My sister had her kid last night after a very long day of labor! Ashton was born @ 7lb 11oz around 8pm yesterday. I am going to head out Austin later today to go meet the new nephew.

Love graduation time as commencements seem to populate the internet. JK Rowling at Harvard had some insightful words about failure:

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

You can watch and read the entire speech here

Before and after.

OK, I try not to bitch about work since my super-secret blog is not as anonymous as it used to be and a couple of co-workers do know about it. That aside, let the bitching begin:

Last week I moved cubes (not much of a move, 2 down) to get away from some noise and from a loud neocon who sat across from me. As of today there are now 2 consultants in the cube beside me. One is on the phone all day to other clients and the other is a … wait for it… loud neocon. He also wants to move the entire shop to Java. This from a guy hired as a BA. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! All I need now is for him to talk about how much he loves Jesus and Pat Robertson and he’ll have broken all the social taboos in one day.

Seriously, if you are a consultant, you should work your ass off not to offend and do a good job. Your coming in because management can’t get their shit right and you’re being paid a lot for the same work as the people around you but your input matters more and you won’t have to clean up the mess you made. So don’t be a giant flaming asshole when you do it, … k?

Today, I had a kid.
Well, if anything happens to Brian and Aimee then I have a kid. I am not pulling for that but if something does then then goddaughter moves to real daughter status. So welcome Brooklyn Marie Lazenby!
I assume being my god-daughter comes with a lot of pressure. Naturally I expect any plans I have for world domination, you’ll be all-in. You’ll probably be an honorary general or something in charge of my armies once I get those together. But until that happens, I figure we need to outline the godfather duties. A quick Wikipedia search informs me that I am sponsor your baptism. If you were born a little Jewish boy, then we’d have an issue but I think I can handle baptism.
So I figure beyond the baptism and being on-call if something happens to the folks, I will fall back to the cool uncle status that I’ve been perfecting for years. Try to stay hip enough to relate and keep the channels of communication open. I don’t have to be the heavy but if I think you are headed down a dangerous path, I’ll call you out on it. I’m all ears if anyone out there has any other tips for a new godfather or goddaughter. And I think she definitely takes after me.Brooklyn

OK, I celebrate 4/20/02 as the birthday of v1 of this blog. It was 6 years ago that I started blogging on a semi-regular basis. A few years back, I had to go underground for anonymity sake but I can proudly say the quality did not increase one bit!

I requested today off a couple of weeks back. Was planning a guys’ weekend trip but that fell through. So I thought I would unwind, run some errands, basically TCB. Well, my tags expired back in January so I thought I would take care of that. Well last night a tornado rips through Little Rock and takes down power lines, etc. Certain neighborhoods don’t have a single working red light. And of course the Revenue Dept where I would go to renew my tags is out of power. So they ship me downtown where I wait an hour to get assessed. Well the huge downtown facility does not have a treasurer so I can’t pay there. I’d have to go to place #3. At that point I bail and decide I’ll take care of it when power gets restored to my normal Revenue Dept. BTW, Arkansas has the most f’d up personal property taxes. Anything with a license get taxed. I may be a bleeding heart but I can tell you that politicians are self-involved assholes and don’t deserve the right to touch my Benjamins.
Then I come home to check on some finance and find a $70 charge to my credit card from TLG*EverydayValue. I don’t know how these fucking scumbags got my credit card number but I know damn well that I did not sign up for their service. I called Chase and the guy knew immediately how to fix the problem, ‘unsubscribe’ me, and refund the amount. I am about to mail off taxes. Hopefully that will go smoother.

I should have just gone into the office today.

Feb 17 -22 I travelled out to Utah to see my family and get in some snowboarding. Had a blast and thought I would give a day by day recall for my memory as much as anything else.

Day 1 (Feb 17-18): I have a friend who works at the Little Rock airport who hooks me up with buddy passes when I travel for personal reasons. This made my round trip airfare to Dublin last year $250 (on 4 days notice). I paid $150 to go from Little Rock to Charlotte to Phoenix to Salt Lake City. The “exciting” part is flying standby and out of all standby passengers I rank last to get on the flight. I woke up at 4am CST to make my 6:05 flight from Little Rock to Charlotte. Woke myself up once on the flight with the sound of my own snoring. Yeah, I have become that guy on the flight who sleeps and whose snoring keeps the other passengers awake. With a tight connection in Charlotte, I made it to Phoenix OK. Once in Phoenix, every flight to SLC was oversold. Looking at the prospect of spending the night at an airport (keep in mind it was about 1:30 in the afternoon), I decided to rent a car and see a bit of the West. Phoenix to Salt Lake is a beautiful drive … when the sun is out. Once nightfall came, I found myself rolling down my car window, sticking my hand out until it was as cold as possible and then slapping my face with it just to stay awake. Around midnight I found myself at Zion National Park driving on curvy mountain roads. That was a bit more excitement than I wanted. Once I made it to my aunt’s, the roads in SLC are on a very confusing Cartesian Coordinate system and I ended up on South 2100 East instead of East 2100 South. I finally made it in around 3 am CST. A very long 23 hour day.

Day 2 (Monday Feb 18): Pretty laid back considering how tired I was. Went to the airport to get my luggage and return the rental. One way cost me $160 or more than the airfare round trip. Ate at the red iguana and a great seafood place called Broilers. My aunt’s Jeep Grand Cherokee battery died and we got the manager and a couple of employees to help us push it uphill to get a jump. Mormons are extremely nice people.

Day 3 (Tuesday Feb 19): My aunt had vacation (Monday she was off for President’s Day) and we went and toured the city. She showed me how to get to the ski resorts, we went downtown and toured Temple Square. Very interesting tour. You can’t go in the temple but the convention center and surrounding building are fantastic. No matter what you think of the L.D.S Church, there are so many common themes of martyrdom, persecution, and travel in different religions. Very interesting stuff from a sociological perspective. We then went downtown and ate. Coming out, we were offered free tickets to the Utah Jazz/Golden State Warriors game. We were in the nosebleed section but was fun to see a pro team play since Arkansas does not have any to offer.

Day 4 (Wednesday Feb 20): I went to Brighton to get my board on. I picked up passes through the University of Utah (where my aunt works) and headed out. The resorts are about 20 min outside of SLC and a gorgeous drive. Brighton is really just a couple of lodges, lifts, and a parking lot. I suspect this is where the locals come. Powder was great but I had to come to the sad realization that the past 5 years have taken a toll on me. Could not do nearly as much as I could when I lived in Denver. Hell, I could not even buckle up without getting winded. I know some of it is the altitude but not all of it. Anyway, I highly recommend Brighton. More affordable and far less people than Park City.

Day 5 (Thursday Feb 21): I hurt like a sonuvabitch. I think I am still aching from it. I did as little as possible. Went to Park City but passed on boarding and toured the city. A lot of money and has an Aspen snooty feel about it. Last time I was there was 2001 and it has completely changed. I then drove to the Olympic Village and toured their museum. I passed on the $200 bobsled lessons but was very tempted. We then watched the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Practice and they tore the roof off!

Day 6 (Friday Feb 22): Woke up and hit the slopes at Park City. It was packed, about 60% more expensive than Brighton and I still hurt. I boarded until about 3, went and picked up my aunt, met her boss and then we got my stuff together and had sushi. I went to Ichiban’s which was very good but still not as good as Igibon’s in Little Rock. Got dropped off at the airport. Flew to Las Vegas after the flight from SLC was delayed. By the time I got to Vegas it said both red-eye connections to Charlotte had left. I checked to see if I could get on the Baltimore flight (at least I would be on the east coast) but that was full. I stopped by the gate for the latter flight to Charlotte and they allowed me to board. From there to Little Rock was not too bad except in LR where the airline personnel were extremely unhelpful in helping me find my luggage. 24 hours after I arrived, I got my bags.

So that was the trip. More pics are posted to my flickr site.

Today I voted in my first primary. Considering my track record of presidential voting (Bob Dole, 3rd Party, & John Kerry), I don’t know if I did Barack Obama any favors.

Well I got my new computer in. Aside from the computer I built for storing media, my old computer is 7 1/2 years old and when I moved into the new house, something just gave out so it would would hard crash during boot process or in the first 5 min of usage. I thought about getting a Mac but they are still seem pricey and I don’t necessarily like Apple’s business practices any more than Microsoft’s. Plus I would like the option of gaming; the fact that my sister (and soon to be mother of my nephew/niece) works at Dell had a lot to do with my purchasing choice.

I went from a 1 Ghz Micron to a dual core 3 Ghz Dell XPS 420. I like the hardware a lot (22 in wide monitor roXXorz). I got it with Vista Home Premium and consider me jumping on the anti-Vista bandwagon. It seemed to work fine on my machine at the old job (Dell 280) but last night I noticed some weird glitches. I had to move the mouse to the top half of any button before it would highlight and I could click. Also I deleted a very small install exe and the deleting graphic ran forever. On a fresh box with a fresh install I shouldn’t see glitches like these. I think this weekend, I’ll partition and rebuild as a dual boot with Ubuntu Studio.

I have not really gotten to play with Vista media center too much. Comcast did not connect my back room like I paid them too. But what I’ve seen looks like a nice improvement over XP MCE.