A wise man once said, you never know who you are until you get fired.  Not sure who said that first, but I’ve heard that saying before.  People always say, you really find out who you are when you get fired and have to scramble to survive.  Well, truth be told, I wasn’t fired because I’m still employed by my consulting company, but I was “let go for budget reasons” at the place I was consulting.  So, not really fired, but let’s say I worked for a different consulting company, I’d be out on the street looking for something new and would have to face a bunch of crappy consequences.

Ok, not the same thing, I know, but my point is, I always kinda thought, everyone eventually gets cut, fired, or something like that over a career, and I always feared that day.  So when I got the news, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t give a crap.  I mean, it sucks to leave, it sucks to not be working and all that, but I guarantee, within a week, I’ll be working somewhere better, doing better work, learning new things… without a doubt because the company I work for is looking out for me.

Still more, what’s even better is that if they DON’T find something for me, my wife and I are finacially stable and she “sells” people with my skills, so she could find me something fast and I’d make even more money and she’d make money on my money…

Strange how this “firing” has opened my eyes.  I always feared this day, but now that it’s here, I wish it had happened a long time ago :-)  It’s just good to know that I’m in a good place right now and that I have a good career path, a good company behind me and a good wife behind me.  Working is actually kinda fun when you don’t care about getting canned

Well, it’s been several years since I would have considered myself a phone-whore, but now I can clearly remember why I used to be.  Of course, by phone-whore, I am referring to the fact that I used to buy a $300+ phone every single year because of the advances in technology and all of the cool new tools and goodies that came with it.  It all started with the Star-TAC.  I paid $350 for that thing.  Hard to believe when you look back.

Anyway, when I met my wife, I kinda stopped being such a kid and I eventually stuck with my Treo 650 for about 4 years.  It was a great phone and I really had no reason to get rid of it.  After a while though, I started losing reception and missed calls and dropped calls like crazy.  I had also just gotten into this freakin’ car accident and had completely covered the Treo in my blood so I thought it was a good idea and a good time to upgrade.

Well, this was the first phone I had every actually bought without researching.  I randomly decided to stop by the Sprint Store and saw the HTC touch.  I knew nothing about it, but it caught my eye and eventually took my full attention.  I played with it for no more than 5 minutes before they called my name, and I was already sold.  I didn’t actually “play” with it, I simply checked the specs and some of the control panel options and networking options and I all of a sudden couldn’t live without it.

The sad thing is that the next day I was floored by all of my concussion issues and I literally could not physically walk to go get my phone, let alone find the desire or any more interest in it.  It sat on the counter uncharged and unused for 5 or 6 days.  I didn’t even check for missed calls, let alone play with it or set anything up. 

Well, needless to say, I eventually picked the damn thing up and fell back in love.  It was a little difficult to start using because it was my first Windows Mobile phone and it was the first phone packed with all these goodies.  When I finally started figuring things out and using it like I should be using it, I couldn’t figure out how I had gone so long without a new phone and why I hadn’t known more about this one.

There’s still a LOT I’m not using on it and a lot that I don’t know about it.  I don’t even know how/where to get free apps for it yet and I don’t know of any hacks or anything, but here’s what I know and what I use:

It’s 4 oz.  It’s so much lighter than the Treo.  Seems weird, it’s only 2.5 oz lighter, but you can really tell.  It’s also  1 oz less than the iPhone.  It’s a half inch shorter than the Treo and iPhone and it’s about the same thickness of the iPhone (almost .5″ less than Treo).  It’s the same width as both.  This isn’t necessarily a GOOD thing because you lose screen real-estate compared to the iPhone, but it’s better on the pocket-space/purse-space if you’re a chick.

The Battery life really suffers compared to the others, especially the iPhone.  I have a AC/DC power charger though so I almost always have it externally powered.  It’s USB powered too, so when I hook it to my PC, I’m getting charged as well.  Not sure if the iPhone is. 

There’s a measly 152MB of built-in memory which is a big step up on the Treo, but it’s about 7.9 GB short of the iPhone.  However the iPhone is stuck at 8 GB, where the other two use SD slots.  The Touch uses microSD.  I have a 2GB in there now and that’s plenty for now.

It has Bluetooth like the others, but I had never really used the Bluetooth stuff on the Treo before.  I already have everything running with Bluetooth now and I absolutely love it.  Bluetooth deserves it’s own post though.  This version of the phone (CDMA) can’t use WiFi, which kinda sucks.  The iPhone can.  The Sprint people told me it could, so that bugs me even more, but then again, that’s something I don’t think I’d use that much.  EVDO is fast enough for what I do methinks.

It uses Windows.  Not PALM… not APPLE.  I’m not THAT much of a Widows fanatic, but I despise the other two greatly, so I’m thrilled to have Windows Mobile 6.  It’s also got built in GPS.  Sprint hasn’t come up with the software for this yet, so you can’t really use it unless you pay for the proprietary Sprint services.  Oh well, I’ll have this for a while and I’ve heard that this will be release 1st quarter (Sprint peeps said that).  Can’t wait, but the Map features in Windows Live are awesome enough without it.

So anyway, enough with the comparisons.  There are goods and bads as compared to the others, but this is what makes me love the phone regardless of why I did or didn’t do this on my Treo and regardless of whether other phones do this or not:

It’s my first Windows Mobile phone for starters.  I love that fact how this seamlessly integrates with all of my Office tools at work and home, mainly Outlook.  This is the first time I’ve ever been completely synched.  I have integrated all of my contacts from all of my email services (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, work and home) into my phone and then back to each of the sources.  My contact lists are now all the same.  They’re not truley synched, but I can synch them manually when I want, but the bottom line is that my phone as ALL of my contact info and so does my laptop’s Outlook.

Aside from that, I also have all of my email integrated into the phone now.  So now, when I get hotmail, gmail, work, comments from here, text messages, or Instant Messages, I know right away.  I also have all of my personal calendars and work calendars synched.  I know that sounds trivial, but the further along in my career and the further along in my family life (The older I get), the more I will live and die by these features.  I haven’t been late to a meeting and or doctor appt and I haven’t forgotten that I need to do this or that after work, etc.  I’m excited now when the alarm rings and says “Wake up, you have an 8:00 this morning”.

I love the touchFlo.  For those that don’t know, this is something that iPhone has and seems to do well.  It’s really nothing more than a flash way to browse.  For instance, you slide your finger up and it pulls up a menu, or you slide right and left to scroll through pictures or you slide it in a circle to zoom in and out.  There aren’t many buttons on this phone, so this helps make things easy to navigate without scrambling through menus.

I love the way Windows Live Search works.  I’ve always been a Google Maps mark but this map software for the phone is awesome with the driving directions and the way you can navigate and zoom on the turns and destinations.  I love the Sirius player I installed to DEATH.  Since my car has been in the shop for 25 days and still has 10 to go, I’ve been using my phone to listen to Howard and Bubba on Sirius on the ride to work.  I love Sprint TV, but not nearly as much as the Slingbox mobile software where I can actually control and stream my physical components at home (I can power on and watch my cable or Replay TV on my phone…  freain’ awesome). 

I love the mini USB.  It’s nice and easy to hook up to the PC.  It comes with a splitter so you can power it and use the headphones at the same time (the headphones are USB too).  There is an adapter for a 1/8″ headphone jack too.

I don’t like that Sprint has “disabled” the GPS, or that they haven’t done whatever they need to do for us to use the GPS chip on non-Sprint software.  I don’t like there isn’t a keyboard option like what I’ve seen on the iPhone where the numbers get larger when you press them so you can make sure you’re hitting the right key before release your finger.  I also don’t like that there’s no WiFi and I don’t like that I don’t know anything about the new features and hardware on the phone so I can’t use it for more stuff :-)  For instance, I don’t know how to use it as a modem for my phone (without paying for the Sprint add-ons) and I’m struggling to figure out  how to synch via Bluetooth dongle.  I think that’s an ActiveSync issue though, not my phone.

All in all, I love the phone, as you can clearly infer from my comments and I’m not biased in any way other than the fact that I didn’t like Palm’s OS and I don’t like Apple :-)  Really though, the phone is great.  I strongly recommend it for anyone.  I got it for $250 after rebates and would have paid more for it.  Do your research though unlike I did.  I would have still gotten this, I’m sure, but there’s plenty of info out there.  Enjoy.

 If I can pull another excuse out of the bag as to why I haven’t been here lately, I’ll take my best shot.  Here are some quick pics of what I’ve been up to lately

 I was driving home a few weeks ago, and I was no more than 1/2 mile away armed with a few  movie rentals to enjoy with my wife in front of the fire on a night without children.  It had started snowing about an hour before, but only about 10 minute prior, it started coming down really hard.  There was maybe 1/2 inch to a full inch of fresh snow on the roads, but from what I felt in my Pathfinder, it was still smoothe sailing.

I vaguely remember thinking how glad I was that my car was so “safe”, with the slip protection control, the automatic 4×4, the really-good-anti-lock breaks, the fact that it’s big, etc.  It completely slipped my mind that other people may not have that same luxury. 

The road I was on was straight, flat, and otherwise, completely safe.  There were a few side roads with stop signs, and I know the road like the back of my hand.  I noticed the car to my right, ahead of me, pulling up to the stop sign, but by the time I noticed that they weren’t stopping, the car was only about 15 feet in front of me, and I was going 30-40 mph on snow —BOOM.  I had just enough time to cut the wheel hard to the left, which at least kept me from smashing her driver-side door; I hit more of the front-end, which I would imagine saved her a LOT of pain.

After impact, I apparently spun across 4 lanes, 2 oncoming, and luckily no one hit me.  I don’t remember that, and I don’t remember the airbag or anything up to getting out of the car and calling for help.  I remember calling my wife and saying “I got into an accident, don’t worry, I’ll call you with details”.  I knew I was bleeding like crazy from my head and would be going to the ER, but I figured if I got into a wreck, I certainly don’t want her driving out here to come see me.

Since I was only 1 minute from home, she decided to come check on me and help me. Based on how she perceived the situation and the clarity of my voice when I called her, she was a little shocked to see me on a stretcher, tied down, in neck and leg restraints with blood completely covering my face.

Here I am in the ER.  I took this picture of myself after I got stictches in my hairline and after the blood was cleaned up.  You can still see some smeared across my forehead and on the bed, but most of the carnage was gone at this point…  about 6 hours after we were admitted :-/.

Here’s my  Pathfinder.  ~$16,000 in estimated repairs at this point.  Looking to get it back at the end of Jan (40 days total).  I sure hope they do a good job, I don’t want to have keep taking it in for more repairs :-/

Here’s my leg.  I remember in the ER saying that my legs “kinda” hurt.  I had no idea how bad they were until the next day.  This bruise ended up taking over my entire left leg at one point.   The knot was about the size of a baseball.  It’s still there.

Just at the time that I was able to start winding down the painkillers and muscle relaxers and start moving around a bit, I got the flu.  Just in time for the holidays.  On top of all that, apparenly I had some sort of post-concussion syndrome or whatever that was causing me to be lathargic, depressed, nausious, weak, dizzy, and all that good stuff.  I’m surprised at this point that I don’t have bedsores from all the time I spend just laying down or sitting. 

You always think “I can take care of myself”, at least I always do, and you probably can take care of yourself, but it’s times like this that really make you feel thankful for your friends and family, and especially your spouse if you have one.  I’ve never really been in a bad accident before; there’s just a lot of stuff you don’t think about that needs to be taken care of.  Getting things out of your car, talking to the police, driving you around, getting medicine, getting a rental car, talking to the insurance companies, etc. 

Thank God for my wife or I might still be on the side of the road.

Without thinking too much, I’m trying to remember when the last time I wrote a post or even came to this site to check stats, comments, or anything.  It escapes me.  At some point, I fell into a huge slump and a nasty rutt where I hardly even checked email, let alone had anything to do with a blog.

I’m not sure what happened to me, but I completely lost every desire to do any kind of personal work.  Some sort of depression I suppose, but I’m no shrink.  I even pulled the plug on my Adwords campains that were making me [some] money.  The weird thing is that I didn’t check any stats or any income numbers at ALL since my last post.  I completely abandoned it.

Well, I looked today and almost had a heart-attack.  Of course, what do I expect.  I was somewhere around 3million on Alexa for this site and something like 7million on one of my others.  The other is unranked, lol.  It’s just silly, because I was getting to a point where things were starting to run smoothly, and I just jumped ship.  Who knows.

So here I am, back for another go.  It may take me a bit to get back into a steady groove, but I’m going to try.

If you haven’t guessed, I’ve been spending every waking hour cleaning and organizing the house and yard.  Today we have a real-estate agent coming by to tell us how much money we think we can get from our house.  Anything more than $350k and we’re gone.  We have until the end of the day to secure a contract on the lot we’re wanting to build on, so we’ll have about 2 hours to figure out the numbers and make an offer.

Anyway, needless to say, it’s could get very difficult for me to blog if things start moving forward.  Perhaps the theme of this blog will take a turn toward home-building

In a selfish attempt to sell our house, I’m posting the details here :-)  We’re getting ready to break ground on our new house, so we’re trying to sell our current house.  We’re trying to sell it ourselves for a few months, then we might have to look into agents :-/

Click the image to see the actual posting.

Price: $364,200
Est Payment: 1,794/month
Chandler Ct, St Charles MO, 63303
4 Bedrooms, 3 Bath
2080 sq ft upstairs, approx 1000 downstairs

PROPERTY HIGHLIGHTS:

Man I’m glad I wasn’t there.  My wife and daughter went though and had a blast.  Not for me!!!

This is a few clips from… ummm… Nobody’s Perfect, from Hannah freakin Montana.  Enjoy!


Here’s a quick little montage of stills.

–Edit
Dang, youtube sucks the quality right out og the video. Oh well, the originals are here.

I never thought I’d live to be this old.  I’m 30.  I don’t feel any different…  but that doesn’t change the fact that I already hate being 30.  Nothing like getting old, fat, and ugly year after year.

I still play games like crazy though and I still love acting like a kid.  Even though half of the time, I’m in pain the next day.  Just like my parents, I try to explain to our daughter how lucky she is to be a kid.  I don’t have [m]any regrets in life, but damn, I’d still do anything to be 7 again with all the wisdom I have now.

I got a ton of beer… some Fat Bastard wine, some Hypnotiq alcohol, a broken golf club, a huge party, and a 22 or 24 inch monitor (whichever I can afford with all my gift certs).  It sucks that there was a “30″ attached to it, but I guess it was kinda cool to have a birthday party for the first time in 9 years.  I don’t remember much of that one either

When the heck did I become a BOWLER?!?!  I just started wondering this last night after I bowled in my ”other” bowling league. 

Six months ago, my daughter had never been bowling, my wife had maybe bowled 2 or 3 times, and I hadn’t bowled in over 10 years.  Then one random Sunday, we decided to go bowling.  To my surprise, the two of them loved it.  I love anything that I can feel competitive in, so of course I loved it.  We decided to go again the next week.  Since then, we’ve only missed maybe 2 Sundays out of about 24.  On top of that, my wife and I have been slipping out on most Wednesdays too to play.  All three of us now have our on balls, bags, and shoes.

The natural progression, simply put, was to join a league right?  Yes, eventually, we decided to start playing in a league every other Saturday.  My wife and I, my mother-in-law, and a friend.  So now we all play “for real”. 

But that wasn’t enough.  The company I work with started a bowling league, and I just HAD to join that too.  So no I also play every other Tuesday in a league.

I got a 225, 190, and 186 in one league… and a 220, 190, and 268 in the other!  The 268 looked like this (note the only spare was actually a gutter, then I hit all 10 for the spare):

When the heck did I become a BOWLER?!?!

I recently got to try two more of the Unibroue beers.  I posted earlier about the Ephemere beer, which was outstanding.  These two actually tasted very similar to each other, but nothing like that one.

These both tasted very…  Belgian.  Almost like a heavier, fuller and much more alcoholic version of Fat Tire.  The Chambly was more smooth and less bitter than the Maudite, but it was the Maudite (translated to “Damned”) that really took the crown.  It’s a got a nice 8.5% alcohol kick to it :-)  These are 24 ouncers too, so it doesn’t take much to tie one on here.  Trying both of them one after the other really does the trick :-o  Dang, maybe that’s why they tasted so similar.  I was already drunk when I got done with the Maudite!

Well, probably not, my constitution is pretty strong at this point when it comes to beer.  Anyway, I suggest you give these a try.  Actually, so far, all of the Unibroue beers have been impressive.

Enjoy, and um, drink responsibly.