The Hypocrisy of Al Gore

Enjoy this video I found at Americans for Prosperity (www.americansforprosperity.org) showing our former Vice-President doing opposite the crap he preaches.



Take care for now...

The Fact is I Don't Post Enough - But When I Do...

Yeah yeah yeah, I know I don't post enough here, I have a lot to say, trust me. Just no time to get it down here. But this video is just too good not to get posted, so here is is.



As always, take care...

Ethan's First Sentence

Here is video of my son and his first sentence. Enjoy.


Ethan's First Sentence 6-19-2008 from Fusion Realty on Vimeo.

Why I am suing Stevie Wonder

Up until last night I was a huge fan of Stevie Wonder. His talent both with instruments as well as with his own vocals are immense. One of my all time favorite songs, "As" is certainly in the top 10 of my personal lists, as well as one of the most played tracks on my iPod.

The problem I am having however is last night, perhaps for the first time, I stopped and actually listened to the lyrics of a song I was listening to. The song, "I Wish" was the straw that broke the camels back, and is the basis of a lawsuit I am filing today against Stevie Wonder. The opening lines of the song start as follows:

"Looking back on when I
Was a little nappy headed boy
Then my only worry
Was for Christmas what would be my toy
Even though we sometimes
Would not get a thing
We were happy with the
Joy the day would bring"

This is just the first verse, it gets worse...

"Sneaking out the back door
To hang out with those hoodlum friends of mine
Greeted at the back door
With boy thought I told you not to go outside
Tryin' your best to bring the
Water to your eyes
Thinkin' it might stop her
From woopin' your behind"

How much more offensive can this song get with phrases like "little nappy headed boy" and "what would be my toy" and the reference to "hoodlum friends of mine."

This is the crap they play on the radio, and I ashamed of the fact that I can mindlessly recite these lyrics.

It gets even worse...

"I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go
I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go
Cause I love them so

Brother says he's tellin'
'Bout you playin' doctor with that girl
Just don't tell I'll give you
Anything you want in this whole wide world
Mama gives you money for Sunday school
You trade yours for candy after church is through"

WOW!!!

Playing doctor with that girl, stealing money intended for Sunday School to trade for candy.

What the heck is wrong with people?

"Smokin' cigarettes and writing something nasty on the wall (you nasty boy)
Teacher sends you to the principal's office down the hall
You grow up and learn that kinda thing ain't right
But while you were doing it-it sure felt outta sight

I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go
I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go"

It doesn't take a genius to tear this exchange apart, let's see, "smokin' cigaretts and writing something nasty of the wall" and then wishing those days would come back once more.

I am offended, and my lawyer is confident we can bring down this Stevie Wonder, and get a nice healthy financial payday out of the whole ordeal.

For me, "I Wish" for filth like this to be taken off our airwaves and out of our iPod's.

For now, I am off to take a stroll around the neighborhood, I just loaded Dr. Dre's "Chronic 2001" on my iPod, now that is a great album.

For now, take care...

A Tribute to Earth Day...

OK, this is pretty funny in my opinion, and I wish I could take the credit for it, but all credit is due Rush Limbaugh for this little tidbit.

How to celebrate Earth Day

"Drive. Drive! Drive five miles above the speed limit when you're on the highway. Go out and buy, buy, buy! Use extra toilet paper. Clog up the toilet if you have to with extra paper. Use, use, use. Turn on every light in the house, every light in the office, and leave it on when you leave -- and if you see anybody driving a stupid hybrid around, just buzz 'em with your horn and wave at 'em as you speed by. Just ram it down their throats, ladies and gentlemen."

Have a great earth day.

Live from Florida

Well, here I am at WB's house. What a whirlwind trip this has been. Last night found us at Downtown Disney. What I love about Disney is that just in the off chance you missed buying the Disney crap at any of the 16,000 stores, you can always find it at the main Disney Store.

Today we went to IKEA, the Mall of Millenia and then to the Florida Mall.

Tonight we will be cooking steaks with baked potatoes. That should taste good as I am starving right now.

Tomorrow morning we are going home, hopefully the flight won't be too full.

I think WB is a little annoyed with us being here, but you know what, tough.

I know she will have a lot more to say that I do, so for now, take care...

2 Computers - 2 Weeks

I have been busy the past couple of weeks. With Chinese New Year all but shutting down my inbound shipments, I have had a lot of free time to do other things. So I woke up last week and decided to sell my laptop on eBay. After the 7 day period I got a bidder and got it sold. I went out that night and bought the new MacBook Air. I have to tell you that this computer is like a feather compared to the 17" MacBook Pro I had just sold.

I tried out the remote migration tool, it told me it would take 18+ hours to transfer the 45GB of info from my desktop to my laptop so I stopped that transfer. The bad thing about the process is that it ties up both computers as well not allowing you to do anything else in the process.

So I used my older hard drive based 20GB iPod. Three trips between computers and about an hours of time, and all the info was transferred via USB from the desktop to the laptop.

And then I got inspired. For you see I sold my MacBook Pro for $1400, but spent $2200 between the MacBook Air, Apple Care, and the 9.25% the state takes out of my pocket, so I dug up a Intel based Mac Mini I had sitting in the closet and listed that on eBay hoping for around $500.

The auction ended tonight at $637.50. Not bad for a computer I got for free. I am now only $165 short of what was spent on the new laptop.

I will say this, this computer is slick. I do see some limitations with it seeing as it does not have a drive installed, but is is fast and powerful, and for what I use the laptop for, I think just about perfect.

I got inspired about selling the 2 computers on eBay, I went and reopened my eBay store with Geta agreeing to do the listing and managing of the store to try to sell the electronic component items I have in inventory for the company.

All in all a great week.

My sister WB posted about the trains, and included the link. This Saturday promises to be a big event at the train set as we are expecting the largest showing yet of participants. To show you how excited I am, I bought 4 powered engines to run on the layout. It should be a great time for all.

I will have to post here about the pipe we had break in a house we built, but that will have to wait until the next post.

For now, take care...

Dude, this is funny - Dead Terrorist

My friend Bill showed me this, and it is funny.

Enjoy.

I present to you the Dead Terrorist.

Happy New Year!!! 2008 - Part 2

I guess what amuses me the most is that I get on here and tell others that resolutions are things you don't need to wait until a new year to make, and I go a fall into a panic mode regarding one of our companies due to the actions of an employee previously mentioned here.

As it has occurred to me that I only have 1 reader besides myself out there, I thought it better to start a different train of thought for fear of losing you. If a contest was held today on this blog, the likelihood of you winning is 100% as when the only person to compete against is yourself, the only way you can lose would be to drop out of the race.

But isn't that how life is as well. Isn't it true at the end of the day, the person most likely to knock you out of the race is yourself? Feeling sorry for yourself, lamenting past bad decisions, constantly looking back instead of forward, all things done to knock ourselves out of the race.

My Dad and I are in the same line of work. Things have not been as good as he (they) would like for the past couple of years. For me last year was not as good as I would have liked it to be, but it was still decent. I have made a lot of stupid financial decisions in my life. But I wonder if the stupidest of them all is constantly looking back at those other dumb decisions versus looking forward to create better decisions for the future.

For 2008 I have prayed that God will bless our business in a HUGE way. I have prayed that we can make enough money this year to pay off the house, the cars and any debt we may have. That is a HUGE number. But who is that number HUGE to? For me, right now it is HUGE. But to the one who created the Heaven's and the Earth. The one who parted the Red Sea. The one who bore the sins of the world and shed His blood for me and then was raised from the dead. I don't think it is a huge number at all.

And so I have prayed the following, "...Lord, this is so much bigger than me, that if you answer this prayer ALL praise and glory is given to you as this is something I simply cannot do on my own..."

There is more to it than that, but you get the gist.

Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Seems like a pretty good deal in my opinion. Of course there is the whole seeking issue, but we can delve into that at another time.

Cheer up, I know it could be worse. If you look for the bad in everything you will find it. Funny thing is though, if you look for the good in everything, surprisingly, you WILL find it.

For now, take care...

Line up to be taken advantage of...

Talk about a rocky start to 2008. Aside from the fact that I am taking a beating in the stock market right now, it is the beating closer to home that is really taking its toll on me.

In a Monday morning meeting held on yesterday (Tuesday) because I was out of town on Monday, my partner and I were accused of "taking advantage" of our lead employee. Allow me to set the stage for this drama...

Our "employee" moved here from California in 2006 originally to do our trim work as well as other odd jobs around our job site. At that time, we have 26 homes being built at the same time, so there was no shortage of work that needed to be done. The original agreement was a salary of $600 per week, and entailed roughly 40-50 hours per week. During the first 6 months of his tenure, he was allowed about 14 vacation days, all of them paid, so he could travel back to California to visit his fiance.

During that time, he asked for a pay increase as well which we gave him taking him to $650 per week.

In November when we had the split with one of our partners, this "employee" stepped up again and demonstrated he was capable of running the entire operation, and was again given more money, this time going to $700 per week As 2006 expired and 2007 began, more vacation time was necessary, and again he took off 5-6 days during the first quarter of 2007. They were all paid as well.

In August, again we were approached about more money, and an agreement was struck moving him to $750 per week, but this time with certain conditions that had to be met on his part.

And still he excelled.

In late October, early November things slowed down a bit, and he was told he could relax a little bit due to the slowdown. The thought process was that he could rejuvenate and start back fresh and anew for us in 2008. What was offered by us, a couple hours here and there, turned into whole days, and then several days at a time that he didn't work. But he sill got the full salary agreed to.

And then he took a second job.

And lied to us about what was being demanded of him at that job.

And told us that he needed to leave us early every day to go to the other job as he was needed there.

So his participation in his salaried position went from 35-40 hours per week, to barely 30 (if we were lucky).

Which actually caused us to lose work.

Because his lack of desire to work for us was seen by the people paying us to do work.

So we started losing work.

Which brings us to yesterday morning when my partner and I confronted him about his lack of motivation for our company. And we were told that he felt like we were taking advantage of him, and that he deserved more money.

So playing the devil's advocate, I asked, "What things have you done to warrant this pay raise?"

To which the response was simply, "I don't know, I just deserve it. I feel like you guys have taken advantage of me."

Let me get this straight, I am paying you for a 40 hour work week, I am barely getting 30 hours out of you. You have taken another job that pays you the conflicts with the time you are supposed to be working for me, and I am taking advantage of you???

How about our other employees who are true hourly people, who if we don't have work for them, they don't get paid for that time? How about the fact that we lost work because of you, which directly affects other people's livelihood? How about the fact that you are "double dipping" in working at the same time for 2 different people, and the person being asked to shoulder that burden is me?

Perhaps it is time we shake hands and go separate ways.

See if you can find another employer who allows you as much liberty as we do, and pays as well as we do.

The winds of change are a blowin' and how it plays out is being written by the employee. For you see there was a time when this employee was not expendable, a dream position to be in as an employee. But in his own arrogance he has made himself fully expendable, no, he has done even worse than that, he has made it absolutely necessary to get rid of him as he no longer contributes in a positive way to the company.

I am sad about this, but while my partner and I will likely take the blame, the truth is the employee is the one who created his own problem.

How many of you out there would line up and take on the role he has abandoned???

For now, take care...

Off and Running

Welcome to 2008. Funny how people think that since all a new year technically is a date change from one day to another, that "things are going to change or get better."

The reality is the change, if any is to occur can happen at any point during any year. There is no magical law that says because we went from one numeric description of time to another that things automatically get better. The truth is I believe it to be quite the opposite.

I didn't make any New Year resolutions this time around. For the last several years I will tell you that I have. Two years ago I made a resolution which involved a 3-year commitment to a leadership training program which starts its third year this upcoming Monday. The resolution in and of itself had nothing to do with the ultimate outcome of that commitment, rather my desire to see it through made the resolution valid. And if you yourself seeing a resolution through is sufficient to bring about a change, why not make resolutions each and every day to insure that you have a fuller, more fulfilling life.

I have an employee working for us in the construction company who is miserable right now. For months he has struggled with borderline depression regarding most everything happening in his life. In typical Monday morning quarterback position, it is easy to question what this person has to be so depressed about. He makes decent money, has a nice house and all the "toys" that go along with it. He has friends and activities that he is involved in, but he is miserable.

And sadly that miserable is translating into a less than stellar performance on the work front. Which is getting noticed by the people who pay us.

So I met with him yesterday and tried to pick his brain. Now I know that answer to the question I asked, but I had to ask it anyways. Boils down to this. He is simply not happy right now. The part I don't know, and he can't (or won't) answer is this: If the unhappiness coming from work and being carried over into his home and personal life, or is the unhappiness starting at home with his personal life and translating itself into his work life.

I have my suspicions, I think he is unhappy at home (In all fairness, I would be if I was in his shoes!!!) but that is neither here nor there. The point is trying to get him out of his "funk."

So I asked him, what makes you happy. A question asked numerous times, but yet to be answered.

I implore you to make each day new and special. Life is much to short to "...wait for next year when I can make a new resolution." Make the resolution each and every day to at least enjoy life. Be happy, look for the good in things, not the bad. Be positive even when others aren't. Smile at strangers. Hold the door for an older person. Try the Publix approach and offer to help someone to the car with their packages. Buy coffee for a stranger at Starbucks.

Do something, do anything. Just don't sit there being unhappy. Life will pass you by, and in that process the only person you have truly affected is yourself.

For now, take care...