Jodag.NET

Jacob had his EEG test today. He is five years old, his teacher thinks he might have had a seizure at school

The instructions were to keep him up late (11pm) and wake him up early (4am) so he would fall asleep while the EEG was recording. The nurse scratched his scalp and attached electrodes. First they made him hyperventilate for a few minutes and watch a series of bright flashing lights. Then he fell asleep.

After all that was done the doc declared his results as normal. He did so well we hit up coldstone creamery.

You may remember a spanking I received a year or two ago at the SCVPA photo contest.  Time marches on, my tears have dried and my wounds have healed and I entered another local gallery’s photo contest.  As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I did much better this time around.  I entered five total photos and took first place and honorable mention in landscape category, as well as an honorable mention in the man-made scenery category.

Three new ribbons, 25 dollars cash money and a picture on the front page of the local newspaper.  I could get used to this high rollin’ lifestyle.  Small pictures of the pictures I entered are below, along with a shot of the dolla dolla bills I won.

I originally wrote a thought provoking post on big brain descriptions of each of the pictures, but I wrote that on my phone and somehow lost it.  Looking at these shots, I want to get back up to Bodie to do some more lens work as the place is just teeming with potential shots.  Even better I’d like to work there for a season and see all shots the behind the closed doors.  I obviously am getting back to Death Valley this year, once the temperatures are a bit more benign.

It feels good to get some applause for the shots I put up, we’ll see if this starts anything big.

It was announced today that the remains of Lt Cdr Michael “Scott” Speicher have been located and returned home. He was the first American casualty during the first gulf war when he was shot down over Iraq.

I remember when he was shot down, and the stunning realization that despite our technological prowess and military power, good men and women still die in war. He was mentioned in no less than two state of the union adresses, his status changed from KIA to MIA to captured over the years and now his remains have been found and he can be laid to rest.

I am so godamned proud of the military that kept looking and almost two decades later found him. I hope our young PFC who has recently been taken hostage in afghanistan stays strong long enough for someone to get to him out safely.

Welcome home Lt Cdr Michael “Scott” Speicher, rest in peace.

Lots of new stuff.

http://jodag.net/Media/Movies/mystary.wmv

Direct link, rather than embedded due to IE’s failure to respect HTML standards.

So, for 5 years I have been on satellite Internet. For those who are unfamiliar with this concept, it blows. The latency is obscene, which makes any form of online gaming impossible and the speeds are equivalent to that which you would see from a tortoise with only two legs, both of which are broken. The price is 70 a month, you can only download 375 megs per day and you are responsible for paying technicians to fix your trash when it doesn’t work.

To put it simply, the satellite Internet company knows it has you by the short hairs. Their customer service sucks, prices are atrocious, policies make it worthless and speeds make it only a slightly better solution than dial-up. Five years is a long time and technology advances.

Because of this, today I get to call and cancel. A friend of mine cancelled his service with direcway / hughesnet once. The end result sucked for him.

He was having tech support issues and used cancelling as a bluff to see if they would help him out. He told the guy on the phone, “if you aren’t going to fix it (the problem he was having) I’m going to cancel my service” the customer service tech replied, “then you’ll have to cancel”. Jared cancelled right there and then, his bluff was called.

To make things even better, after only a minute or two, Jared said fine, I’ll pay for a tech to fix it, just send one out. He was told since he no longer had an active account, he would have to pay the account reactivation fee and pay for the tech.

WWAN has finally caught up to my little slice of real estate though, and satellite is no longer the only option. I can’t wait to terminate my relationship with these idiots.

Ps. This is my first post from my iPhone. I love technology.

I seem to have had an odd effect on my last two employers.  You may remember in April of ‘04 as Interplay was seemingly in the final throes of a long, drawn out death I quit.  Mainly because I had my current job lined up and finally ready to start, but also because they were bankrupt and bouncing checks.  So, I received my final paycheck and the very day I received it, I tried to go cash it at my company’s bank.

After some snickering and muffled laughter the teller gives me my check back with this neat little NSF (Non-Sufficient Funds) stamp on it.  Eventually I did get it paid sucsessfully, but it was just a delightful way to end four or five years of employment with them.

You can read a bit more about that here.

Now, seemingly happily ensconced in my current job there’s economic turmoil coming to find me here as well.  The good Governor has seen fit to cut everyone’s paychecks by 10% starting next month and all sorts of other fun ideas.  Whether or not that’s necessary isn’t anywhere near my scope of practice or knowledge so I’m not going to get into that.  I will say that I personally believe that unions can be a huge portion of the problem.  Unions protect the jobs of those who don’t perform their work adequately and demand equality in pay for the entire range of competence in job performance, instead of being based on merit.  Honestly, I respect Arnold for what he’s trying to do here.  I think the unions are too strong though, and stay strong by feeding off of California’s carcass.

We’ll see what happens there, but again like in April of ‘04 I’m beginning the job hunt process again.  I can stick it out here just fine, but my job has recently lost most of its appeal, nothing to do with the budget.

Speaking of money though, in other worrisome news I am either getting audited or have a fan at the IRS recently.  The last five days of visits to jodag.net include some visits from everyone’s favorite federal agency.

Hopefully it’s a fan.

I met up with a very old friend of mine, Vu Bui who I haven’t seen in about 4 years.  He asked me, “So no more APM’s?”  I had to explain to him how it has been more of a posting malaise, since I have been keeping active these last few months, just not writing or documenting much (any).  I’ve also had a few things that I’ve wanted to write about but I’ve just been reluctant to.

Blank.

I’ve heard it said that all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.  If there’s a need and you have the capacity to fill the need and do nothing, you bear the responsibility for that failure.

Blank.

I respect Hugh’s spirit of adventure and hope to be half that spry when I reach his age.  Thank you Vu for forcing me to write again.  It feels good, though I may take this down if I even put it up.