Intellectual Poison

We are celebrating a combination of Christmas and Jolly Days in my house today. I could elaborate but then I'd have to hunt you down like a Christmas goose and I don't really feel like doing any blasting today so I'll skip it.

Here is hoping 2009 wraps up nicely for you all and that 2010 ushers in a new age of prosperity, happiness and health for you all.

I know that 2010 is going to be a major roller coaster year personally, I just hope there are more ups than downs this year.

Things I'm looking forward to:
- Moving back to Santa Cruz
- Skydiving
- Spring training and baseball
- Better employment
- Teaching my boys how to ride bikes
- Competing in a triathlon with my wife
- Finding the "lost" route between Nisene and the Demo Forest
- Joining and riding with local mountain bike clubs
- Going back to New England to visit friends and family

I'm sure there will be more but this is a good place to stop for now. I hope everyone enjoys today, spends good times with family and remembers that today is less about spending money on people and more about spending time with those people.

Labels: new year

Went to CostCo with the whole family, braved the somewhat more frenzied crowd and then broke away to go for a bike ride.

Some things to remember. It is the middle of December and bound to be chilly in the woods, wear more than a light shirt and shorts. I knew I was going to be chilly for a bit and I was but I pedaled my way to comfortable and did two loops of lower Nisene before my surprised legs threatened multiple cramp rebellion and I headed for home.

I did see a guy leading three kids on bikes in the woods and was like, "Hell yeah, I can't wait to do that with my kids". And I can't.

Christmas is just around the corner. I'm looking forward to getting it over with so I can have more fun with my time off work. More biking, a bike for Sully, some projects, maybe find a new place to live, a new job and probably something else that no one's thought of.

Anyway, I'm hungry so I'm gonna drop kick this one and call it done. Happy Chrismahanukwanzuka.

It isn't a countdown this week, it is going to be a grind down. There is a three week break pending at the end of this week and a ton of work that needs to get done before it hits. And not enough man and woman power to get it all done which means some projects, even some high profile and important projects are just not going to get finished. Heck, some of them aren't even going to get started.

One of the hardest aspects of my current position, aside from having effectively, five bosses, is that my time on site is so limited and there are always fires to put out or other priorities that derail attempts to complete stagnant projects. And those stagnant projects get pushed a little further back each time they are shuffled off.

So much to do, not enough time to get it all done and sometimes that realization can paralyze me in the gates. Which project to pick up? Which project to ignore? Which teacher to wave off, which one to help? My job is nothing if not a constantly shifting mass of obligations, partially fixed problems, request for rights and scrounging up of parts because ordering them would take more than a month if the order actually passes through the freeze committee that has to approve of every single purchase.

In other news, it appears that I will come in second in our neighborhood football pool again. This will make the fourth or fifth week this season I've just barely missed the money spot. The upside to this is that I will likely move into first overall which would be okay with me so long as I can hold on to it for the overall win. Otherwise I paid a lot of money and didn't get jack squat in return. And I'm not really a fan of the jack squat when I want me some jack scratch, ya know?

We are engaged in the house hunting process trying to find a smaller house but closer to Santa Cruz. Reduction in monthlies is the goal but the secondary goal is to get closer to our friends, mountain bike trails and away from Watsonville which has never really made me feel totally comfortable and settled. And there is the whole pain in the ass of having to load up my car with my bike to get on some trails. I'm tired of that crap, for sure.

Anyway, time to get the lead out, do some software installs, make tech behave and then go do it some more at another school this afternoon. Can you tell how excited I am about this week? No? There's a reason for that.

Labels: break, football, holiday

Time to put my money where my mouth is, make my UFC 107 predictions public and see how I do after tonight's outstanding fight card is run.

Televised Bouts
BJ Penn vs. Diego Sanchez
Prediction: Penn
Reason: Sanchez is an animal and comes with a furious power but Penn is the kingpin in the lightweight division. I think this is going to be a great fight but I'm going with the champ.

Frank Mir vs. Cheick Kongo
Prediction: Mir
Reason: Kongo is pissed off at remarks Mir's said recently, he's going to come with some anger. But I think the basic fact is that Mir's jits is far better than Kongo's jits defense. I see a choke out or arm bar in this one.

Jon Fitch vs. Mike Pierce
Prediction: Fitch
Reason: Don't know Pierce but I do know Fitch and he is one of the toughest sumbitches in the fight game. He brings his A-game each time he fights and his A-game is pretty damned good.

Kenny Florian vs. Clay Guida
Prediction: Florian
Reason: I like Guida, everybody likes Guida but Florian is the better fighter. Period. Aside from Penn above, I think Florian is the class of the weight class.

Paul Buentello vs. Stefan Struve
Prediction: Struve

Preliminary Bouts
Alan Belcher vs. Wilson Gouveia
Prediction: Gouveia

Matt Wiman vs. Shane Nelson
Prediction: Nelson

Johny Hendricks vs. Ricardo Funch
Prediction: Hendricks

Rousimar Palhares vs. Lucio Linhares
Prediction: Palhares

DeMarques Johnson vs. Edgar Garcia
Prediction: Garcia

Kevin Burns vs. TJ Grant
Prediction: Burns

Update: I went 7-11 on my picks this time around and scored 173 points in the UFC Fantasy picks which was good enough for 112th place out of more than 20,000. Not too bad. And the fights were very, very good action almost all the way through the night. I wonder how Diego Sanchez's face is feeling today because looking at it post fight made me cringe.

Labels: mma, prediction, predictions, UFC

When it rains...water falls from the sky. When I create new words, they sometimes come in bunches. Here's a bunch.

Smarticle - smart article. Something you read that makes you think.

Of course, this leads us to a few other new words:
Starticle - a starting article, one that leads to a series of articles.

Sparticle - an article about Sparta or possibly an article about sparring.

Tarticle - an article about a tart or person of, uhhhhh, looser morals.

Hearticle - an article that deals with or tugs on the heart.

Barticle - an article dealing with Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) or Bart Simpson.

Of course, all new words posted are archived at my Fictionarium to make it easier for the Washington Post to come and steal them and pretend like they came up with them all by themselves. No, I'm not bitter.

Labels: nwotd

“Most look up and admire the stars. A champion climbs a mountain and grabs one.”

1. 95% of the people in the world say "Show me and I'll go do" Champions say "I'll go do and show the world"
2. You can make excuses or you can make money but you can't do BOTH!
3. Competition is a myth, the only true competitor of you is yourself. Stop comparing yourself or your success to others.
4. True forgiveness is saying "Thank you for giving me this experience" and being grateful for the growth and experience that it brought into your life.
5. While we can't deny the struggles and setbacks, neither should we be restrained by them.
6. Discipline will lead you from discomfort to comfort.
7. Excuses allow us to justify the reality that we have created.
8. Always bet on yourself
9. Vision without action is a dream.... Action without vision is a nightmare
10. Aim for the moon, even if you miss, you'll reach the stars.

Labels: motivations, work

Brrtter - bitter cold (the brrr part). The kind of cold that makes you think you'll shatter like a glass if something hits you.

Labels: nwotd

Any parent that leaves education to schools is doing a massive disservice to their kids. Children learn all the time and it makes good sense to make use of the time spent with your kids to teach them new skills or ways of thinking or even just how to relate what is around them.

With that in mind, here are a few ways to sneak in some education from this month's Parent & Child:
1. Hangman - teaches alphabet and spelling.
2. Destination Game - Choose a place and add words that sound like it. "I went to California and saw cows, cranes, coasters and castles."
3. What's the Total? - Have your kids guess the total of restaurant checks and grocery bills.
4. Tongue Twisters - Strengthens articulation and speech skills.
5. Dominoes - Numbers and problem solving.

There are actually six ways but I kind of think the sixth way in the magazine is semi-bogus (give your child a digital recorder and have them narrate their day). I guess I'll add my own sixth way to stealth teach your kids.

6. Ask your kid to tell you about his artwork and listen (i.e. don't interrupt) to his response.

There are other ways that I try to get my kids to think when we are spending time together. Like making up songs, trying to figure out why something is the way it is (why do trees grow upwards?) or making up stories together.

Something I heard a while ago that still sticks with me has to do with reading to your kids. Did you know that what you read is much less important than the fact that you do "read"? In fact, a study showed that illiterate parents who made up a story while looking at pictures in a book with their kids were able to impart the same educational value as reading the actual story. It is the interaction, the concentration and the time together that delivers the value. Read together even if you can't read this. Crazy.

Labels: education, parenting tips

Why would a man with all of this risk it all by a cheap fling (or ten) with another woman? I don't pretend to understand the rationalization of adultery and infidelity but then I have an automatic risk vs. reward calculator hard wired into my brain and the risk far, far outweighs any momentary reward where infidelity is involved. A momentary pleasure against that moment ever becoming public is a stupid risk.

So there is the near non-stop Tiger Woods' "accident" coverage on sports shows these days. The accident is looking less and less like a real accident and more like a crash while trying to flee a severely pissed off wife with a golf club. There has already been a pseudo-press event of Woods' alleged mistress arriving at LAX with celebrity whore/lawyer Gloria Allred by her side. There has already been the hiring up of big gun expensive lawyers by Woods himself. There have been discussions about the logic or illogic of the explanation of the accident and how there is simply no way Elin Nordegren would have been physically able to pull her husband out the back window from the front seat.

From the outside, Tiger Woods lives an amazing life. He's the best golfer ever, he's married to a pretty ridiculously smoking hot woman, he is the highest paid athlete in the world, he's got endorsements coming out his backside and really he can do almost anything he wants. But those are just appearances and the reality of his life, as we are learning, is not quite so idyllic.

His smoking hot wife may also be a nutcase vengeance driven scorned woman who attacked her husband upon finding out he'd been banging some floozie. The injuries sustained to Tiger's face are inconsistent (supposedly since he's gone all Greta Garbo since the accident) with a car accident and are supposedly a lot more consistent with a pissed off wife scratching and hitting you for being a cheating sleazebag.

And Tiger's latest statement will do little to ease his problems. Yes, he apologized for his transgressions but then he took the opportunity to take a swipe at the culture that made him rich beyond imagination because he "deserves" his privacy even though he's been constantly portrayed as a role model for kids. The problem with his mindset is that he wants it both ways, he wants accolades, fame, money and all the good stuff but doesn't see that there is another edge to the sword. You won't be able to get away with one without the other.

But yes, his marital infidelity isn't my problem, sure, I'm interested in it because I'm a married man and I am, or was, a Tiger fan even though I tend to find televised golf more tedious than trying to watch Glenn Beck without puking.

I don't get it and maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Labels: cheating, infidelity, role model