Posted by: kitejockey | March 21, 2009

My Son

Today was a good day for me. I went out and flew kites with some of my friends and although I was missing my wife, as she is away visiting family it was mostly a good day. But as I am writing this I am having some strange thoughts and emotions run through my mind. For some reason today as I was packing my kites at the Lake Park Kite Festival I had a random thought pass through my mind. What would my life be like had Vicki and I had kids. More importantly what would I be doing with my child or children had we conceived?

I need to stop here for a minute and tell you that I almost did not write this post as I don’t want my sweet wife to think for one minute that I regret marrying her. She knows in her heart that I don’t entertain those type of thoughts. She also knows that I don’t blame her for not being able to give me children and that I know that this was God’s plan for us. I may not understand or agree with God’s plan in this part of my life, but I except it for what it is. I know too that just because we don’t have kids does not mean that we are not loved by our Savior. I did hesitate slightly before writing this but I felt that I needed to share from the heart. I love you Vicki, please never forget that.

So there I was packing my kite bag. I was getting ready to zip up the case that contains my Prism 3-D when a random thought hit me. What would it have been like to share a day like today with my son had I had one? What would he thought about what I do? Would he be right there beside me helping me pack my bag? Would he feel strange that his 41 year old dad was just a big kid himself? What memories would we share later about this day? The smell of the wet grass, the feel of the cool spring wind on the back of our necks, or the smiles on the faces of the spectators and other fliers as they watched us play with our colorful kite collection. What would he have learned from me today? Would he have learned how to play well with others? Would he know how important it is to love those around you as much as you love yourself? Would he have been proud of me when I went back to pick up the trash that some of my fellow fliers so careless left behind when they were done flying? Just what would he have learned?

Then the thought occurred to me what would I have learned from him? Just the fact that a son would be out spending the day with his dad has to be a precious thing. I know so many father and son teams that hardly ever spend any time together. Would he share my enthusiasm for the simple things in life, or would he merely go to humor me?

I would hope that if I had a son that he would love me and want to be with me. That we would see the world in somewhat the same way. I would not want him to be a perfect carbon copy of me, because I would never wish that on anyone, but I would hope  that we would have some of the same interests. I would hope I could teach him about God, and show him through my life how important it is to try to always please the Lord. I would want him to be well rounded, and unlike me, to place a high value on his education. I would hope that I would be a good teacher to him about what this life is all about. I also would hope that he would learn from my mistakes and from my failings so he would not be forced to repeat them. I would want him to not have to learn things the hard way, as I did.

I guess part of what got me thinking about such things was watching all the moms and dads at the park with their children. I was not jealous of them at all, but my only thought was what is it that they are passing on to their sons and daughters. You know even in the subtle things we say and do we teach our children something. What do you children learn from you when you don’t know they are looking or listening. Do you they hear you yelling obscenities at the car in front of you because they are not going fast enough or blocking your way? Do they hear you praying at night when you and your wife are in bed? Do they see and hear you doing things that you have told them not to do? Do they see daddy eyeing another woman when he thought no one was looking? These are the type of things that I have the luxury of pondering simply because I have no children. All these questions are hypothetical to me, but how about you? Do you have kids. If so how are you doing in these areas?

I know this post does not come close to detailing all the things a mother or a father must ponder as they raise their children. I also know that there  is no such thing as a perfect parent. I also know we are all in process. I just hope that if you are a parent and you are reading this that you understand that if you have not been the best example to your children that you can start today. No, you can not take back the times you have failed you children, but maybe you can start today to make a change for the better while you still have some influence with your children. If you don’t know where to start I would like to suggest you start be reading the Bible with them and Praying with them on a daily basis. I know it sounds old fasion and a bit cleche but I think there is some truth in the fact that the family who prays together stays together. I would hope that if I had a son I would teach him that lesson first.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not perfect nor do I feel that I am a subject matter expert. Oh, and I feel like I have a long way to go before anyone would want to use me as an example of a Godly man, but I do think of these things and ponder them in my heart. I hope that something that I wrote here will challenge and inspire you to want to be the best person you can be if not for your kids, for the kids of others who are watching you. We owe it to the next generation to be a better people than even we think we can be, and we can only do that by walking with God daily.

Posted by: kitejockey | February 17, 2009

Tea Party Anyone?

So Mr. Obama is going to sign the “stimulus” package today and save us all. GIVE ME A FLIPPIN’ BREAK! Actually he is not the first and he will more than likely not be the last to toss good money (or in this case borrowed money) after bad. I just don’t get it. Why would anyone in their right mind think the government can solve this “crisis”. Are we all so dumb that we can not see what is happening right around us or are we so apathetic that we just don’t care.  Look when you live in a capitalist country you are going to have successes and failures. That is the nature of the capitalist system. When you start hearing things like “so and so is too big to fail” and the words “government bail out” look out because the next words you are going to hear are socialized or nationalized________(fill in the blank). Well it is not too late to stop socialism from taking over but there is not much time left. Capitalism is headed for an early grave.

We now know that once government gets it greedy little hands on a formally capitalistic institution like a bank that things are going to get nutty. Case in point the salary cap for CEO’s. Does Mr. Obama really think this is going to fix anything. This is only going to make things worse. When you cap the pay for those at the top it has a trickle down effect. If a CEO only makes $500,000 a year then the VPs that work under him are only going to make $300K to $400k. The folks below them will make even less and the folks below them will make even less and so on and so forth until the guy at the bottom (me and you) make way less than we do now or be out of a job all together. How is that supposed to fix the economy?

Also do we really want the government running “private” businesses. I mean look at the great job they have done with this country. Gosh they have got everything running so efficiently and we have lots of money in reserves for things like social security and medicare and Medicaid. Wow I am so impressed. They never waste a dime and have always looked after the best interest of the American people. Everything the government touches turns to gold. Oh, and the ethics and the morals of those in elected office are of the highest order. They never lie, cheat on their spouses, or their taxes. They never take bribes and they are above reproach. Wow why didn’t we think of this sooner, of course the government can fix everything. After all unlike most businesses if they run out of money they can always print more. Why shouldn’t we have socialized and nationalized everything. What are we waiting for utopia awaits!

In reality things are not going to turn out well. I will say that for a short amount of time (maybe a few weeks) things are going to look like they are going to turn around. The money from the stimulus package may actually buy us a little time. But in the end I am afraid that once the money is gone (and it will not take long) that we are going to be back in bad shape but next time it will be even worse. We are going to be in more debt than this country has ever seen. Business all over this country are going to continue to fail one right after another. More people are going to loose their jobs and the next time the government will not be able to buy its way out of a wet paper bag. We are headed right into national bankruptcy and the idiots are leading the parade. The sad thing is I don’t think they know just what they are doing to this country. They think they have the answer but they lack the foresight to see the errors of their ways.

It disturbs me too that the American people are not fed up with all this crap. That they are not protesting this monumental brain fart that the government is selling us. Well if the American people are missing it somehow, the rest of the world is not. You would think if this stimulus package was such a good idea that markets all over the world would be rallying behind it with support. You would think that investors world wide would be chomping at the bit for a piece of the action. But that is not what is happening at all. When this so called stimulus package was passed investor confidence world wide took a huge dip. It is funny that the rest of the world see this for what it is. It is the death of capitalism and soon the free market system.

So how do we reverse this. Well I don’t pretend to have all the answers but here are a few things that I would suggest for the short term for all you potential bail out I mean stimulus recipients:

  1. If you are a business owner large or small, never take government money. This will allow you to make your own decisions about how and when you invest your money. You will not have to worry about salary caps or big brother interference (other than some of the stupid laws that you are already dealing with). If you business is failing then find a better business model, or reorganize so you can start making money again. But what ever you do don’t take cash from Uncle Sam, there is always a string attached.
  2. Quit making the same widget if  it is not selling. Move on and keep up with the times. I don’t care if your great, great, great, great, grand father came up with the widget maybe people in 2009 just don’t need it anymore.
  3. If your CEO mismanages the company fire him or her. Don’t let one idiot run the whole thing into the ground.
  4. Modernize your operations so you can produce quality. The adage is true you have to spend money to make money. If you keep producing crappy products sooner or latter people are going to figure this out and stop buying from you.
  5. Quit sending American jobs overseas. If we are to survive in this global market we need to be strong at home first. That means hiring Americans and paying them a fair wage so they can better afford to buy your widget and which in return will lead to stronger sale figures for you. We are one of the biggest consumer markets in the world but this is quickly changing because Americans no longer can afford to buy even the cheep imports you keep sending over here from countries like China because the job they once had that let them buy this stuff is now being done by a 13 year old in a factory in Beijing. American families can not survive on Wal-Mart greeter salaries.

In the long run we need to elect better leaders and toss the bums out of Washington. I went to school to be a teacher and I have heard it said that there are those who can and those who teach. To some extent this is true. You would never ask an economics teacher with no cooperate training to take on a job as a CEO of a major fortune 500 company so why do we elect folks who have never been successful or even tested in private business to run a capitalist country. We need to look at how we pick our leadership. The leaders we choose should be the most successful and resourceful among us. We should never vote for someone who wants to be a career politician. We need term limits of four years max for every public servant. I would love to see the entire governing body from the fed level to the state and local turn over completely every four years. No one should every make their carrier as a politician. They should get into office do their job and get out. If we could find a way to turn our leadership over every four years I think we would see a much more efficient government. Their would not be time for corruption to grow (as much) and the government would have to be light on its feet in order to get anything done. There would not be time or room for so much bureaucracy. Politicians would know that there is a price to pay for screwing up. Because when their term is over they have to go back to the private sector and find a job. If the screw up to bad they may not have a job to come back to. We need a way to fire those that don’t preform and quickly fill vacancies. So every position would have a runner up. A person that was second in the election who could step in and do the job if the elected one can not cut the mustard. We need a ban on lobbying. We have representatives in Washington we don’t need a group of people who were not elected trying to influence our representatives to do their bidding.

Basically  we need to rethink our government from the top down. What we have now is not working. Not only do they not represent us, instead of listening to the desires of the American people, they spend most of their time trying to figure out how they can exert more and more control over every little thing we do. It is time for a tea party Boston Style.

Keep the "Change"

Keep the "Change"

Posted by: kitejockey | January 12, 2009

Pet Peeve/email

It has been a long while since I have taken the time to blog anything. To be honest since I have discovered Facebook and Twiter I have done very little other social networking or blogging. I am really enjoying meeting and keeping up with friends and family on Facebook and Twiter and really wish more of my friends and family were on these sites (hint). That is, at least in part, why I am writing this post.

I can remember a time not so long ago when email was my main way of keeping up with distant friends and family. When I first started using email in the mid to late 90’s I found it to be a great way to stay in touch and to give and receive useful information. As time has gone by email has for me lost some of it’s appeal mainly because I get so much of it and unfortunately 80%-90% of it is not useful information. You all know what I am talking about. It can be summed up in one big ugly word SPAM!

Spam in and of it’s self is bad enough when it is from someone you don’t know. Because it tends to clutter up your inbox and slow down your attempt to get to the really important stuff. Over the years I have developed a callous on my delete key finger from all that spam. But thank God that for the most part I have got it under control. Most of it never even makes it to my inbox any more. But what do you do when the spam is from your friends or family?  Well I can tell you what I used to do, I used to try to read it all out of a guilty and twisted sense that I owed it to the sender to read what they had sent me. But that just left me tired and disappointed most of the time. I then moved to the next stage of handling spam from known sources and that was to tell the spammer to quit spamming me or else! Well I said it nicer than that and most of them got the message, but still a few persist.

What gets me is that some of these folks don’t have anything better to do than to read the spam that they get and then forward it on to me which I get only because the sender is in my address book and is a trusted sender. So in effect it is like I don’t have a spam filter at all. I mean come on, are some of my friends and family getting paid to send me spam, cause that it what it feels like sometimes. What is slightly less annoying is those who read something that they deem as Earth shattering or life changing for them and then feel compelled to send it to almost every one in their address book. Not that some of this is bad or not interesting but do they ever think that there might be a better way of sharing without filling up the inboxes of everyone they know. I hate to call this spamming but I don’t have another term that comes close to telling you how this makes me feel.

Well now that I have made some of you mad because I am not sensitive to your way of thinking let me take it a step further. GET A BLOG. After all I would not want to point out a problem without giving a solution. Welcome to what has become  one of the hottest ways to communicate with large groups of people in the last ten years.  I would suggest that if you have some tasty nuggets that you just can’t keep to yourself that you start a personal blog and then invite your contact list to see it. In this way folks can pick and choose if they want to read your latest revelation or pass.  If you do this I cannot promise you that everyone will read what you have to say, but what I can tell you is that those who are interested will. As a added bonus you may actually gain some new friends (and or enemies) from the world wide web.  Either way your friends and family will appreciate it and you will no longer have to wonder if they are reading what you send via email any longer or just trashing it all like I do.  You will be doing your part to bring peace to unknown numbers of email inboxes.

For more on how to avoide spamming people by email or if you just want a good set of rulles to follow when thinking that you just have to send that email click here to to to Seth’s Blog and an atricle he wrote called “How to send a personal email“. How did I hear about Seth? I found his blog in Google Reader. The “How to send a personal email” blog post was sharred with me by a friend on Google Reader. If you don’t have a Google Reader account yet I would suggest you get one. This is yet another great way to share items with out cluttering up someones inbox.

Posted by: kitejockey | December 31, 2008

Your Bank Account

To those few of you who read my blog I am so sorry I have not posted anything in a while. I will try to do better in the near future. For now I am going to post a story that I hope you find interesting. The story below was sent to me from a friend. I can’t tell you if it is true or not but the moral message of the story is one that inspired me. I hope you benefit from reading this as I did.

YOUR BANK ACCOUNT

This is AWESOME….something we should all remember.

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud
man, who is fully dressed each morning by
eight o’clock, with his hair fashionably
combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is
legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.
His wife of 70 years recently passed away,
making the move necessary. After many hours of
waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing
home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready.

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I
provided a visual description of his tiny
room, including the eyelet sheets that had
been hung on his window.

‘I love it,’ he stated with the enthusiasm of
an eight-year-old having just been presented
with a new puppy.

‘Mr. Jones, you haven’t seen the room; just wait.’

‘That doesn’t have anything to do with it,’ he replied…

‘ Happiness is something you decide on ahead
of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t
depend on how the furniture is arranged ..
it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided
to love it ‘It’s a decision I make every
morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can
spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty
I have with the parts of my body that no
longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful
for the ones that do.

Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes
open, I’ll focus on the new day and all the
happy memories I’ve stored away. Just for this
time in my life.

Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw
from what you’ve put in.

So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot
of happiness in the bank account of memories!
Thank you for your part in filling my Memory bank.
I am still depositing.’ Remember the five
simple rules to be happy:

1.. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.

Posted by: kitejockey | November 26, 2008

Mass Email Issue

For a long time now I have been warning folks that it is not a good practice to send your friends email in mass because of privacy concerns when you have several email address in the “To” field or in the “CC” field. Today I got an email from a friend of mine warning of another danger in distributing mass emails. Please read this email below and I hope you find it as eye opening as I did.

Please remember if you send this on to your fiends please put their email address in the “BCC” (blind carbon copy) field.

When emails say: “if I don’t get this back I’ll…. or, “See how many flowers you can get back”, or ” Forward this to 10 people in the next 5 minutes or something bad will happen to you”, etc., etc.

Advice from Snopes. com

1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to ‘10′ of your friends, sign this petition, or you’ll get bad luck, good luck, or whatever, it almost always has an E-Mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and E-Mails of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of ‘active’ E-Mails to use in SPAM E-Mails, or sell to other spammers.

2) Almost all E-Mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of E-Mail is, is a way to get names and ‘cookie ‘ tracking information for telemarketers and spammers – - to validate active E-Mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.

You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor by sending the information in this email to them; you will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!

If you have been sending out (FORWARDING) the above kinds of E-Mail, now you know why you get so much SPAM!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound! You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT in the long run. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich!

Also: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.

Posted by: kitejockey | November 25, 2008

Need to laugh? Read on…

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, ‘If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?’

Bud looks a t the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, ‘Sure, Why not?’

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, ‘You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.’

‘That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,’ says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, ‘Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?’

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, ‘Okay, why not?’

‘You’re a Congressman for the U.S.Government’, says Bud.

‘Wow! That’s correct,’ says the yuppie, ‘but how did you guess that?’

‘No guessing required.’ answered the cowboy. ‘You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don’t know a thing about cows… this is a herd of sheep…

Now give me back my dog.

Note: This was sent to me today in an email. I do not know who the writer was. I just thought it was funny.

Posted by: kitejockey | November 11, 2008

Chaos vs. Contol (a quick thought)

Recently someone on a forum I visit posted a thread wanting to know why we don’t take the word’s “under God” out of the pledge of allegiance. Their basic argument is that there should be separation of church and state. This forum soon erupted with folks striking out at each other from both sides of this issue but it did not end there. Before long folks we going after each other on everything from the constitution or gay marriage. They were saying some pretty nasty things about each other and God for the matter. The word bigot was being tossed around a lot too. This all prompted me to respond, not that I thought it would do much good but this is what I wrote.

“I am wondering when and if we will ever see the end of all the special little groups trying to get satisfaction from the government and society? Why don’t we just toss out all the rules and laws and moral convictions so that anything goes? Maybe then we will get to the end of all the whining and crying over all the inequality. Oh, and why we are at it we might as well burn all the Bibles and other religious writings that try to impose a point of view on us and all dictionaries or other books that try to define us. Let’s get rid of any monetary system that is keeping us all down and demand that every thing should be free. Let’s do away with anything that gives our lives any structure at all. Lets also all quit work and demand that the government take care of us…oh wait…I know why we don’t…we don’t do that because without structure, without order, without rules, and without morals, society would cease to function. I guess all of us who don’t want to live in chaos are bigots to someone somewhere, and you know I am fine with that.”

What I was trying to say is that there is no way to make everyone happy all the time. We do have to have rules and laws to live by. No rule or law is going to make everyone happy all the time. But without them none of us would be happy anytime. We have to have some form of structure. That does not mean that you have to like it but you should at least recognize the need for it. Right now gay rights and the separation of church and state are hot buttons with a few people. So lets say for the sake of argument we fix these issues for these few. So what is next? What if next time the hot issue is people who want to eat their children or folks that only think a car should be driven on Monday’s. Do we change our laws of way of life to accommodate these folks too. Where do we draw the line, and who decides where that line needs to be drawn?

We literal have God to thank that we live in such a nation where we have to right to even express these kind of ideas. If it was not for Gods providence we might have been raised in a nation where such thoughts are not just dangerous to express buy could be deadly. In this country you have the right to vote and majority usually rules. What some of the proponents of these small but vocal groups tend to forget is that the nation of people that they hate for their morality and laws, is the same nation that gives them the right to disagree. They also need to be reminded of something I learned at an early age and that is just because you don’t get your way that gives you no right to lash out at others. Some of these folks are no better to me than a spoiled rotten foul mouthed little three year old, who will not shut up until they get their way. I thank God that we live in a county that has rules and laws. A country where society is protected from all the nuts out there who care more about what they want than what is good for the majority. I am glad our country was formed by a group of God fearing individuals who wanted to protect the church from government not the other way around. I still believe this is the greatest nation on earth. I believe God put me here in this nation or a reason and that reason was not to whine but to be an example to the rest of the country what it means to be a God follower. I hope that be living by the rule of law and by the teachings of the Christian Bible that my life can serve as an example to all of those who are seeking for a better life. A life not centered around selfish desires but on the Word of God.

I also realize to that times are changing and one day my beliefs may become the exception rather than the rule. I have already decided that my beliefs will not change as society changes. I will stay true to myself and my God. I have no intention of berating those who do not feel the way I do just so I can be heard. I have to much respect for myself to act in such a child like way.

Posted by: kitejockey | November 5, 2008

Our New American Presidnet Barack Hussein Obama.

Some say they were suprised today that Elizabeth Hasselbeck came out in support of Barack Obama. But I say his is exactly what we as Americans need to do. We need to get behind our leaders no matter who they are even if we disagree with them. We on the conservative side need to show those one the Liberal side how to be gracious when we loose. No, we don’t have to agree with every crazy idea that Obama comes up with. We can disagree with him on the issues and still honor him as our president. Obama nor any other candidate will change the fact that we are still “One country under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Posted by: kitejockey | November 3, 2008

Before you vote tomorrow, watch this!

Posted by: kitejockey | October 27, 2008

Following up on my post: No, it is not okay…(a rant)

I delivered the laptop on Saturday. It went much better than I expected. She seemed gratefull to have it back and in working order. I showed her the things I fixed and some extra work I did to make sure that her daughter had a backup copy of the recovery disks so if she had a problem next time it would be an easyier fix.

She paid me without hesitation. We did not talk about money and she just took the money out and handed it to me. I did not count it in front of her but counted it on my way out the door and was happy to find she had given me the agreed apon amount.

One interesting side note was one of her coworkers stopped me on the way out the door and said can I talk to you about a computer problem. What was funny she did not want to talk to me in front of the lady who just paid me. So she asked me to step outside to discuss her issue. I don’t know yet if she really wanted help or was just testing me to see if I would give her the same deal. I guess I will find out later if she calls me.

The folks who know me know that I give a good deal to the people who ask me for help. If I was not doing this as a hobby I would have to charge much more. They get a good deal because I do not do this full time and I get a little extra cash to help meet my obligations from time to time.

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