I tend to disagree with that. Obviously as I am not moving here. For starters I am in a very comfortable spot financially right now. I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but working up here all the time has allowed me to save some money and get some things accomplished in my life. I am not rich, nor do I have an endless supply of money. But I don't have to worry about it right now (that can always quickly change). I can take Robert and his wife out for dinner as a way to say thanks for letting me borrow his bike and not worry if I can afford it.

This is because I don't have an obscene mortgage payment. It's also because the state is raking 11% off the top of my gross income.

I have a 2000 sq. foot custom built home, a motorcycle, a truck and a boat. If I were to move to MT I would have to scale down to a townhouse or a trailer home to keep my liquid cash flow about the same. I might not be able to afford the upkeep on all the toys.

Then there are the trips that I take. This year I went to both Europe and Jamaica. I also had purchased a season lift ticket and snowboarded almost every weekend. I can take off at a moments notice and fly just about anywhere to do whatever I want. That would all go away if I moved to MT. The trip I have planned to Rome and Greece would have to go on the back burner.

I guess what I am getting at is that while it may be great to walk out your door and do all these wonderful things, you CAN'T do them if you are living in a crackerbox eating Ramen noodles because your mortgaged to the hilt and your income has been dramatically reduced.

So that's my quality of life rub. Have all these things available to do here in Mt, but give up space, toys, trips, seeing my family, and general financial stability. I don't see that as much of a choice. My quality of life has a lot more to do with what I am able to do, not what I could do if I had the money.

And as far as leaving all this behind? There is always vacation.....Because I can afford it.

FINALLY Got To Ride!

Yesterday I finally got to ride some of the roads in MT that I have been driving for over two years. It's interesting because a guy that I only sort-of-know let me borrow is Aprilia Mile and ride with him and his wife. I was surprised and taken by the offer. See, I am paranoid and rarely let anyone ride my bike. Especially if I have never seen them ride, etc. So I can't believe he offered it up.....but I was so stoked!!! So Robert, if you are reading this, a big thank you!! I had a great time.

We took the bikes up 191 and then up the mountain to Big Sky. Then had a coke and a smile, and turned around to come back. It wasn't a long ride, but it was very refreshing. I don't think the temps climbed above 85 and that was just about perfect to be riding. We straffed through the canyon and up the mountain. I didn't push the bike too much since it was a borrowed bike and I wasn't 100% familiar with it. The Mile' is very similar to my bike back home. Consider it the next model up. That made me fairly comfy, but I still didn't want to risk trashing his bike.

While we posted fairly illegal speeds, there were no accidents or tickets. Afterwards we went out to dinner and had a few beers. Let's say the conversation was "interesting." Not a bad way to wrap up the weekend!

Thanks again, Robert!

Jamaica!!! Yeah, mohn!

Well, first off let me apologize for not blogging much lately. I got in from Jamaica at about 11:00pm on Monday the 7th. Since then I have worked on site at one client or another every day with an average work day of 10+ hours. As an example, I have 78 hours of billable time in over the last possible 8 days I could have billed. The other 2 days were spent traveling and I've had to work on the weekends to catch up. That doesn't leave much time for the blog.

I spent most of my time on the beach checking out the scenery and generally not doing a whole lot of anything. After my Europe trip and grueling work schedule I just wanted to chill and not do a whole lot. We stayed at a Beaches resort. It was an all-inclusive resort, which is the way to go as far as I am concerned. All meals, all beverages, etc. That might explain the picture above!!

My friends got married and while we had a killer downpour right before the wedding, it was quite nice by the time the ceremony kicked off. Here I am giving some last minute "advice" to Bling before he ties the knot. I wonder how the honeymoon night was?

Everything was very nicely done and simple without being too extravagant. Maybe some people like that, but I am not personally into it. They did the whole shoeless wedding and I think it came out very well.

Here is one last shot of the whole wedding party. If you want to see all the pics - go here:
http://s61.photobucket.com/albums/h78/fullstate/Jamaica%202006/

I haven't figured this out exactly. I like the Yahoo photo album because I can put descriptions in the names, but I like this site because the links are stable and they work great for the blog. I guess I'll have to have pictures in two locations.

An Atrocity and a Travesty

One of my neighbors here in TX has a son that is a Marine. This guy has already completed two tours of duty in Iraq and is planning on going back for a third. He even fought in the battle of Felujiah and lost most of his unit and some good friends. Why? Because he has been there and is proud of what we are trying to do. Contrary to what the press would have you believe there are a lot of people over there that appreciate what we are trying to do.

I recently learned that he is currently in CA awaiting re-deployment. He has eight other guys that are under him and were still over in Iraq. Apparently, and what the press will not tell you, is that our soldiers are no longer allowed to engage the enemy at will if they are being fired upon. That's right, now the Muslim's can fire upon us and we have been ordered to NOT fire back without permission. Then, it apparently comes down to the weapons being used. If the enemy is using a pistol, our Marines are not allowed to utilize their M1 Abrams, 50-cal, or M4's to fire back. They also have to use a pistol or similar type weapon. WTF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? A bullet is a bullet. They ALL are capable of killing.

Now it gets worse. His unit was under fire from a sniper and had taken cover. They radioed in and requested permission to fire back and were given authorization from the command unit. They took out the sniper (I do not know how they took him out). They are now in the U.S. in a military jail awaiting a courtmarshal trial with a possible sentence of life in prison or death for taking out the sniper. They also had to pay for their flight back to the U.S. out of their own pocket and apparently are not being provided an attorney by the JAG unit.

How could we do this to our own people? We send them over there to fight for us and our country and then tell them they can't fight back. Then when they fight back we hang them out in the wind on their own with no support from their own country? I am appalled and outraged that this is taking place.

My opinion is that this is due to the political machine of the liberal democratic party that hates America and wants to destroy it. Our soldiers who are in Iraq fighting for what us and their own lives deserve better than this.

I am going to try to find out more information, such as the unit number, date and members involved. Once I have those details, I will re-post the information. I strongly urge you to take this information and write your governors, senators, and president. I would also urge you to let others know what is going on because we are not going to see it on the news or read about it in the paper with our liberal America-hating press.

FLY NAKED!!!

More terrorists will attempt to blow something up and we will respond by further reducing what you can carry onto an airplane. I figure with all the restrictions it won't be too long before we are reduced to this. At least this company will have a "leg-up" when choosing your preferred travel arrangements. Now when you have to sit next to the smelly, fat-bastard on the airplane it's going to be a whole new ballgame.

I hope they clean the seats really well.....

Eat, Drink and Re-Marry

That's Bling....one of my very good friends. He is getting married in a few days so we took him out for a bachelor party. I am not sure if it's because it is his second wedding, or because we are all older (please don't remind any of us) but we had a fairly good time without going overboard. We didn't fly to Vegas, rent a private suite, get some hookers, rent some farm animals, and ingest enough chemicals to make a supermodel party look tame by comparison.

Bling and one of his friends spent the day at a "man salon." That's one of the ones where they apparently get large breasted women to cut your hair, give you a shave, manicure, pedicure, etc. while they have sports on flat-screen plasma TV's along with your favorite cocktail and pool tables. I didn't do this as I had partied all night the previous evening with Grashopper and Ron (that is another story in and of itself).

After that me and some other friends met them at a fairly nice bar where we had some beverages and some food. Then we trekked across town to Pops Safari Cigar Bar. It's a really cool place that is kind of hidden away in the cultural district of Fort Worth. We had some nice port, and most of the group had a good cigar (I didn't) while we told war stories of wives, g/f's, etc. Bling and his friend spent a good while discussing the entire pedicure procedure and the paraffin wax treatment.

Finally, we had to do the obligatory strip bar. Again, it was fairly tame. We had a lot of girls come by and offer table dances. I turned them all down and told them I was taking care of "my boy, here." So we hooked him up a few times and then bought a dance for one of his friends that was shy and soft-spoken. He looked like a scared little puppy in that place. It was highly amusing watching him get a table dance.

I had multiple dancers ask me if I "approved" of the marriage. So I told them that I did. They then proceeded to tell me that a lot of guys ask the dancers to talk their friend out of getting married. I was a little surprised by this. Then I thought of the actual situation. In most cases, guys will try to talk guys out of getting married. Especially if they are younger. I do see a lot of young guys getting married to women that I just don't think are right for them. I think that has a lot to do with a lack of experience and / or immaturity. In Bling's case, he has been married before and he knows what to expect. I don't see this as a problem for him.

So it was a good night. Nobody danced on stage. Nobody stripped off all their clothes and declared it "national nudist night" And nobody puked or got arrested. And absolutely nobody called me in the morning to see if I had returned the goat. All in all, not a bad evening.

More Job Issues

Ok, so here is the latest. I was out in California at the home office and had a chance to sit down with the owner and CTO. What I was basically told is that while they want me in Bozeman, MT they do not want to sign a contract. Ok, no problem.

I am not going to re-hash all the issues with moving there....you can scroll through my blog to find them. :-)

In any case, I was going to write an email to find out that if I moved there what would the conditions be? Considering that this has gone through multiple iterations over the last year I didn't want anything to be misconstrued.

Here is what I got (exact quote from the email, though some has been omitted for privacy):

To be sure that there is no misunderstanding or ambiguity to what’s “on the table”, the purpose of this e-mail is to summarize with certainty what the Company’s position is in regard to you possibly moving to Montana.

Salary - what it is now
Commission - what it is now
Moving expense allowance - $7,500
Car rental - Company will pay the rent until Dec 31, 2006. None after that.
Housing allowance - none after August 31, 2006
Personal travel allowance - none
Common Stock questions - as defined in the Employee Option Agreement sent to you last week. Vacation and other benefits - as defined in the Employee Handbook
Assurance of Employment - Should the work environment change in Montana where full time work was no longer profitable, Skyline would use its best efforts to keep you employed by seeking work in other parts of the country.

Basically....NOTHING. So I replied stating that it was me taking all the risk and that I couldn't see the company as taking any real risk. So forget it. It isn't going to work.

The reality is that I'll come back here....and then probably go contract, losing my benefits, and then I'll look for another job. At least hDEFY in the DFW area there are plenty to be had, unlike Bozeman, MT. Who knows? Maybe things will work out. It's been an interesting ride.

Sick of Flying

Or rather, I get sick from flying. It almost never fails. Generally, with in one or two days after flying I get sick. And here I am, once again, sick. I take vitamins and stuff, but it doesn't help. I have to fly to Jamaica in 2 days for vacation and to be the best man in my friend's wedding. I do not need to be sick.

I've read studies that indicate that the air on an airplane is no worse for you than the air in any public building. What I don't know is who funded the studies. If I was the airline industry I would try to fund the studies so that they leaned in my favor, of course.

And who knows? Maybe the air isn't any worse. But what about all the surface germs? If I were to track how many times I get sick after flying it's probably be in the 60 ~ 70+ percentile. That's fairly significant.

Blow it out of your Politically Correct Orifice!!

I received this email from my father and I double-checked it against Snopes (urban legend site). I found it interesting, but I have read multiple articles that support this type of behavior and discrimination against American citizens, but oddly enough, not against Muslim’s. After reading this, go check out this link regarding an incident with the Marriott hotel chain and CAIR.

Again, this is on JBWilliams site:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/009249.php

Here is the email:

I Can Say What I Want, But Not You?

Well, what do we have here. Looks like a small case of some people being able to dish it out, but not take it. Let's start at the top. The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman. Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association. The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were "hate speech." Enter Professor Wichman.

In his e-mail, he said the following:

“Dear Moslem Association: As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey!), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.

This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests."

If you do not like the values of the West -- see the 1st Amendment -- you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially, I. S. Wichman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering"

Well! As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well. They're demanding Wichman be reprimanded and mandatory diversity training for faculty and a seminar on hate and discrimination for freshman. How nice. But now the Michigan chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.

For its part, the university is standing its ground. They say the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks. That will probably change. Wichman says he never intended the e-mail to be made public, and wouldn't have used the same strong language if he'd known it was going to get out.

A Soldier's Point of View

I came across these videos today that were highly revealing. Some will support the war effort while others may support the anti-war effort. You be the judge, but take a few moments and watch them. They are NSFW (not safe for work) and contain some fairly graphic images.

http://www.filecabi.net/video/aintalltherestfu.html
http://www.filecabi.net/video/marinamortar.html
http://www.filecabi.net/video/helmet-cam-soldier.html
http://www.filecabi.net/video/iraqbootycall.html
http://www.filecabi.net/video/rooffireiraq.html
http://www.filecabi.net/video/Iraqipropaganda.html
http://www.filecabi.net/video/troopsfun.html
http://www.filecabi.net/video/ereverydayiraq.html

American Flag Still Flying Over France

A big hats off to Floyd Landis for winning the Tour de France!!! This marks the eighth consecutive year that an American has won the race. The previous seven, and record, were won by Lance Armstrong.

I'm not a big bicycle racing fan by any means, but I think it's great that we still have the American Flag flying high at what has been a traditionally European event.

Universal Truths

Or at least two things that I find highly amusing:

1 – any song that has been remade by a death-metal band, slowed way down and sung by a death-metal growling singer. I have a small collection of songs like this and it never fails to amuse me. Just try it. Take any song and play them back to back (the original and the remake) and see if it doesn’t crack you up.

2 – porn is always far more entertaining if played at about two-times the normal speed….but you have to have to have the audio. It’s the audio that makes it hysterical.

So go grab some popcorn, your beverage of choice, and load up the CD Player, or DVD player. You will be glad that you did.

Political Points of View

Here is a link to writer JBWilliams (same initials, but not me!) blog on political division in America.

http://jb-williams.com/7-15-06.htm

For the most part I agree with what he has written, though I am sure it will offend someone. Personally, I don't care if you are offended. Maybe you need to be offended. Let's face it, regardless of what some groups would like to do by constraining the freedom of speech, it is not a constitutional right to not be offended.

Based on his seven political divisions I fall mostly in the "The Constitutional Conservative" with perhaps a bit of the "The Moderate (Compassionate) Conservative" thrown in for good measure. I still maintain I am not a true conservative, though.

We'll Just go a Little Further....

That was our thought yesterday when we floated the Jefferson river. After stopping at a gas station to load up with ice, beer, water, and a little food for a snack we headed on down towards the river. Three of us had never floated the Jefferson before (me included). Only one of us knew the way and how all this worked.

We dropped one car off at the get-out point and then proceeded up the road to the put-in spot. It wasn't that far up the road. So we asked the guy how long of a float it was and he said about 2.5 hours. Naturally, that wasn't long enough so we decided to head up the road "just a little further" to see if there were any other good spots to put in at.

We found a spot that was a little sketchy, but we got in OK and started our float. Just four of us....all guys. We had a raft, two tubes, and one chair-raft-thingie that was meant for fishing, a cooler, two sippy cups, and a football. (if you don't know what my sippy cup is, scroll down or go back through the archives until you find the picture. You can't miss it).

We floated, we drank, we swam. The one guy that knew the float got completely hammered at about the three hour mark. We had to take turns "babysitting" him because he couldn't stay in his tube or successfully navigate the river bottom to walk.

We kept thinking that around any bend we'd be coming up on the original put-in spot, but NO! We kept floating....and floating....and floating...and floating. We didn't see anybody. We lost the road....or rather the road lost us since we were fixed to the river as it were. We did see lots of cool wildlife, though. Monstrous pelicans seemed to be the choice wildlife of the day and we kept "following" a flock of them down the river. I don't think I have ever seen pelicans that were this big. And of course, we didn't see another single person on the river. Apparently there weren't any other morons that were stupid enough to put in so far up the river.

SEVEN HOURS LATER we made it to the put-in spot. It was now just before 8:00 at night!! No way were we going to go another 2.5 hours. We were sunburned, fried, tired and generally wiped out. So we thought, there is no way we went that far up the road. The guy who left his car there got a ride up the road and sure enough it was only about five minutes further. Just five minutes tacked on seven hours of float time. Unbelievable.

Still Gainfully Employed

I guess that is better than being another welfare leach. Things with work deteriorated rapidly yesterday evening. I thought we had things worked out based on an email that I sent out and from the response I got, but apparently this was not the case.

I spoke to my boss in the early evening on the way to the Music On Main Street festival going on this month in Bozeman. Apparently people were now upset with me because of the dates I had scheduled to travel or be home on my down week.

If you read the previous post, I mention how most of us travel quite extensively. What I failed to mention is that we often travel on personal days (i.e. Saturday, Sunday or a holiday) so that we can be on-site to teach or do a gig. While I certainly understand the need to travel on personal days so that we can be at said gig, I do not agree that it should be company policy to eat our personal days when it isn’t necessary.

As an example, if I was a contractor, worked hourly, worked for the government, served in the armed forces or worked for just about any other company I would be paid to travel. I travel for work, not because it gives me a warm fuzzy to sit in airplanes and dick around with airports.

As I told my boss and our COO, if anyone came to me and offered me a job and said “by the way, it’s company policy that you have to travel on your days off which will effectively eat up at least another 30 ~ 45 days of your personal time a year without compensation” I’d tell them to fucking forget it.

So this became a big issue on which I pretty much told the company it isn’t going to work for me and that perhaps we need to reevaluate the nature of our relationship. I’m not threatening to quit, but I am not going to put up with the company nickel-and-diming our personal time away. I already work salary and sometimes put in very long days and weeks. Ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you that.
Then the account manager over the area is all upset that I’ll be gone again. I tell you this happens EVERY SINGLE TIME I go home. It’s ridiculous and I am fed up with it.

So I almost quit this morning….but I have to remember that it’s not a good idea to quit without another job lined up.

So now I am scheduled to go back to TX permanently. This should alleviate some of the issues. We’ll see.

I’ll miss Montana. I’ll miss the friends I have made here. I’ll miss snowboarding every weekend and the beautiful scenery that this place has to offer. But I won’t miss the headache of dealing with people getting upset because I want them to treat us (employees) decently and uphold their agreements.

Damned Frustrating!

I have been living in Montana for about a year and a half, now. My residence is still in Texas. My house, toys, friends, family, etc. are all still there. That is my home. I am here for work.

We have tried to work out a deal where I would move up here, but it just hasn't worked out (see previous posts).

Regardless of that, one of the agreements (amongst many) for me to be up here working is that I would travel back to TX once a month to have a "down week."

Most of us in the company travel extensively. It is not unusual to have folks racking up 100,000+ flight miles or be on the road for 40+ weeks out of the year. While I am a little more static than others, with being mostly in MT, I am still technically on the road for the company if I am not at home.

The "down week" is not officially defined by our company. The understanding, though, is that folks spend time at home to take care of their affairs and spend time with their family and friends while having some time to decompress from being on the road. This does not mean that you get a week off. You still have to be responsive to emails (in a reasonable time frame), take phone calls, etc. Think of it is a reduced work-week that you get at home.

Personally, I don't have a girlfriend or wife to take care of my house and things for me when I am gone. That may or may not sound like much, but think of all the little things you do to your house or place throughout a month's period of time. You might try to imagine cramming all of that into one week while you are simultaneously working and trying to visit with everyone.

So the whole time I have been working up here I have been fairly lenient with going home. I rarely have made it home once a month. It is usually six to eight weeks before I get home. I have been pushing a little bit harder after the big fiasco that happened several months back...but I digress.

So I have a down week setup at home for the week of 08/07. This is the week after I am taking vacation down in Jamaica. An account manager for our company has a potential gig for me with an important client that also happens to be back in TX. The timing may work out well that I could do the work the same week I am already there, thus not having to incur additional travel expenses for the company, etc. So he and I call my boss and try to figure out a way to make this work for everyone. The only thing I said is that if I am to put in 40-hours that week, plus drive time to and from the site, it isn't a down week and I want another week at home during the month of August.

This did not sit well with my boss and we kind of got into it. I know it frustrates him, but I think that is because he receives pressure from the higher ups. It frustrates me because I feel like the company is not upholding their end of the agreement. Sure, they say one thing, but then expect another. How can you not have conflicts with this type of behavior?

With rare exception it seems like I always have to fight the company for my down time in TX. I do not understand why this has been an ongoing problem for over a year. I really feel like being a dick and just setting up a string of flights that would have me home the first week of every month and telling them tough shit, that was our agreement. But no, I try to help out and be a good employee and the thanks I get is for people to get pissed off at me and tell me that I am not being a team player. Fuck that. See finger picture in post below!

And they wonder why I want a contract to move up here....

Bush Embryos

I was chilling yesterday while I read the paper and had a beer after work. In the paper was a brief article on the house voting to support additional federal funding of stem cell research. Before I go any further, a few points:

Many people criticize Bush for not supporting stem cell research. This isn't quite accurate as federal funding for stem cell research was allocated under Bush, not Clinton or any other previous president. It's also important to note what he is being lambasted for is FEDERAL FUNDING.... not preventing research. This means it's a question of whether or not your tax dollars pay for it or the companies have to do it with their own money.

Secondly, there are multiple types of stem cells. Most scientists are working with adult stem cells and trying to culture and grow them. The raging debate is over embryonic stem cells, which are the cells of an embryo before they have been "assigned" to become any type of specific tissue. There is a great potential for research in embryonic stem cells.

Now I am not going to tell you that utilizing embryonic stem cells is either right or wrong. That is a religious debate for which I don't want to get in to. What I will tell you is that it looks like the vote is going to pass to support additional federal funding and that Bush is saying he will veto it.

This makes me very unhappy. I think there is a lot of potential in medical science with regards to stem cell research. I think, that if the people elect to spend their tax dollars on it then it is a good thing (I might also add that I don't think companies that benefit from this should be able to completely privatize their revenue when they come up with something). I don't like Bush intervening because he doesn't have the same religious belief as the majority of the house. Bush hasn't vetoed anything in his presidency, yet. Why this? Why does he have to impose his ultra-conservative beliefs on the entire United States?

I do not think that having a sense of values and morals is a bad thing. In fact, I think our country has lost too many values and we are on a downward spiral. I think something really bad will have to happen before it gets better. But where do you draw the line? Our country is supposed to be based on a basic democratic process (though it's not a true democracy). This is one thing about Bush that I definitely do not like or support.

The Many Faces of bRad

When I was younger (and not that I am old, now!) I had really long hair that pretty much covered up my face. I also wore very dark tinted glasses (almost to the point of being sunglasses). So you basically couldn't see my face very well. If I was growing a beard at the time you could pretty much forget it.

I quickly discovered two things:
1 - if I didn't want you to be able to read me I could effectively go "stone face" and cut off about 40% of the communication factor.

2 - if I wanted you to read my facial expressions I had to exaggerate them!

so there were pros and cons on both sides of the fence. I also tend to use my hands a lot when I talk. Last night, during some beverages, I was called out a number of times because of my animations. While I don't want to post a bunch of facial expressions here we did make fun of some of my hand animations.


Here is me making a point. Note the slightly out turned pinky to emphasize the point. This has the same effect as me making sure that you know what I say is the word and yuo should listen to nobody else.






This is a WTF? It could also mean that I am open to listening to you.

Either that, or hand me the bottle....it's my turn!






I think we all know what this means.....

Global Warming Disasters

A couple of interesting facts were pointed out to me by my father that I thought all the fanatics would be interested in:

1 - whazzhisface, Mr. Gore, dramatically states that it is warmer in his hometown now than when he was a boy. As it turns out, according to recorded history, it's actually cooler now. How could that be?

2 - the number of tornadoes that officially occurred in Tornado Alley this year during the tornado season were......drumroll please..... ZERO. That's right folks. Not ONE recorded tornado in tornado alley this year. How catastrophic is that?

3 - all of these scientist that agree with each other are talking about the ice shelfs breaking off and raising the sea level. Let's think about that for a moment. The ice shelf is FLOATING in the ocean. Let's try an experiment:
Take a glass of water
Put in a cube or two of ice
Mark the water level
Let the ice melt.
What happened? My guess is that unless you have aliens in your freezer making your ice cubes, you noticed that the water level didn't change. How odd. How is it that Gore and his scientists defy the laws of physics?