Dr. King is crying.

I read a story this morning that made me angry, then it made me scared and now it just makes me sad. There was a young boy in Florida who was attacked on a school bus by three older boys. The news is saying that this was a “retaliation” attack for the George Zimmerman verdict. What happened to Trayvon Martin was a tragedy; it could have been completely avoided if the one holding the gun had called the police instead of going out on, what amounted to, a vigilante raid of the unknown young man in his neighborhood. Thanks  to one idiots actions, we were subject to Rev Sharpton and Jesse Jackson calling for the white man’s head on a platter, how there should be justice for Trayvon, etc, etc. I totally agree with them on this, the shooting and death of this young man was a tragedy. The only question I have for Rev. Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, where were you when this young white man was brutally attacked by the 3 older black kids on the school bus? You were quiet, that’s where.

From what I remember of the history of Dr.King, who Rev. Sharpton and Jesse Jackson rode his coattails to get to where they are at now. Dr. King was all about peace and safety for all people, all children, regardless of color, regardless of social class, regardless of where you came from or where you’re going. His hopes were that one day people of all colors would be able to live in harmony. Rev. Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have been living to make a name for themselves in D.C. by creating and perpetuating controversy between the races. If you were truly living by the beliefs of Dr. King you’d be just as outraged and disgusted by this revenge attack as you were of the Zimmerman/Martin attack. If you could stop being a common political media whore for a few moments, you’d see that being one sided will never get this country back on track to starting to heal the rift that is very obvious in today’s society.

I’m at a crossroads in my life. Our marriage is great, the kids are good, but I've coming to an intersection of what do I want to pursue in my career? I have been accepted into two very interesting programs of study this past Summer, one is Radiation Therapist and the other is Electrical Engineering. Originally I was working my way towards a degree in Nursing with an advanced degree in Nurse Anesthetist, being able to administer anesthesia to patients on an out patient or labor and delivery basis. I've had a long conversation with my wife, who as you all may know is a very good nurse, and she let me know that the future of health care is looking pretty rough. Most of her concerns stem from the cyclical nature of how hospitals operate, where they cull the older, more experienced nurses who are making a very comfortable living, and bring in the less experienced, fresh nurses from schools. This kind of turnover is good for the hospitals, but not so good for the nurses. With this kind of culling, the hospitals can start to impose their new ways of doing things which, again is good for the hospital, but not so much for the nurses or even the patients who are under the care of the new nurses. The culling will also create serious issues between the veterans and the rookies in the nursing profession. The other major drawback is that I would have to quit my current job, which isn't all that rewarding most of the time, but it does pay the bills and it keeps a roof over our heads, food on the table and my car payments paid.

That said, I've been looking at the alternatives, first is a position still in the health profession. Radiation Therapist, this is one that intrigues me because it’s based in both biology and physics. Radiation therapists administer, sometimes known as Dosimeterists, the radiation to cancer patients as needed. This would be a rewarding career in that I would be working with patients who needed me, while getting my physics fix in on the side. The major drawback to this though is that I would, like the nursing school, have to quit my job and like above, house, car, food, etc… would be stretched as I went through the 2-3 year program. I wouldn't be able to sit around and not work because I couldn't do that to Mie, MG or MB, I realize that school would become my full time job, but I still need to bring in close to what I’m making now in a more limited capacity. That’s just not a reality at this point in time.

The other road of the intersection is going to Arizona State U. online to their Electrical Engineering degree program. Because this is online, I would be able to keep my current job and go through the schooling from my desk. Although the thought of building electronics sounds interesting to me, mostly because my uncle use to work for IBM in their robotics division, but also because Electricity scares me a little. Yeah, I know that’s kind of counter-intuitive, but I've learned that the best way to face your fear is to learn more about it. Kind of like ‘Know thine enemy’ sort of thing. Needless to say this degree wouldn't be as “rewarding” as say nursing or being a radiation therapist, it would be a good career to advance from where I’m currently at. 

My mind and my heart are at odds with this, my mind tells me logically go with the Electrical Engineering, it’s in a field I already work in and the EE degree would only help me to advance further into the ranks of where I’m at. My heart tells me to go with the Radiation Therapists training, even though it would potentially causes is to go into the poor house and lose our current residence. But then my gut gets in there and throws a monkey wrench into my thinking with telling me that I should still pursue becoming a nurse, then onto a nurse anesthetist. I was thinking that feeling was residual from the past four years towards one definite goal. I hope that these crossroads give me a clear sign as to what it is that I’m meant to do, standing here at the fork in the road is going to get me run over by the garbage truck driven by time.

Dear 16 year old self

Dear 16 year old me,
Don't worry, you'll become something, you'll do something with yourself. Slow Down, you don't need to rush to grow up, be a kid for a little while longer.

Your world is going to become increasingly harder in the next couple of years. Don't pass up any opportunity to tell your parents that you love them, never leave home without letting them know just how much you appreciate them. You won't have them much longer, you need to spend what time you can with them and let them know that you will be ok because they've given you and your brother and sister the tools to do well in life, you just want to spend quality time with them.

Don't be a dick in school, you've spent the last 18 years telling your daughter that there are two roads that she can go down, the easy one where you can do all the work and go through the schooling and get the good paying job after college, or you can dick off and struggle.
Guess which one you decided to choose, don't do it, stay in school. You are good enough, you do deserve the good things in life, you can do it because you are stronger than you think you are. Stop torturing yourself, and for god sake stop giving your teachers grief. You can thank Mr. Garcia now for putting up with your crap and not strangling you within an inch of your life. He and your Dad were both right. You know what I'm talking about, no need to go any further into that conversation.
High school is NOT the best years of your life.

All those girls that you have a crush on who don't know you're alive, forget them, they aren't worth it. Stop being so narrow sighted, broaden your vision and you will see the girls who matter and who are willing to give you a chance. The girls you are going after will all end up addicted to something, whether it's alcohol, drugs or plastic surgery. The ones around you grow into beautiful women.

You're going to lose a daughter, it's going to be one of the hardest things in your life. The 10 years after high school are going to be the hardest experiences that you've ever had to deal with in your young life, you're going to struggle, you're going to fight, but you're going to claw your way through it because you are a fighter, and you are strong. You'll be rewarded with 3 marriages and have to deal with the failure with 2 divorces, but the best things that have ever come into your life will come out of these trials.

You'll be gifted with a beautiful, intelligent, damn hard headed daughter who is going to take the world by storm. Just remember to agree with her mom on the name, and then when she's doped up on the post birth drugs, you can give your daughter her true name. You'll have to wait, but eventually you will also be gifted with a wife who loves you, and who believes in you with all that she is. She's going to give you a beautiful baby boy. You're going to go back and forth over his name, but the right name will come in time.

 Dear 16 year old self, please take these next words to heart: GOOGLE, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Cisco, anything internet.

 Be a good person, don't try to impress anyone else, live the way that you know is right. Follow the truth of "To Thy own self be true" and you'll do good.

 Love,
Your 41 year old self.

Low and Behold

The prodigal son returns. I've come realize that Facebook is the devil. It allows people who usually can't get people to notice them outside of their normal every day lives to seemingly become "interesting". It's been linked by psychological studies to increased narcissism. I mean, really, do I care what you had for lunch and with whom? No not really. Do I care that the same girl dumped your for the nth time this month? No. Do I care that you're out getting your duck face on while getting groped by a multitude of meat heads at a local bar? Well... ok, no not at all. This induced narcissism has permeated our media like a plague, it's every where you look now. On TV we're inundated with "Reality TV". There's nothing real about this. What happened to the good sit com or the non-reality drama? Why is it that a 16 year old pregnant high school girl is given more press than the teen age girl who has trained her whole life in pursuit of the perfect score at the Olympics? Why do we have meat heads who have the vocabulary of a fifth grader given a show when we have people in other countries fighting for the common man's right to vote? What the hell is a Snookie or a Honey Boo Boo? These are all fails our society is going to pay for when the generation growing up sees that, if they do stupid shit, they can get on TV for their fifteen minutes of fame and then feel entitled to getting money for doing absolutely, nothing. I'm already seeing this entitled mentality in today's younger crowd. Give me an XBOX, because I go to school. WHAT? So did I, you know what I got? I got to go another day without having a boot firmly planted into my ass for missing class. Give me money to go hang out with my friends? Really? And besides sitting on my couch, eating my food with your dirty ass feet up on the arm of the chair, what did you do to earn this money? I've been working since I was thirteen years old, that's when I could get a paper route and I worked my ass off seven days a week for two hours a day pedaling my bike and about 100 lbs of paper up the steepest hill in the area to earn $70 a month. It gave me a sense of accomplishment and pride in my ability to earn money. Mom, I need the newest, name brand clothes to fit in at school. No kidding, how about you get 3 pairs of pants and a couple of shirts and be happy with it, because well, that's what you've earned with your C's and D's in class. If you don't like it, I have three words for you GET. OVER. IT. I've since stopped using Facebook, Tweeter, Tumblr and most of the other "social" media outlets, except this one because I need an outlet. Not one where I put stuff up to get a friend to tell me "You're so great, keep your head up", just one that I can come onto and vent to get it out of my system and let it be.

Pepper spray and UCD

I have one thing to say about the students who were pepper sprayed on the UCD Campus. You're a DUMB ASS!

What we were privileged to see on the 11 o'clock news was only 5 seconds of the whole picture. And the totally unbiased media won't show you the events leading up to the 5 second clip. Basically what happened is the police arrested a couple of the protesters for vandalism and trying to incite a riot. They left the rest of the protesters who were being sheep and following what one very boisterous person was telling them to do. They followed the police to where they were "staging" those arrested until a police vehicle could come and pick them up, book them and probably release them. The police did the absolutely right thing by trying to remove the ones causing trouble away from the ones who were peacefully protesting. The sheep in them decided to go protest where the trouble makers were being held.

They not only decided to follow the police to where the trouble makers were being held, they decided to surround the police to keep them from taking the trouble makers away. That folks is considered obstruction of justice, and if the police officers on the scene feel that they are in danger, that's threatening an officer. The officers went to the young lemmings who were blocking their vehicles and tried to convince these young lemmings that they should allow for the vehicle to come in and let them do their job, or they would have to take the appropriate actions so that they could do their jobs. These young sheep, decided that the "pigs" were obviously kidding about taking the appropriate actions and decided to stay and obstruct the officers from doing their jobs. The police attempted, for what was approximately 45 minutes, possibly longer, to convince these young sheep/lemmings to move long enough to allow them to bring the vehicle in to do their job. These young sheep/lemmings decided to make jokes instead, and laugh at the officer's attempts to get them to comply. The officers even went so far to warn the young sheep/lemmings/dumb asses that they would resort to using pepper spray on those who were blocking them in.

At this point, the police who were on the scene were being surrounded by the protesters who were being egged on by an anonymous voice off to the side. The scariest thing was that whatever this voice said, it was immediately chanted by the mindless masses who were surrounding the police officers.

After what seems like 5 attempts to persuade these young sheep/lemmings/dumb asses to move and allow the police to do their job, or to get pepper sprayed. The police, get this, used the pepper spray on the 15-20 young sheep/lemmings/dumb asses who were on the path that the police vehicle was trying to come in on. That's it... The police didn't go wild and start spraying everyone in site like the media is leading the general public of sheep to believe. Just the ones who were blocking the vehicle and refusing to move.

Now, to me, that's like throwing a rock at a police officer and crying foul when they arrest me for assault or tripping one while they are chasing after a robber, then cuffing me for obstruction/assault. I know that these don't compare to the crimes that were committed by the young sheep/lemmings/dumb asses at UCDavis, but it's the same principle.

Davis is one of the top schools in the state and the Nation. This school has been known for creating free thinkers, leaders of industry and environmental issues. All I saw were lemmings, mindless drones doing what an anonymous voice was telling them to do. This is a far cry from their grandparents at the campuses of the 1960's. With the world of easily posted videos and the smaller hand held video cameras, I think that it's getting to the point where media should be held accountable for the snippets and the parts taken out of context, if they're not going to show the whole story.

Please young lemming dumb asses, please I implore you, start acting more like free thinkers than the sheep that you were that day.

Ok

So this day started off fairly well. I came in, checked my stuff, everything looked good, so I went to breakfast.
Low and behold I found out that the stuff that ran didn't finish completely or at all, hence the error alerts that were set up didn't run at all. Fantastic. I go back to the group that I've been working with and tell them. They're understandably concerned. I get off the phone and get back to fixing the issue. I get a phone call about 15 minutes later from their boss, who just so happens to be my interim boss, and proceed to get a serious ass chewing. I listen to what he's saying, being quiet to let him finish his thoughts which seems to piss him off even more. I don't understand this, I've always been raised to let someone finish before you rebut what they say. Apparently he's use to people disputing with him while he's talking and my letting him finish his thoughts must have been an insult to him. He finished and all I said was "Ok" then hung up.

Now there's one thing that I've learned over the years with regards to I.T. folks, management in particular. When they are that angry, justified or not, they aren't hearing what you're telling them, so it's pointless to argue with them. This might come across as apathetic, or what have you, but I really don't have time to play this game with them. I'm willing to play "Hide and go fuck yourself" but not the I can Yell Louder Than You Can To Get My Point Across game. The thing that really stinks about this? I turned down a job with a better company, better benefits, a larger team to help me out, and at literally twice what I make... just at the beginning of this week.

The reason for declining wasn't because I love my JOB or what have you, it's because I made a promise to MG to keep her in the school she started with the friends that she's made and most importantly I love HER

UGH!!

I don't know why I do this to myself. I go into work and expect to have a great day, every day. It seems that the rest of the world is with me, they want me to have a phenomenal day too, then I walk through the doors of work and the first person I see is my "Manager"... I use that term loosely. I see him once a month if that, I don't even think that he knows my name, I'm sure that he thinks that my name is "Hey... um... Could you do this for me". When walking into the building this morning I saw him up on top of the stairs above the door that I have to go into to get to my hole. He looks down and I can see the disdain on his face. Wow... really? I realize that this isn't your life's choice of what you wanted to do, but damn. Don't look at me if you feel that way. I have a strange ability to read people, and I'm fairly good at it. There's the "friend" who is ashamed to be near us, why? Probably feels like she shouldn't be talking crap. There's the friend who also shows disdain for us, arms folded and looking me up and down like I'm not worthy of being in his presence. I'm not the one who, again, isn't living the life that I wanted, go to school and do something about it. There's the friend who has to be liked by everyone, but talks trash and tries to over compensate for it. It's easy, just stop talking trash.

My supervisor is out this week, he and the "senior" janitor are out in Vegas and we all know that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. I've been left to basically my own devices, the acting supervisor is pretty much keeping to himself seeing that his mom is elderly and sick. I can't blame him either. If I was in the same situation, I'd have spent as much time with my mom before she passed. I have Mie and MG though, so they make my day all worth while. I love them both beyond words, now if I can just get out of here unscathed today, back out into the world that wants me to have a phenomenal day and get back into that mind set, I'll be all the better for it.

Oh, Also taking Chemistry this semester. They are proving more that everything is made up of energy. Is there any truth to the "Laws of Attraction"?