An Arizona Cheesehead's Thoughts

I had the great fortune to hear Frank Abagnale speak last week. Yeah, that's the guy who inspired the Spielberg movie, Catch Me If You Can . Abagnale started the presentation with his personal story. Sobering and full of pathos; I don't remember it being as dark in the movie. While his cleverness at the art of the con at age 16 was entertaining and often humorous, his personal despair at the breakup of his family and remorse over his criminal actions were the overwhelming emotions I walked away with. He feels guilt to this day and has turned down three Presidential pardons. It was also a powerful story of the preservation of the two parent family and the importance of teaching children lessons in morality. He presented many studies showing the shift regarding the latter. Short story, kids today don't consider things "wrong" as previous generations have. For example, cheating in school is considered no big deal by a growing percentage of youth over time. Sa...

OK, I had a novella written about how depressing/stressful my life has been for the last month to explain why I wasn't posting but let me sum up what I deleted: lack of sleep, drama amongst my friends, work issues, an inexplicable soul crushing reaction of despair to the government shutdown and the venomous comments that have ensued, Jimmy Buffett convention and tickets/concert stress, and a cash shortage. Yeah, that about sums it up. However, I feel like I'm emerging back into the light after some self enforced evenings at home licking my figurative wounds. Happy postings to commence soon! I hope. Seriously, hope is the best I can do at this time.

It's already started. The folks against further gun control are talking about the recent Texas stabbings at Lone Star College. Their comments are along the lines of, "So, where's the demand to outlaw knives now?" The folks for further gun control are also talking about the stabbings but with a different view. "Fourteen stabbed but none dead, imagine if he'd had a gun?" The folks against further gun control make the argument that, if someone is determined to wreak havoc and cause injury, they'll find a way even with further gun restrictions. Those folks are correct. Someone can use a knife, a car, a baseball bat or a chain and hurt a lot of people. Unfortunately, guns are just a much more effective way to kill a lot of people in a short period of time than those other methods. What keeps getting lost in this huge, often vicious debate, is that it's not the guns, it's not the knives, it's not the baseball bats that are to blame fo...

I was sitting in my office at 5:3o tonight when, pop, all of the lights went out. The only thing emitting light was my monitor because my machine is on its own UPS. The emergency lighting didn't even turn on. We gave it a few minutes then headed to the server room to see what servers were still up. Of course, there was no light in that room, either. We checked that everything looked to be still up and running on the UPSs in there. I got on the horn to our DBA , Unix Admin and Network Admin. While I was trying to get them up to speed, I got lots of text messages from the Big Kahuna and Sugar Daddy about the outage. Lots of multitasking going on. Our two main buildings were both out and there were lots of employees milling around. The power came back on for a few seconds then was out again. And, stayed out. OK, here's the deal. Our office is right by the airport. Two gridded areas went out at about the same time that President Obama was scheduled to land. He was the s...

A new law about license plates took effect here yesterday. You can't have anything that even partially obstructs the word ARIZONA so a lot of license plate holders have to removed around the state. The fine is $140 but, more importantly, it gives the cops an excuse to pull you over and look for other violations if they're so inclined. There's been a lot of griping how this is just another money grab by the state (like speed cameras on the freeways). I actually see the need for the rule, though. We've allowed so many different specialty plates options that it's really hard to tell if it's an Arizona plate. Some of the special plates are really "busy". We took my car to the New Year's Eve party and I looked at my back plate while The Rocket Scientist was loading up. Dang. My Key West Margaritaville holder blocks part of Arizona. I'm not sure if he offered to take it off the next day or if I just assumed he would but it was made the plan. ...

I read an article in the paper this week about how people say they're going to spend their stimulus checks. Last time, the biggest portion was spent on clothing. This time, people are planning to spend a lot less there. That's a bummer for me as one of our company's product line is apparel. It's not doing as well as we would like and I (though I'm no marketer) suspect the economy. My entire check (and then some) is going towards airfare. I paid about $550 last year to fly into Key West for Meeting Of The Minds. This year, when I finally started looking at prices, it was nearly $700. I debated going into Ft. Lauderdale early with the gang and driving down the Keys. It's a great trip. But, after factoring in car, hotel and food and drink (make no mistake, there will be a lot of drinking on that journey) it was a break even. The clincher was that I would have to take an extra vacation day and those are more valuable than gold-pressed latinum . So, I decid...

We had to go through customs on our way off the cruise ship. I had no problem despite my lack of passport. However, two members our party got pulled aside and questioned. They were literally taken off to a back room and interrogated about their history. Here's the thing that gets me. These are two Caucasion males in their 40s who are natural U.S citizens and whose last names were Jones and Johnson. I couldn't help but think that if they're pulling aside everyone who meets that profile, they're holding up a lot of people.