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"?

Development Summary

When I started this class, I wasn’t sure what it was that I was going to learn. I was surprised to learn that how I was raising my daughter was how the experts suggested. I took what my parents taught me and applied it, I’m not sure if they read any books by the experts beside maybe Dr. Spock, but I feel that they did everything just the right way. They passed on their knowledge to their kids, adopted and birthed kids alike. I like to think that they helped raise more than just their three kids and the six grandchildren that we gave them.

This personal profile project helped me to fully realize that we didn’t have a whole lot of material possessions growing up, but what our parents gave us was worth much more than anything that they could have bought for us. For them to take their young family of my parents and my sister, and move to California where they didn’t have any relatives or friends was a huge leap of faith. To make it work out here on their salaries was an act of sheer will on both of their parts. They saw that they wanted a better life for their family and they were going to do what ever it took to get to that Promised Land. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said “I’ve seen the promise land, though I may not get there with you…” That’s was my parents philosophy without even really knowing it. They worked hard all of their adult lives so that their children could have a better life than what they had. That drive is very much evident in each of their kids lives today, we all want our own kids to do better than what we currently have.

I’m glad that my parents instilled trust, autonomy, initiative and industry in my siblings and myself. We have been able to establish our own identities through adolescence and intimacy as young adults. As we move into Middle Adulthood, I’m noticing that we are becoming satisfied with where we are in our lives and our ability to provide the same good traits of the Erickson Development model as our parents were able to instill in us.

With this model and the Piaget model to learn from, I’m almost looking forward to moving into the Older Adult phase, sitting back as I retire on the beach of Tahiti drinking my Mai Tai after a long day of scuba diving and reviewing my accomplishments that led to my being able to live the way that I’m living. I’ll be a large part of my grandchildren’s lives, just like my mom was a large part of her grandchildren’s lives.

Puberty and High School

I've been taking a class at the local Community College and have to write a paper, this is what I have so far.

Puberty was rather unkind to me, I got the really cool cracking voice, acne and glasses as my eyes went through their own turmoil. I was stuck between maturing and still being the geeky kid for most of my high school career. To add insult to injury, my parents thought that this would be a great time to get braces. I now understand that the delay in orthodontics was mainly due to the lack of insurance, but at the time I just thought that my parents didn’t want me to be dabbling in teen age sex. All of my friends around me were getting their physiques and were having girls chase them. I was always the odd one out.

During school I loved the sciences, I had great teachers who taught because they wanted to be there, not because they haven’t been able to write the next great American classic novel. I thought that I had a better connection to the adults in my life than I did with my peers. The person who had the largest impact in my life was my dad. He taught me how to be a man, camping, working with my hands and how to be respectful of women. “Treat them as you would want your mother treated”, that has stuck with me all these years.

My grand plans for after school was to travel the country. Through out high school, I had a map of the United States with little pins in it marking places that I was going to visit starting the summer of graduation. I had saved most of my money from my jobs that I had since I was thirteen. All of my plans changed the day of November eighth nineteen eighty-eight. That was the day I was called to the principal’s office. When I got there, one of my neighbors was there to tell me that my dad had suffered a massive heart attack and didn’t survive. It was a very rough rest of my senior year, all of my savings went to my mom to pay for the mortgage on the house because growing up, I learned that family came before self. I left the map on my wall though to remind me that I can still go on my trip, it will just be postponed for a little while.

The night my dad died, I realized just how many people he touched, and just how many people I considered friends. Most of my senior class showed up to console me and pay condolences to my family. Our tiny house was packed with kids and adults alike, family, friends, co-workers, bosses, teachers and pastors. I wanted to be alone, but they knew that would probably be a bad idea. They stayed with us all night to make sure that we were going to be alright. It was probably the longest night of my life.

I went back to school the next day so that I could give my mind something to do. I didn’t have a tenth grade homeroom, I didn’t have homeroom throughout high school, but my first period teacher tried to tell me that I should go home, but I told her that I needed the mental stimulation more than being out of school. We had a Mexican stand off, she wasn’t going to teach until I went home, and I wasn’t leaving. She did ask me to stay after class. She told me that I was the most hard-headed, stubborn, mentally strong child that she had dealt with in a long time and then told me that her and the other teachers were praying for our family.

I’m not to sure how much culture came into play during this time in my life, we lived in a very racially and culturally diverse area. There was a large influx of Vietnamese and Hispanic families. Most of the kids I grew up with were African-American, Chinese, Hispanic or Caucasian. The one thing that my parents did teach was to celebrate the diversity, that’s what made the spice of life.

The group of friends that I had and hung out with on a daily basis was the kids I grew up with. Some new ones who had moved into our school, but all welcome. We were lovingly called the "Odd Squad" we were made up of the Jocks, the “Stoners”, the smart kids, the dorks, the geeks and then there was me. I was told that it was hard to classify me, I told them that was because I was me, I didn’t want to try being anyone else.

Joe

So have you ever wondered where some singers come up with their lyrics? I'm listening to the Bob and Tom show via the web, they have a gentleman who has been a drummer and co-song writer for a number of years, having played with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Ted Nuggent, Peter Frampton, Don Henley, The Eagles, Phil Collins, and Joe Walsh just to name a few.

This is where it leads me to wondering where lyrics come from, specifically Joe Walsh and the song Life's Been Good to Me So Far, "I live in hotels, tear out the walls"... This really never made sense to me besides maybe the typical rock star behavior of punching holes in walls. No, Joe would bring in a chainsaw and literally cut out walls between hotel rooms with the chainsaw so that he could have more room.

Must be fun having that kind of money to have your accountants pay for it all.