This is a Crazy Time

Hi Everyone…

This has been, and continues to be, a very crazy time for me.  I have lots of my own projects that I need to work on, as well as work I need to do for some of my clients, and more things I need to accomplish for my employer.  To top that off, my mother (who provides her great child care services for our son) is vacationing in the Virgin Islands.

As a result, I am spread as thin as tin at the moment.  That’s why I haven’t been blogging too much or on Twitter and other social networking websites a great deal, recently. I’m just too busy.

I do have a whole long list of articles that I want to post, as I am still actively running the Web Design and Development group at Google Groups.  I have contributed quite a bit to the group over the years and want to archive my most helpful posts/articles here.

I am also trying to learn a few new things, as well.  Flash would be just one of them.  I have been putting-off learning Flash far too long.  I think that if I can just get a handle on drawing and tweening in Flash, I will be able to do what I need.  Unfortunately, Flash looks quite spectacularly different than any other vector drawing or frame animation graphics program that I have ever used before.  And the tutorials I am taking are the absolutely most boring peices of junk that I have ever seen in any kind of design or artistry textbook (usually I love reading these things).

I bought an HP notebook for my wife for Christmas and was so jealous that I almost bought one exactly like it for myself.  It’s a good thing I didn’t because I found a Sony Vaio VGN-AW125J laptop with a full keyboard, full 1080p Hi-Def screen and a CD/DVD/Blu-ray player & burner.  Although I couldn’t ask for a better computer, Sony is having great difficulty getting me a decent battery.  The first one would only charge to 80% and drains quickly, and the replacement battery that I received yesterday only seems to charge the battery up to 79%.  So I am starting to get very disappointed and angry with Sony. My family and I actually spend quite a bit buying Sony products.

Please note that although I would prefer to buy American for most of our stuff, Gateway & Dell have failed me miserably, before.  So I am truly puzzled when this Sony Made-In-China laptop can’t perform as required straight out of the box.  But Dell, Gateway, Compaq & HP products are all coming out of Taiwan or some other foreign country, anyway.  So it’s not like I could buy American, the US doesn’t make anything, anymore.  Even American cars and trucks could well have been made in Mexico or Canada.

The state of the economy is absolutely sinful.  And the financial institutions did this to us.  And they did it on purpose in the name of profit.  Greed corrupts.  It always will.

I am truly thankful that President Obama is finally in office.  I am very pleased with his performance so far.  I am not pleased with the senate & house who are either to inept or feeble minded to cut the pork out of the bail-out bill.  It kills me that the senate is crying about the pork and does nothing but attach its own.  No one seems to even be pondering the ridiculously heavy burden we are putting on our kids.

So I am not at all happy with how the bail-out has been going, and feel infuriated at how it has been handled.  Especially the mismanagement of banks and financial institutions who have been ripping-off the public for years on end.  And we have no options, we have no choice but to trust banks.  And yet, they stiff us at every single turn.

Bank executives are making millions for failure while I am still in the poor-house as a productive freelancer and employee.  I barely make anything and often pay double the taxes for my freelance projects because I am “self-employed”.  My own bank is wasting millions and I will be addressing that very soon by transfering accounts to a different and much smaller FDIC insured bank that I can trust.

The country was run by a moron and his moronic administration for 8 years now, and it is simply falling into the gutter.  The rich are richer and drunk as hell with unchecked power, peeing all over the rest of us.  There is no way that Bernie Madoff should have been able to steal 50 Billion dollars.  But he did because the government looked the other way.  WTF?

I am absolutely sick of this pork barrel attitude and the ineptness of our government.  And while I realize that President Barak Hussein Obama had absolutely no part in building the situation that he was left with, he is still holding the bag at a time when everything is so bad that he may get blamed with the predicament despite his hardest efforts because the government itself is so positively and absolutely broken and non-functional.

But today is a time to enjoy the blessings of my family.  It is a wonderous time because tonight my 8 year-old son will try to become a Black Belt at Songhamn Taekwondo.  Whether he accomplishes it or not doesn’t actually matter to me.  Sure, I will be very proud of him if he does, but I will be just as proud of him for trying if he doesn’t test-out as a Black Belt.  I know that he will be a Black Belt at any time, now.  When doesn’t really matter.

We put Max in the Taekwondo program at Hoover’s Martial Arts (in the Western Mall in Sioux Falls, SD) as a Tiny Tiger less than 4 years ago.  He was excited about it then, as he is now.  In fact, we have given him several chances to leave the program, but he really enjoys it and is anxious to attend each class.

Although almost certainly a great deal of pride comes from this impending great accomplishment, no matter when it actually occurs, the thing that I am the most proud of is that Max made this happen on his own.  It really is his accomplishment, not ours.

There is a little something more to add to this, as well.  Because taekwondo has been extremely good for Max.  It hasn’t just helped with his coordination and control, but it has actually enriched him as a person and taught him discipline.  Obviously, his instructors deserve a great deal of credit for inspiring him and instilling this capacity for discipline in my son.  But Max also deserves an even larger portion of the credit for understanding and utilizing the tools he was armed with through their teachings.  He was, afterall, open minded enough to absorb what they taught him.  And he is intelligent enough to understand it it, as well.

The truth is that Max’s attitude was just starting to becoming a bit of a problem when we enrolled him in the taekwondo class.  The classes gave Max direction and focus.  He’s stopped behaving like a little boy, and more like a big boy who understands responsibility.

We still struggle to keep Max from becoming a “spoiled little brat”, every parent does.  Although his taekwondo classes offer a great deal of guidance towards that goal, it also functions as a platform on which our minds can connect when discussing life’s lessons and choices.

Because as Max has told me, we have choices.  He knows he can choose to have a good day or a bad day, to be a good boy or a bad boy.  And I am proud that he has a history of making good choices.  That’s what life is all about, trying to become a righteous man.

With all that going on, I really have been busy.  I certainly wish Max all the luck in the world, although he is so skilled I am comfortable that he won’t need it.  I do hope that the government wises up and just passes what is required.  I know something needs to be done right away, but if they give away the horse and the cart too my son will be paying for that mistake because they will mis-manage it again, just as they always do.  History continues to repeat. Why doesn’t anyone learn from this?

Stupidity still abounds.  Even my own x-senator, a minority leader, can’t pay his taxes after making millions?  Don’t get me wrong, I like Daschle, he helped us out, he did some great work.  But he can’t pay his dang taxes when I have to?

ARGH!

What is wrong with this government?  Too much, I’ll tell you!  I just hope Obama will bring change, or we are truly doomed.

WE NEED SOME DAMN LEADERSHIP, RIGHT NOW.

Anyways, I had to make it a point to stop and post something to the blog, it has been way too long since my last post, and this is a very crazy time.  I am extremely busy.  I am proud of my son, yet extremely shameful of my government.  And I’m really, really sick of buying crappy computers.

But now, I have to get back to work…

Take care & be cool!  -Doug