Anyway, last Sunday, I went and traded the old phone for a new one, that supposedly had a hardware fix for the problem. At least I thought I got one of those phones. Right out of the box, the new phone actually performed worse than the original! I couldn’t swap it again, so I took it home and installed a “leaked” OS. This is an OS released by RIM (Research in Motion, the company that makes Blackberrys. Blackberry is not the name of the company) but not officially condoned by the wireless carriers. Well, the problem has gone down about 80-90%. I still have to thwock it, but not very often.

I have the applications I need, and they are working fine. I have it set up  the way that I like it, and this phone really does a lot for me, besides making and receiving phone calls. I would be hard pressed to be as effective in my life if I were to no longer have a Blackberry.

With everything going on in my life right now, I never had the time to pre-register, so I’m stuck in the long line of those dolts who also didn’t pre-register. Eh. It really doesn’t matter one way or the other to me right now.

So, if you’re in Olive Branch, Mississippi this weekend, drop on my the Whispering Woods Convention Center and say hi! I’ll be the tall, handsome guy with a Bawls bottle in his hand who is dressed like a regular human being.

I spent about half of it on a new phone.

Right after I was employed by my present company, I found out they have a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server). This means they can get my company emails to my Blackberry. They only approve of certain phones, and the iPhone is NOT one of them. So, I bought an 8330 Curve, and have enjoyed it for about 13 months now.

Last Wednesday, I went out and bought a new Storm 2. It has a touch screen that “clicks” when you press down on it to select what you’re touching. UPDATE: I finally beat Wordpress into submission and got an image of the Storm 2. Here it is:

UPDATE 2: I’ve had it now for 2 1/2 weeks, and I still think it’s the neatest thing since sliced bread. It has its idiosyncrasies, but I still think it’s great. I’ve installed several apps that make my life easier, and I think it’s just plain cool.

The teachers union balked when the school superintendent asked for 25 minutes a day work. The teachers were getting paid *3* times the median income of the district, and still had a 50% high school drop out rate. So, when the union said no, what do you think this lady did.

She fired the teachers. All of them. This lady has a pair of brass cajones the size of shotputs, and they go clang clang clang when she walks. I think I’m in love.

Now, why can’t we do that here in Memphis? I mean, just fire all of the teachers and start from scratch.

Too much effort is being wasted on those who don’t want to learn. Just get rid of those who don’t want to learn. Don’t give them a diploma, and they are not entitled to social services of any type. Let them starve. They don’t care about putting effort into themselves, so we shouldn’t put any effort into them either. I am sick and tired of watching the schools on the news to the point I have turned the news off. They try different flavors of the same failed formula and wonder why it doesn’t work.

Hitting the reboot button and starting over from scratch I think is the way to go.

First, I now have two jobs at work. They are intertwined, but I don’t have any free time any more at work for perusing the internet looking for interesting tidbits to comment here about.  The new job has actually crowded out the primary job for the time being. More staff has been hired, and hopefully my load will decrease over time, but right now I’m getting hit with 10-15 cases a day, each taking 30-60 minutes to fully process and close. Right now, I’m waiting on callbacks on 5 cases, which allows me the time I am using to update you.

Then comes other responsibilities. For one, I am following in the footsteps of my father, grandfather and at least one great-grandfather. I am in the process of becoming a Freemason. That requires time, because they don’t just wave a wand and go *POOF!* you’re a Mason. There are things you have to learn, things you have to know, and stuff like that. I’m sorry, but I can’t go into any more detail than that. 

And then there is Gamerz Depot. Yes, it’s still there, yes, I’m still pouring my heart into it to try and keep it alive.

I was counting the hours I’m doing everything throught the week, but I decided that sounded too whiny. I’ve made the choices to do these things, so I should either quit doing them or man up and shut up and do them. So, I’m shutting up and not whining.

I have the Flames of War Nationals coming up in 148 days, and I have to prepare for that. Painting (which has it’s own story), detailing, double checking details, making sure I have the right number of models on a stand (which if you have the wrong number of guys on a stand, you could lose the use of that stand, or worse yet, get you tossed out of the tournament. Yeah, these guys don’t dick around. They take their historical accuracy very seriously.

So, I am investing a lot of time in a lot of things. Some will pay off, some the results are still up in the air. All I know is I am very tired at the end of the day. I go to bed late, get up early and hard charging all day long. I’ve even taken to shaving my head at night just so I don’t have to spend the time doing it in the morning and saving myself about 15 minutes. When you have less than an hour in the morning to wake up, eat breakfast and groom yourself to look presentable, saving 15 minutes is a very big thing.

So, I’m done with my whine. I just wanted to say that I don’t have a lot of time for this anymore. I’m not stopping, but I’m not going to do 2-3 posts daily like I did when I started out. My life has moved on, and I have changed a lot over these past almost 8 years.

One of the concepts of recovery is when your illness is no longer the focus of your life. I have reached that point. My illness, while still present, is not the overiding force it was, that would drive me into the closet for 10-20 hours a week. I have filled my life with enough things, good and normal things, that I don’t have time for my illness any more. I hope to keep this blog as part of my life. It allows me to say things I cannot otherwise say. While not being quite anonymous, I can speak my mind and not worry too much about it. Anybody who wants to really dig can find out who I am, and I ask you not to do that. I don’t want to be “outed,” for that surely spell the end of this blog. I don’t want that to happen.

Let me sign off this post by saying that I have places to go, things to see and friends to make. I am no longer defined or confined by my illness. I am a person first, followed by many things like husband, father, and many more descripters before I get to “someone with Bipolar Disorder.” I’ll talk to you soon. As soon as I learn to give up sleep.

Well, I have been predicting this since 2005, and finally the rich Liberals have gotten tired of pumping cash into a failed and dying network. I don’t think it ever made it over 100 stations, although Memphis actually had an affiliate for about a year, WWTQ. They gave up after they couldn’t fit a piece of paper between their Nielson rating and zero.

I listened to them from time to time, but finally gave up. I listened to them just to hear what they were saying. But years of “Bush lied!” “Bush is a Nazi!” “Bush is EEeevil!” tends to grate on even the faithful after a couple of years.

Of course, the Liberals who ran it and supported it will blame Conservative talk radio. And everybody else as well. The reasons why Liberal talk radio failed are many and varied, and none of the reasons are their fault.

Let us hope that no more liberals without radio experience try to start it back up again. I would rather drill a hole in my head with a 1/2″ paddle bit than listen to any more Liberal talk radio. I’m sure there are tens of millions of Conservatives who feel the same way as I do.

Goodbye and good riddance.

There are a couple of other dirty tricks they could try, but I can’t think of them right off the top of my head.

Anyway, the most Liberal state in the Union, (guess who voted Democrat in Reagans 1984 49 state landslide) put a Republican into office. I don’t know enough about him to say he is a Conservative, because just because you are a Republican doesn’t automatically mean you’re Conservative and vice versa.

He is not against health care reform, but he is against this bill of health care reform. After the citizens of Massachusets have already suffered under a microcosm of what the national health care reform would be, they don’t want it, and I can hardly blame them.

Be happy, but don’t start celebrating yet. We still have a lot of work to do.

My deepest sympathies go out to LWC and all of the family and friends that surrounded Lauren.

I figured that if I drove up by myself, and stayed by myself, it would be right around $1,100. I can pretty much cut that in half if I go with one other person, and even more if I split it with others. So, since I don’t do debt, I’m doing it in cash, that I’m socking away some every payday. I missed last years Nationals because I would have had to go on my own, and I didn’t have enough time to save up. This time I’m doing it right, and I should make it.

Which means, I have to get on the ball and actually develop a good tournament list, and paint it, since it is a requirement that I use all of their vehicles and that they are all painted. I have about 27 weeks, so I should be able to get it done, since I paint at a glacial speed. I’ll have some examples up as soon as I think they are presentable.

I’ll get back on the ball soon, I’ve spent the last 11 days off work, and I am looking forward to going back to work so I can rest up from my vacation! It seems that I have more to do and work a lot harder on vacation than I do at my day job!