8.27.2006

Veni Vidi Vici

Blame it on the silly lil bulletin I posted earlier, or the bottle of homeade hard cider I've been drinking tonight, or my hyperactive imagination... But an interesting concept fired off the synapses this evening.

At what point do the actions of a person quit being the result of that person, and become something that defines that person? When do actions quit being the means and start being the ends? We see it in movies, television, books, etc. where a person starts down the slippery slope, hits the bottom, only to come back in the end and show the world that they are still the wholesome hero that they started out as. Is it the slippery slope that defines us? How far down we go? Maybe its the dramatic recovery that hooks viewers but that's not life.

I see it all the time where we judge the person by what they have done. I try to maintain the objectiveness and not judge a person by their actions, but I am just a man with all his beautiful flaws. I jump to conclusions, judge the book by its cover. No matter how much I try to seperate the emotion from the logic, I still have the gut reaction that condems the subject by whatever few actions are shared with the public. I say all of this is just trying to predict the nature of a person by their actions.

While it is true that the universe follows patterns, there is so much more that we cannot comprehend. That's why there is the rule that every forecast is wrong. No matter how well we can identify the pattern, there is still the wild card that nobody can put thier finger on. Coincidence, fate, serendipity... The little bit of chaos that we cannot contain. But yet we look at the past to give us some kind of insight into the future.

So how do we look at a person; a collection of actions, circumstances and appearances; and decide that person is good or bad? How can we say that the ends define the means? I don't want to do that. Even more, it bothers me when other people do that. Yet I still work my ass off. I create all kinds of positive actions to try to define myself as a good person. Is it just an attempt to throw the scales in my favor? Offset my negatives with some kind of goodness to over-compensate and make me look good? All I can really say with any real conviction is that I have to do it with every bit of force I have.

Whatever "it" is... good or bad.

8.01.2006

...And then the papa tomato says "ketchup"

OK, so it has been a score since the last time I actually sat down and dumped my brains on some paper. It's technically been 0.015 score, but folks are terrible at math these days. So here's the abridged version of the summer with all my news that's fit to print, granted I can print it in 30 minutes or less.

I finished my spring semester at WSU, two A's and a B 'cause I'm a friggin' genius. The 17 and 18 year old freshmen don't have nuthin on me, except the hope of a boundless future and smart decisions.

A big company up in Montreal, Canada flew me up there for a nice weekend and a job interview. I got a job offer on the spot, double my salary but I would have to cut ties with everything here (family, friends, house, job, school) and start all over in Los Angeles. At least I grew up on gangsta rap so I'd know the native dialect.

While I took two weeks to make my decision, I got an interview and job offer for a promotion at my current company. It was for a different kind of job as the other offer, so I was at a career crossroads. I was not ready to pick up my roots quite yet, so I pushed my luck and asked for a fat raise along with the promotion (that's phat loot for you west-siders). Since my only true skill is applying pressure to said luck, I made out the best I could.

Amidst all these easy life changing decisions, my friends and I went to Lake of the Ozarks for Memorial weekend. My buddy has a house and boat right on the lake so we spent a long weekend drinking beer, cruising around the lake, watching pretty women, cliff jumping, my poor atempt at water skiing, and yet more beer drinking. For as much as I avoid the sun, I had an amazingly fun weekend.

So back to school for the summer... this time it was Business Statistics and the Information Systems lab. In other words, the joy of charts and how to make them in Excel. Lucky for me, that's what I do at work since noone else can seem to understand the cryptic symbols they call "numbers". Once again, a two wonderful A's again. See, I told you's I's a friggin genius. (sorry, that sounded much better in my head).

Now it's been a few weeks at the new job. My stress level has been reduced to almost nothing. That has been by far the hardest adjustment I have had to make in my career. for the last 12 years, I have worked in high stress environments. The steady pressure has always been a fire that has tempered me with a valuable hardness but luckily hasn't burned me out. Without that fire to keep me motivated, I'm having to figure out how to deal with work the way the rest of you folks do. I can tell you that normal is not normal for me. We shall see how this hand plays out...

So this past weekend, some more friends and I headed up to Hays and Wilson lake for a peaceful weekend of camping, swimming, drinking and conversations. I've made it through another summer with two trips to the lake and no sunburns this year. Gotta tell ya, it's been one of the best summers ever.

So here we are at today, a few weeks from the start of the fall semester. On the menu this time is Management and Organization, Marketing and the coup de gras... Oceanography. Not exactly my most wanted choice, but you gotta do some silly stuff when you are chasing that paper. It should be interesting at least, and that's always appealing. On the homefront, things are peaceful. The cats are terrors, but they are my lil terrors. The family has been patient with me and that's always nice since I'm hard on most nerves out there.

So there's my ketchup. Hopefully most get the Pulp Fiction reference and hopefully I will be able to maintain this a bit better. God knows I need to speak out more