Anger Management

This is one of those pointless, waste-of-time emails that get passed around the office.  However, I thought this one was funny enough to post.

 

When you occasionally have a really bad day, and you just need to take it out on someone, don’t take it out on someone you know, take it out on someone you don’t know.

I was sitting at my desk when I remembered a phone call I’d forgotten to make. I found the number and dialed it.
A man answered, saying “Hello.”
I politely said, “This is Chris. Could I please speak with Robyn Carter?”
Suddenly a manic voice yelled out in my ear “Get the right f***ing number!” and the phone was slammed down on me.
I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so rude. When I tracked down Robyn’s correct number to call her, I found that I had accidentally transposed the last two digits.
After hanging up with her, I decided to call the ‘wrong’ number again.
When the same guy answered the phone, I yelled “You’re an asshole!” and hung up. I wrote his number down with the word ‘asshole’ next to it, and put it in my desk drawer. Every couple of weeks, when I was paying bills or had a really bad day, I’d call him up and yell, “You’re an asshole!” It always cheered me up.
When Caller ID was introduced, I thought my therapeutic ‘asshole’ calling would have to stop. So, I called his number and said, “Hi, this is John Smith from the telephone company. I’m calling to see if you’re familiar with our Caller ID Program?”
He yelled “NO!” and slammed down the phone. I quickly called him back and said, “That’s because you’re an asshole!” and hung up.

One day I was at the store, getting ready to pull into a parking spot. Some guy in a black BMW cut me off and pulled into the spot I had patiently waited for. I hit the horn and yelled that I’d been waiting for that spot, but the idiot ignored me. I noticed a “For Sale” sign in his back window, so I wrote down his number.

A couple of days later, right after calling the first asshole (I had his number on speed dial,) I thought that I’d better call the BMW asshole, too.
I said, “Is this the man with the black BMW for sale?”
He said, “Yes, it is.”
I asked, “Can you tell me where I can see it?”
He said, “Yes, I live at 34 Oaktree Blvd, in Fairfax. It’s a yellow rambler, and the car’s parked right out in front.” I asked, “What’s your name?”
He said, “My name is Don Hansen,”
I asked, “When’s a good time to catch you, Don?”
He said, “I’m home every evening after five.”
I said, “Listen, Don, can I tell you something?”
He said, “Yes?”
I said, “Don, you’re an asshole!”
Then I hung up, and added his number to my speed dial, too. Now, when I had a problem, I had two assholes to call.

Then I came up with an idea. I called asshole #1. He said, “Hello.”
I said, “You’re an asshole!” (But I didn’t hang up.)
He asked, “Are you still there?”
I said, “Yeah,”
He screamed, “Stop calling me,” I said, “Make me,” He asked, “Who are you?”
I said, “My name is Don Hansen.”
He said, “Yeah? Where do you live?”
I said, “Asshole, I live at 34 Oaktree Blvd, in Fairfax, a yellow rambler, I have a black Beamer parked in front.” He said, “I’m coming over right now, Don. And you had better start saying your prayers.”
I said, “Yeah, like I’m really scared, asshole,” and hung up.
Then I called Asshole #2. He said, “Hello?” I said, “Hello, asshole,”
He yelled, “If I ever find out who you are…”
I said, “You’ll what?”
He exclaimed, “I’ll kick your ass,”
I answered, “Well, asshole, here’s your chance. I’m coming over right now.”
Then I hung up and immediately called the police, saying that I lived at 34 Oaktree Blvd, in Fairfax, and that I was on my way over there to kill my gay lover.
Then I called Channel 9 News about the gang war going down in Oaktree Blvd in Fairfax.
I quickly got into my car and headed over to Fairfax. I got there just in time to watch two assholes beating the crap out of each other in front of six cop cars, an overhead news helicopter and surrounded by a news crew.

NOW I feel much better. Anger management really does work!

What’s this? A CD?!?!?

I pulled just about all of my aftermarket stereo equipment out of the Trailblazer this weekend.  That consisted of my busted-ass deck, two amps, and my subs.  I decided to leave my Alpine Type-R’s in the doors and hook them up to the factory stereo. 

The factory deck has a CD player.  Remember those?  They are about 5″ in diameter, really shiny on one side (that’s where the music comes from apparently) and have a painted label on the other.  These are soooo mid-90’s!  Okay, all kidding aside, after having my iPod hooked up to the aftermarket deck and never using a CD, its a little weird to all of a sudden need one now.  The last time I actually bought a CD was a couple years ago.  Even then, I ripped it to my computer to play on my iPod and put it away, lost to the dust bunnies of time. 

So, to remedy the situation, I have a Griffin iTrip FM Modulator on the way.  Granted, it’s not going to sound really awesome, but at least I’ll be able to listen to most all of my music – 30 GBs, one song at a time.

RIP Cmac

So, I lost a good friend last week.  Chris MacDonald (who had some posts on this site) died in a motorcycle accident last Thursday night (7/17/08).  I don’t really think anyone reads this blog, so, this is mostly cathartic for me.

I’ve known Chris for about 7 years.  I met him while working at Bank of America.  I remember the first day he came in.  He was a temp, and they sat him down kiddy-corner from me.  One look at the guy and I thought to myself, “Ya, he’ll last”.  To my surprise, he did.  We ended up working in a couple departments together and hung out with a couple other mutual friends.  By the way, this broke my rule: Work Chris and Outside of Work Chris could never collide.  I didn’t hang out with co-workers outside of work.  Normally, the only thing you have in common with a co-worker is work.  Frankly, the last thing that I want to do is work 40 hours only to get away socially and talk about… work.  That’s stupid.  However, with Chris (and eventually, the other guys in that group), that was different.  So, over the years, he ended up becoming one of only a few friends, and one of my best friends, at that.  Although he was a fairly social guy, he enjoyed his freedom and alone time.  I could relate to that – mainly because I’m not that social of a person.

Chris was the kind of person that while I may not have always agreed with his choices, he was always helpful, provided a listening ear, and was a great sounding board for a lot of stuff.  I mentioned at the memorial service yesterday that if there was a beer in it, he was in.  If you raised the stakes and included a pizza, he could be convinced to help you move, or help around the house.  He helped me out with putting together a playset gfor my kids.  Dispite not really wanting kids of his own, he really loved kids in general.  He loved spending time with his nieces and newphews.  What I appreciate, though is that he actually played with my kids.  We’re not family.  He didn’t have to do that.  He really was like a part of the family – if only to me.

Chris was a really good friend and his death has left a pretty big hole.  He will truly be missed.  RIP.

NASA’s new Lunar Vehicle

You’ve gotta check out this video on NASA’s website.  It shows off their new rover, the Athlete.  Apparently, the prototype is about half of the final size and is designed to carry cargo and other big, heavy things around on the moon.  It has six independent legs that can pull double duty as arms with various tool attachments.  They showcase a gripper attachment as a hand and a drill bit as well.

Anyway, this thing is pretty cool and could really advance space technology and the study of not only the moon, but other planets as well.

Greatness

Greatness is a characteristic that is far too often neglected in light of the lesser things in life.  We live in a society that demands that we settle for mediocrity.  Look around you.  What things possess you that embody this notion?  We live in a digital age.  Right now, I’m working on one computer while the laptop sits next to me, and my Blackberry next to it.  The TV is on, but the volume is muted so that it doesn’t distract me.  There are two lights on in the kitchen, a lamp and an overhead light on in my living room.  My life is cozy.  It’s complicated.  Yet, does the converse lend itself to greatness?  Does a life less complex equal greatness?  Let’s look at it this way; when we don’t have all the distractions around us, we think more clearly.  We articulate more acutely, more importantly, we are not dumbed down by all that possesses us.

Let’s take the electronic media for example.  Ten years ago, it was commonplace for a person to sit down and write a letter to a dear friend or loved one.  This speaks of a personal involvement.  There is a sacrifice of time, one of investment.  As the recipient reads that letter, it’s what is not put into print that really jumps off the page.  It is the very fact that the sender thought enough of that person to take the time to draft a letter – to pour out their heart and soul in their own handwriting.  What is the situation today?  Well, even as I write this, I am doing so at my rather expensive computer.  By way of example, I drafted an email to a friend the other day.  I haven’t spoken to her since probably May.  I worked with her at Bank of America at the time until she could stand it no longer and left.  Anyway, I sent her an email to catch up.  I apprised her of the events going on right now in my life, how the kids are doing, and so on.  Honestly, it was painful.  It took me all of five minutes to write.  There was no sacrifice of time there.  I found her email address after being lost for five months and thought that I’d better ’shoot’ her an email before I forget or lose her address again.  Sure, I put thought into what I want to say.  However, it’s not quite the same.  Is that a mark of greatness?  Taking the time to slow down?  To draft a letter to someone?  In it’s entirety, no.  I don’t believe so. However, I do believe that is just one piece of the puzzle.

What is another piece of the puzzle?  Well, as I alluded to earlier, I believe it is living a life less hindered by our current civilization.  I have a disclaimer, though.  I love electronics and gadgets.  As I mentioned, I have two computers; both of them top of the line Apple Computers.  I have a Blackberry Curve.  However, in a few months, it will be traded in for an iPhone.  I have three 27” TV’s in the house.  Hell, I have a DVD player in the dashboard of my SUV (which, by the way, I can connect my video iPod to).  My point is this; we live lives that are fettered by things that dumb us down.  Another  personal example; I don’t enjoy reading.  So, if I were reading this document, I probably would’ve stopped after the first paragraph and said, “That’s nice” and moved on.  I read by skimming.  I look for the main points and assimilate that way.  It hasn’t totally steered me wrong.  I just graduated with a  3.45 GPA – which isn’t all that bad with going to school full time, working full time, and having a wife and two kids to care for.  I also recently took a rather non-scientific IQ test.  I got a 137 – which is well above normal.  Not bad considering that is five points up from the last time I took it a year ago.  I’m not bragging, I’m making a point.  The point is that I’m a smart guy, but I’m lazy.  Rather than expanding my mind and broadening my horizons, I’d rather surf the internet on my blazing fast computer.  Or, rather than reading a classic book, I’d rather be playing on my Xbox.  Worse yet, rather than investing my time in writing a letter to someone (which is so ten years ago), I’d rather laze around on the couch.  I have been dumbed down by my society.  What’s that phrase?  Oh yes, “Work smarter, not harder”.  I’ll tell you, my dad always put in a hard day’s work until the day he died.  Fortunately, it wasn’t the work that killed him.  Now, that’s not to say that working smarter is bad.  However, that phrase in it of itself is a misnomer.  It implies that if you only work smarter, you don’t have to work hard.  That is completely untrue.  Look at what Tom Brokaw refers to as “The Greatest Generation”.  They fought hard not only for our country, but for freedom globally.  I’m sure that some of the soldiers weren’t excited about potentially giving up their lives in that massive war.  However, they did it because they believed in the greater good.  They believed that in order to live a life of freedom, a life of greatness, it would have to be done unfettered.  In their case, it was not being chained to a ruthless world power.  Yet, the principle is still the same.  They fought for something that they believed in.  When was the last time that you stood up for something that you believed in?  More pointedly, when was the last time that I fought for something that I believed in?

Let’s face it.  In today’s day and age, we don’t have to fight for our rights.  At least not in America.  It’s the land of the free.  Well, sort of.  In today’s American culture, the defining characteristics of what gave a man boldness and made him a great leader just aren’t there anymore.  Unfortunately, I can only catch glimpses of that kind of greatness in movies.  I look at movies like ‘Gladiator’, ‘Braveheart’, and ‘300′ and am emotionally stirred to want to be more than myself.  However, it is a fantasy, right?  I mean those kind of leaders don’t exist today.  That kind of person leads with passion.  Believes in their mission with all their heart, and is able to pass that onto other people.  They are someone who exudes greatness not because of some front or act that they put on when they put on their underwear in the morning.  It is something that runs through their very fiber.  It is the very foundation that their character is built upon.  It is something that once you just catch wind of it, you are inspired yourself.  You’re inspired to be something more than you are, something more than you ever thought you could be.  More importantly, you’re transformed from the inside out.  It is that very intangible thing that I want to strive for.

You don’t have to be a religious person to desire this for yourself.  Even in today’s culture of tolerance and sensitivity, it is possible to be so sold out to something that you inspire the people around you to follow.  Sure, I’d like everyone to believe what I believe.  However, I realize that will never be the case.  I also realize that world peace is not entirely possible either.  Yet, I do believe that if we want to turn our country around, we need to throw off the things that chain us, that slow us down.  We need to run as we have never before.  We need to run the race and endure.  More than that, we need to be a beacon of hope and of perseverance to those that see us.  See, as one generation passes and the next takes up the mantle, the things that make that previous generation great are rarely passed down.  Why do you think it is that people always talk about the ‘good old days’?  It’s because they speak of a life that was simpler.  More than that, though, they speak of a day that they once believed in something.  Look at rulers throughout history and you’ll see a decline in greatness and heroism.  Let’s narrow the scope a bit and look at our American history.  Often times when people speak of great rulers in American history, George Washington or Abe Lincoln are at the top of the list.  However, let’s look in the last thirty years.  What names come to mind as rulers who exude greatness?  Richard Nixon?  George Bush Sr.?  George Bush Jr.?  If you said ‘yes’, you seriously need to re-calibrate your filter.  The point here is that it’s not the positives that are often caught and passed down, it’s the negatives.  My generation is considerably lazier than the previous and so on.  The generation that fought in Vietnam went there looking for greatness only to find that when they returned home their country didn’t support the war or them.  It’s a pity because some of the people in that mix were of the “Greatest Generation”.

Again, if we want to stop this decline in our civilization – or at best retard it, each one of us has a choice to make.  Sure, it may not be giving up on technology and all the benefits that it brings.  However, what it will take is something that requires far more sacrifice: it requires that we de-clutter our mind.  We must choose to pursue knowledge and excellence.  Then, hopefully one day, a leader will rise up that exudes greatness.  A leader that stands up for his/her people.  A leader that is worth following.  Until then, let’s strive to be that person: the one that other’s can follow and give us something to believe in.

Membrane Theory

I watched a show on the Science Channel about Membrane Theory.  The very foundation of it says that there are 11 dimensions.  This is obviously far beyond Einstein’s 4 dimensions (forward/back, left/right, up/down, & time), or even the 5 dimensions (forward/back, left/right, up/down, time, and special movement).  Both theories are easy to grasp a hold of and understand, but eleven?  Are you serious?  This Membrane Theory takes physics well beyond String Theory, which is only a mere component.  Membrane Theory postulates that in the eleventh dimension, there are these membranes of energy (this is well beyond the sub-atomic level).  They can take different shapes: donut, donut holes, circular, cylindrical, and so on.  They can interact with each other. bumping into one another, moving through one another.  These different membranes might each adhere to it’s own Laws of Physics.  So, the laws that govern our reality may not govern that of another membrane.  For example, in another membrane, the proton may not be positively charged, and therefore not aid in holding together matter, and therefore not be able to sustain intelligent life.  Or, another might only be comprised of light, or another of anti-mater (thus, alternate universe(s)).  The physicists further consider what could happen if these membranes collide.  Just think about it for a minute, what would happen?  They can apply this theory to the big bang.  They theorize that certain membranes collided to form this intense molecular explosion, and the by-product was matter -which then went on to form universe.  This is really an exciting concept for science, and should be even more exciting to the people that believe in the creation story.  To me, this shows me more of God and his creativity in creation than I ever considered before.

Nowhere in the creation account does it describe the creation of the universe or of time and space.  It only directly addresses the creation of the earth, of man, animals and so on (of this particular reality).  So, why, in eternity past, couldn’t God do something that had the effect of the big bang and use that singular event as the catalyst to create the rest of the universe?  Why couldn’t there be 11 dimensions as this Membrane Theory proposes?  I say to you what God said to Job:  

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Tell me, if you know so much” (Job 38:4)

We weren’t present when He created the world.  Were we then present when He created mater and anti-mater, time and space?  Are we so bold, so base to say that we know how God did things?  If you can answer this in the definitive, then I give you the same warning that God gave Job:

“Then the Lord said to Job, Do you still want to argue with the Almighty? You are God’s critic, but do you have the answers?” (Job 40:1-2)

All I know is this; I am not afforded the room to be so dogmatic about the things that I have not seen nor experienced.  I have seen the living God and have experienced his touch in my life.  That, I can talk about.  However, I cannot say that unequivocally, and without a doubt, the Creation account is the only way God brought things into existence.  Nor can I say the same of the Big Bang account.  Therefore, why can’t there be a melding of the two?  Why can’t science (which, by the way began with the church so long ago – to prove the existence of God) and the Bible both be right?  Furthermore, aren’t there bigger issues that are more important?  Issues that Christ himself was more concerned with?  Like feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and bringing salvation to the lost?  Sure, the beginning of existence is an interesting thing to debate, but, while people on both sides debate, thousands of people across the country and over the globe are going hungry and are given over to disease. 

This article was not written to debate the creation of existence, but merely to point out that there are a lot of theories out there and the know-it-all Christian doesn’t have all the answers.  He/she can’t.  It’s impossible.  Or, need I remind you of the passages you’ve just read from Job?

All New Transformers Movie Clip!

All of the other ‘new’ clips out there are rehashes of the same scenes.  However, this one is a totally new one.

Ravenous Squirrel

I found this article on Yahoo News via Digg.com.

“BERLIN (Reuters) – An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local police spokesman said Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

“After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man’s garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh,” the spokesman said. “Then he killed it with his crutch.”

The spokesman said experts thought the attack may have been linked to the mating season or because the squirrel was ill.”

That’s funny. A crazed squirrel goes on a rampage.

New Transformers Movie Clip

This one has a great shot of Bonecrusher transforming.

Another Transformers Movie Clip

This clip shows Bonecrusher and Optimus Prime fighting