hahaha

I have a new motto!
Warning! Consumption of the Chad may cause you to get religion, get naked, get raised, or get arrested!

The Rule of 20

I heard a story a few years back about a newly married couple that was having a "time." The husband had just been given a pretty big promotion. So, the lady went out and bought a bunch of food and prepped a very nice dinner for her guy. She had everything ready when he got home. She was "dressed up" for him too. After walking in the door, he was greeted with a big kiss and was immediately lead to the table. He stopped before sitting down after putting 2 and 2 together (that this whole ordeal was to congratulate him on his new job). He said, "The pleasure is in the work." This flattened the lady and the night was uneventful.

Let's take a quick look at what happened.
Lady: I know my guy works so hard to provide. He's been so stressed and I know how to work out stress! Hmmmm. I bet he'd love a nice home-cooked meal too! Oh man! I have to go get some meat! And we are out of his favorite drink too!

*insert spending 6 hours of errands, cooking, prepping (more than just the food), cleaning, oh! and chocolate! I love CHOCOLATE! here*

Oh WOW! He's in the driveway! I can't wait to see his face! "The pleasure is in the work" Ouch, I spent all of that time.... ouch.

Guy: #$%#$ I hate my co-workers. I just know this new team is going to dump all of the crap on me. I'm good at it but man. I can't do another 70 hour week. I need a good drink and a couch. Maybe I'll get some tonight. I don't want to be social. I don't want to speak. effing retards. I can't believe that guy didn't get fired.... and then was reassigned to my team. The boss is going to love what I have for him tomorrow. My resignation. I'll have to find another job fast. I've got to keep up with those damn payments. That ring was such a drain. Wait, IS such a drain. She loves it though. Man. I need to find a way to buy a new house. We need out of this dump. I know it's "nice." ... This isn't nice. This is NICER than my grandfather's house, but he had to build it by hand in like 1894. *sigh* I can't do this any more.

I just need to sit down and do a whole lot of nothing..... *walks in his house* *hupmth* *wife drills me and jumps on me* Man my head hurts. I wonder if I can make conversation enough to make her smile. I need to sit down, or maybe lay down. Yeah, that sounds good. A NAP! Oh, she's dragging me some.... oh. She's made dinner. @#$#@$ I can't make conversation. I need to be alone. Even five minutes would be nice. She's going to want to know how I "feel" about the day and the food and her panties and blah blah blah.
"The pleasure is in the work"

Now! Nice story huh! The lady was all about doing something nice for her guy and didn't quite get the reaction she was looking for. Now, she'll need to talk even more about her feelings when her guy does not have the energy or desire. She has driven him away. On that same token, the guy didn't realize what was happening. He didn't see that she had made a VERY time-consuming meal, nor did he notice that she was dressed up. He disregarded her feelings in the process. He was so wrapped up in his exhaustion and getting rest that he tossed his wife by the wayside.

I have now heard of a solution!

The RULE of 20!!!! I know this is just one more thing to ask of a woman, but I heard it from a woman. So, hear me out.

20 minutes after your guy wakes up and gets home from work, give that to him.

NEW STORY!!!! Guy gets off of work, rolls in the door and is greeted by his wife. She says one thing and doesn't take long. "Dinner will be ready shortly." She does so while handing him his favorite drink. Then she immediately goes back to prepping. He stumbles into the living room and collapses into a comfy chair.......
20 minutes later, he wakes up and realizes that he's been watching TV. Hmmm. Something smells good. Wow! She's easy on my eyes! Damn, I'm almost out of my drink. Hmmmm.... yeah, I'm gonna just push her upper back down and bend her over that counter.... yeah.

Some guys, it's more like 5 minutes. Personally, I think I'm closer to 30-35 minutes, but man am I excited after decompressing!

Oh, and just to clarify. The couple in the first story were my parents.... who are now divorced now. My dad never got it.

Chasm TR

My wussie, erm buddy, Ken is getting ready to do some hiking in Japan in a couple of weeks. So, we decided (not real sure where or how) to do some warm-up hikes. This past Sunday we ran up to Chasm Lake. It's really pretty looking up at the cirque that surrounds it. 2:00 up and 1:15 back.
We didn't run into anything crazy. There were a lot of kids (like 200 kids younger than 15) in the first couple of miles. Then we ran into the occasional group of tech climbers. I had read that the summit was still technical due to the snow melting slower than usual. I'm optimistic that it will break in the next couple of weeks and we can make a summit bid. But we will see. We only had to cross a couple of snow patches and they were mild in difficulty. I'm sure that the trail will be dry come mid-August. I think that a summit bid will be safe at that point too.
Anyway, the trail was clear minus a little bit of snow as we crossed into the Chasm Meadow. It was a good day for sure.

mountain pics

I've had a few requests for some pictures of my hiking/climbing adventures recently. So, here you go!
This photo is of the hole in the rock at Chasm View, just below the cables route.

This is the sunrise that same morning from Chasm View. ~13,000ft
This photo was taken by my hiking partner at the time. It was just beginning to rain.
the first two pics here are pretty cool too.

funny old men, guns

I run a cafe of sorts in a health club for my "day job." In my days, I take a lot of abuse from the old men that come and "workout" and then sit and drink coffee for an hour. The conversations range from politics and sports to history and current events. One of them stood up this morning and said, "Well, I suppose I should actually work out this morning!" Steve, another regular, said, "What?!?! I've been workin' hard for a good ten-fifteen minutes!" The banter makes my mornings worthwhile working here.

I don't know if I've expressed my opinion for the news in this blog so I thought that DC vs Heller would be a good place to open. For those not in the know, the District of Columbia vs Heller is the court case that went to the Supreme Court over the right to have a gun in Washington DC. Now, there has been a ban on firearm possession there for some time.

Now, I read the news when I have time or just find a minute between hazings of the old men! I also try to keep up generally on how the stock market is doing and why. I also try to read several different "publications" as well. The reason I do this is because it is difficult to find any "news" source that isn't skewed and is completely objective. I have to kind of giggle at Fox News' "Fair and balanced" stories. Then I outwardly laugh at when a liberal tears at that same thing for the reason that they support the news from CNN or MSNBC. I'm rather blown away that so many people will only watch one of them. I'm not a whole lot better, but I try by reading the Economist, BBC, and once in a while the Guardian as well as the American news sources. I really have a solid disdain for the American news. I'm sure that there are a lot of good people working for these companies. But it's hard to believe everything they say and take it word for word. It's like bashing President Bush. I know a lot of people do it and that's fine. One thing I love about this country is that we have freedom of speech. We can rip on anyone for any reason. There are laws against libel, etc. However, if we disagree with someone, we are free to express that. SO! If you don't like Bush, cool! But WHY do you not like Bush? Is it because he is trying to assist a country in turmoil? Is it because he has used the veto power only on a few rare times? Is it because of his economic policy? I have no problem if you don't like him. Personally, I think there are better leaders. But I have reasons for not liking him. SPECIFIC reasons. I don't bash him because of his imperfect grammar/word usage.

Now that I've said that. DC vs Heller was a pretty controversial court case. It is yet another example of the fundamental idea of the right to own a specific type of weapon as a normal citizen (as opposed to a police officer or military). I think that this is an interesting debate and it really comes down to how comfortable you are personally with a gun.

I grew up in small-town, Wyoming. The state has battled with Alaska for last place on the population list for decades and is recently losing by a good margin as I understand it. It is a land of farmers and ranchers. There are plenty of cowboys around. As a result, livestock theft can be a problem at times. There are people who actually defend their cattle, etc with a shotgun! Even today, this really does happen. To most of the city-bound population, this seems crazy. Imagine making $200/cow each year. At a rate of50-200 cows a year, that isn't much when you have to support a family and farm equipment. Now, $200/cow is on the low side I believe and 100 cows is probably only a bit below the average. But trying to take care of two or three kids on $25k/year is anything but rare. Try stealing $1,000 from a man who works the ground and see what happens! If you avoid prison, you will be lucky.

Now, to flip into the city and ask the same question.... Give a man a responsibility and say nothing to him of leadership and you will have a child with power. This is where that phrase about power and corruption comes from. Give a child a country and you will get a ruthless dictator. Fill that country with children and you will have civil war. Try to take that country back and you are France! Back on point, I really believe that education is the answer.

I've shot guns, even as a kid. I'm certainly not afraid of them. I suspect many city goers are. The only time they see them are when they see law enforcement or someone who is in a gang or the mob. That's not very encouraging to me. I believe that given some good gun safety classes for the general public, things will not be so anti-gun/gun-control oriented in the future. We have the 2nd Amendment for a reason. I believe in that reason.

FOSS

FOSS is an awesome philosophy that I inherently disdain, but in this particular field, I'm down with it! Free Open-Source Software is three parts. Free is self defining and most people know what Software is too. Open-source is a little foreign to most though. Every program, every script, every operating system (including windows) has what is called in the developer world "source code." It is the basic code that the programmers write each day at their jobs as they work towards whatever it is they are developing for their company. Linux is based on this philosophy.

Now, I am a libertarian. I'm a big believer in as much limitation of government as possible, privitization of as much of society as possible, and as much individual rights and ownership as possible. This is something of an paradox for me. For the reason of furthering technology in society, I applaud and support the idea.

"But, but but..???" I hear that WAY too much. "You can't do Microsoft!" is one that I hear often as well. The truth is you can. I ask why you would want to and that seems to get people confused. At that point, I try to explain a little bit of this blog. I'm not sure why, but people are so hesitant to change that they want to blindly defend Windows. I don't mind too much if someone wants to run windows. I really don't! I went Microsoft free for a while with success. I now run one windows box simply because a couple pieces of software that I consider essential were written natively in the windows environment. The box is scaled WAY down to run a simple and secure workstation. I run about 4 programs, one of which does NOT run off of the Linux box. The network environment is mixed and runs perfectly fine. But I would encourage you to
try Ubuntu or Fedora at the very least for a month and see how you like it. It's different, yes. But there is a joke among Linux developers - "You're running into virus problems? What's a Virus?"

Here's the inspiration: http://conversasdobruno.blogs.sapo.pt/372067.html

FINANCE!!!

I'm working on a simple and easy to understand financial post, but I've gotta get a graphic done before I post it. (It will make things a lot easier.)