Attentions pirates: Booty time!
I’m taking my first vacation in over three years.
And the last full week I took off work was the day Connor was born. But at least I won’t finish this year with 105 accrued hours of unused vacation time like last year. And it didin’t roll over. Anyway Connor loves spending time with the baby. We have to be careful because he’s a little rough when he’s being playful. So far I’ve spent more time with him in the last few days than I have in the last month. I’m surprised every day by something he says. It’s hard to beleive I have a three year old that’s reminding me of things I’ve forgotten or overlooked. “Daddy you forgot your glasses” was the most recent as I pulled out of my parents driveway the other day.
Today he got to give his little brother his first bath at home. It was the cutest thing that’s ever happened at our house. Our next door neightbor “Mrs. Pat” came by to watch. She’s one of the best neighbors we’ve ever had. And Connor’s pre-school director from the church came by to bring us dinner. More of the congregation is scheduled to do the same for the rest of the week from what I understand. Which is good because Amy’s pretty tired as she tries to get adjusted to the babies schedule.
A really Good Friday.
On Good Friday, April 6th 2007 Logan Rider Singleton arrived. Amy did great. After just four hours of labor he was born weighing 9 lbs. 5 ozs. It started out rough because Amy went into labor fast and hard while walking around Shelly Lake with her mom. We weren’t sure if she was going to have the baby before having time to get an epidural. Once she got it everything was smooth sailing just like Connor’s delivery.
I don’t know if there was another baby at Rex Healthcare with a bigger fan base in the lobby. Hannah and Skylar got to see their new cousin get his first bath at about 9:30 pm. Connor was already asleep so he got to meet his little brother today. The rest of the day he kept telling me how much he loves baby Logan. We’re bringing him home on Easter Sunday.
How do you feel about Global Warming?
Personally I’ve felt guilty about the amount of energy I waste long before it became a media spectacle and a consensus of international scientist confirming we’re responsible for killing our own atmosphere. Amazingly there are still Neocons who swear the the problem doesn’t exist much less that humans cause it. My own father falls directly into this category. But like the majority of Americans I hear about it and think it’s terrible but do absolutely nothing to change my personal behavior.
I’m not paying extra for recycled paper towels, my company isn’t going to give me $3000 for buying a hybrid vehicle (the Timberland shoe company does) and I’m not going around the house unplugging all of my power supplies and battery chargers. In fact, if I had to turn off my desktop PC when I’m not using it you wouldn’t be reading this and I’d be paying a monthly fee for web hosting. In short, there’s no incentive.
I admit there’s a problem but I’m too selfish to sacrifice my personal desires and routines for universal positive gain. Welcome to America. This is precisely why our government is lax on the environment. There’s no monetary or political benefit to requiring corporations to implement expensive environmental controls. One suggestion I heard an environmental consultant recommend on a news program was “stop flying so much, use video and web conferences”. I’m sure the airline industry loves that idea. Again, where’s the national economic incentive? We don’t see where saving the atmosphere is going to provide anyone with a commission check. The only thing that governs America is money.
Until there are financial or personal incentives for individual Americans and corporations to cut back on greenhouse emissions it’s simply not going to happen. There’s not even social or cultural incentive. You’re stereotyped a “tree hugger” if you drive a hybrid or anything less than a 4-door SUV. The only reason Americans buy fuel efficient vehicles is to save money at the pump, not to stop emitting carbon atoms. It would be completely deceptive for us to tell the rest of the world we’re going to do our part to help when we have no intention of doing any such thing. It’s perceived to be too inconvenient, time consuming, expensive and socially embarrassing to be environmentally concerned in America. Yet we will give awards to the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, which is now required viewing in several European countries. Please enjoy American hypocrisy at it’s finest.
Fine Art. Finally.
Where would we be without the Internet? Still strolling through antiquated “modern” art museums looking at “interpretive” crap that could be mistaken for the homework of a 4-year-old, that’s where. Thanks to the web we can be introduced to art that would be worth traveling to see. Like the sidewalk chalk drawings of Julian Beever. “Striking” is my new word for the week and this art is the definition. Julian’s images can be over 30 feet long on the sidewalk but appear to be only three or four feet high in perspective. Crazy.
http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm
Holidays be gone.
After at least five Christmas celebrations our holidays are thankfully over. I took the last of the decorations down yesterday. We do four family Christmas celebrations each year, three of which are all out gift giving extravaganzas. It becomes quite tiring and old after about the second or third time.
Connor got a battery powered 4-Wheeler and now we will never have another living flower in the yard again. It rained on Christmas day so he spent the morning crashing it into the walls. It was a good but busy holiday season.
2006 Roundup.
Holy crap life has gotten routine lately. Hold on, I’ve got to go kill a spider for Amy. Okay, now that I’ve killed it she’s mad at me for not putting it in a cup and letting it go outside. What are we Buddhist now?
Where was I? The same ‘ol day to day going into 2007. I go to work, get harassed to solve other peoples problems, make 50 phone calls and come home to spin Connor around in the living room for 20-30 minutes before cooking and bed time. That’s it, every week day of my life. We do have the baby coming in a few months and Amy and I are real happy with everything. Bored but happy.
Despite managing the IT deployment of 21 new franchise and corporate facilities this year for 1-800-Pack-Rat I wanna do something that has a bigger impact with more personal satisfaction. So I decided to get my Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute. If I could eliminate the amount of “dead time” I spend during my work week supporting end users through routine tasks and providing basic PC instruction I could be designing some serious wide area networks, back-end server architectures (farms) and negotiating major telco contracts through agency.
That may not sound like fun to most people but it would mean a sense of accomplishment and money to me. The accomplishment part would come from acting as the agent for unsuspecting corporate primes who are routinely getting ripped off by integrators, telco vendors and even unskilled internal staff who allocate money for the wrong technology. I see it happen all the time and Executives are unable to determine right from wrong in the midst of disenting opinions. There are CEO’s of SMB’s out there who need unbiased assessments and I’d like to be the impartial voice helping to determine what will really take their company in the right direction, not boost the Integrators profit margins.
It’s easy to see why I got out of being a Consultant for a VAR relatively quickly back in 2000. As hard as I tried I couldn’t stomach proving unnecessary recommendations to clients on behalf of a sales rep knowing the same technologies could be implemented faster, more securely and cheaper (or free).
Now this is interesting…
For some reason this fact from Gullible Info really intrigued me once I thought about it for a minute:
“Due mostly to increasing life spans, the number of living people is set to overtake the number of people who have ever died by 2008.”
Brings to mind lots of questions for the next two hundred years like mandatory cremation?
Good night Connor.
Tonight Connor ate a huge bowl of spaghetti, went into our bedroom and fell asleep on “Daddies Bed”. I don’t know why it’s not Mommies and Daddies, but I’ll accept the honor of being the presumed sole proprietor.
A few minutes ago as I sat at my PC browsing the web for the perfect new watch (since I now own zero that work) I heard little footprints downstairs and someone calling my name (Daddy). I went to the bottom of the stairs and there was Connor who said “I forgot to give you night-night kisses Daddy”. So I sat on the steps for my big hug and kiss, after which Connor put his thumb in his mouth, cuddled his blanky and went down the hall back to bed.
This is what I’ve waited my whole life for. To be this important to someone, anyone, is the reason we’re all here. It’s not to become rich, famous, or recognized in elite social circles as the smartest guy in the room. Because no matter what kind of super star athlete or Pulitzer Prize winner some of us may become, I promise that you will never mean as much to anyone on Earth as you will your 3-year-old. And in turn your children will never mean as much as anyone else to you. So like I said, you want a reason for living, there it is.
There are many people with psychological conditions I don’t understand. Among these are religious fanatics, serial killers, and people who buy picture frames and hang them without removing the sample photos. But one that perplexes me a lot is people who are so into themselves, and their meager lives, that they make a conscious decision not to have kids. Not only do they not know what they’re missing, and never will, but it also seems they’ve lost touch with their natural reason for existing. I’ve done most of what I can with my life, and maybe there’s more to come, but anything that comes my way now is really my boys.
I once overheard a conversation between two associates during lunch about a father who left his four year old daughter standing on the side of a frozen pond while he dove in to try to save his other child who had fallen through the ice. Both the father and the child drown (it was national news last year). The guy without children argued he should not have done it because he should have thought about his other child. The other associate, who also has two boys, said “You’re obviously not a parent or you would know that man was going to save his child or die trying”. Which he did. – Good man.
Oh by the way, a black face Seiko Titanium Alarm Chronograph is on sale at http://wristzone.stores.yahoo.net/sna107.html.
It’s a boy!
And he’ll be here on April 3rd 2007 give or take 5 days. We’ve got ultrasound pics I need to scan this week and put on FLICKR. We still need to decide on a middle name for Logan Singleton. Connor’s going to have a brother. Something neither Amy or I had.