Life as Jacob

I must give props to Jerry and Stacy for indulging me in on a food safari.

Tonight we went to a restaurant on Bardstown road called Ramsi’s on the World. It’s a nifty little place with a good atmosphere of vintage artwork and strange collections.  They have a patio for those who dare brave the environment of Louisville and two indoor seating areas with an eclectic assortment of chairs and tables.

The menu is about as far away from cheeseburgers and fries as you can get.  I don’t get to eat there very often so a birthday dinner sounded good when it left my lips.  Then, as my voice electronically traveled the 30 miles to my gift givers, I heard a collective sigh.  This is generally a, “Shit, where’s Jacob dragging us now?”

Stacy and Jerry arived just a few minutes after I was seated.  I had already ordered some Foccacia which the waitress sat down on the table with our drinks.  At this point my goal should have been to take out my iPhone and snap a picture of the looks in their faces.  One would have thought the bread, covered in diverse cheeses and spice, was a chopped up platypus on a plate.

The menu, although extensive, was to hold no prize for my company.  Although they had both seen the online version, each gawked at what creations were printed on it’s laminated sheets.  Desperately searching for something close to the edges of a box, Stacy ordered chips and salsa while Jerry went for something similar to a cheeseburger.

As we waited for the main course to escape from the kitchen, we amused ourselves with some fanticiful backstories to for the people around us.  The couple to my 7 o’clock caused Stacy some problems.  We both discussed the possibilities of the older man being gay and eating with his son or a younger man having a gay sugar daddy.  Both possibilities were fun.  Stacy kept saying the younger man was straight and I could see he was gay.  Stacy argued with me on this point, but could give evidence to the contrary.

When the food was placed on the table by our lesbian watiress with a Zorro haircut, I was the only one who had eager tastebuds.  Stacy took a bite of salsa and snarled her lip at it’s temprature.  Jerry disected the bun before him to get to the beef patty in it’s doughy depts.  My eggplant parmesan was hot and delicious.

You can’t blame me for liking what I like.  My expirence at Ramsi’s was good and I will likely return.  Stacy and Jerry on the otherhand will be avoiding this quiant spot in our fair city like the plague.  I was good of them to brave this new world of cusine for me on my birthday, which is why they are both good friends.

Stacy has taken the link to my page off of her website.  This is a form of censorship which I feel is unjust in the eyes of the lord.

I speak my mind about a lot of different topics which might offend many people.  I think if I haven’t offended someone, then I haven’t said anything all that important.  For instance, I think black people should quit complaining about white people opressing them.  White people opress everyone!

I think Mexican’s should try to learn better english and do mind work instead of backbreaking labor.  Mexicans can be smart, why don’t they have office jobs?

White people need to quit being so damn redneck.  Nascar, Bud Light, Mullets, Trailer Parks…  Come on, hang out with some Mexican’s so you can figure out how to throw a good party.  Have you ever been to a good Cinco de Mayo party?  They can throw an event without ever playing the electric slide.

Americans in general need to get off their asses and watch what’s going on with the government.  The government should be afraid of it’s people not the otherway around.  We are way too complacent with the way things are.  Myself included.  Look at this gas price crap.  If we were doing more research on government instead of what Paris did last weekend, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Have I offended you yet?  Has something I’ve said here made you mad?  Good.  Anger is a motivator.

Bufonophobia- Fear of toads.
Ranidaphobia- Fear of frogs.

I’ve come to realize that to “blog” is to “work”. Blogging is hard work if you want to actually say anything! I’m astounded by the people who blog three and four times a day. Where do they get the time? It’s around an hour for me if I want to type anything. Well, there is the occasional YouTube video that only takes a second.

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Thursday afternoon I was contacted on the way home to resolve a problem that popped up with our database. Being the super genius I am, I was able to fix the problem within a few hours. This of course gave me a gold star from everyone. The love was everywhere! I was patted on the back by not only the CEO but by the COO as well. “They like me, they really LIKE me!”

So I went to bed that night with a grin.

Friday. I walk in with a swagger. Life is good because I have just pulled a rabbit out of a hat. I sit down at my desk an start going thru emails. Around 9:00 - 9:15 one of the people on the floor come over to me and tell me that Kayako ( our ticketing system ) isn’t responding. “Hey, No big deal!” I think to myself. There must be a service or something stopped.

I tried logging into the server. Nothing. No connection. Then I walked into the server room to check on it. No blue screen, even worst… Black screen of death! Please insert disk! Holy Crap! My stomach dropped to my feet. Generally there would be a backup of such an important system. This system however has only been up for a short period of time. Although I had the client installed for the backup, none had taken place. I could see my gold star slowly drifting away.

I had to walk in and tell my CEO of our downfall. You should have seen his face. At first it was one of glee because of my previous night’s work…then it fell to a pitiful look of morning for our dead server. “What do you mean it died?”

All day Friday was spent doing little experiments on the system to see what I could do to get it back online. Then finally I was forced to contact IBM directly. We had to sure up on our Maintenance contract which cost a pretty penny. Then I had to get a service guy to come out and figure out the hardware problem with the system. As it turned out the backplane was bad which brought down the hard drives with it. There was a possibility all of our data was just sitting on the drives and was simply inaccessible.

Since we couldn’t get a part until Monday morning ( Today ) I didn’t need to stay over on Friday afternoon. That doesn’t mean my weekend wasn’t shot. My nerves were frazzled because of all the havoc so I just wanted to stay at home and cry. I ended up getting some cookie dough and a pizza.

Saturday was good because I got to hang out with Stacy. We went to the IMAX and saw Mysteries of the Pharaohs. A little decompression but not much.  Still this dead server hanging over my head.

Monday rolls around and I have to deal with the server all day again.  How to get the data, is the data okay, where to put the data, how to do a restore, can I save Windows?  Blah, Blah, Blah…  I started my whole photography thing with the hope of getting out of this crap.  I’m really starting to dislike Windows, Computers, and IT in general.

Anyway, blogging is hard work.  Especially after I’ve had a crap day.

Stacy wrote a lot of very true statements in her last entry but I have to disagree with one.  Family isn’t all you have in life.  They are a part of it but you should really consider the reasons why.

There are families out there who seem to be right out of a storybook.  They love and respect each other and always make up after fights.  The best interest of the other person is always at heart and there’s never an air of devious intention.  I think those families are few and far between.

You are more likely to run into families of the opposite nature.  Unhealthy ones with issues and problems abound.  They squabble and bicker between themselves and often must die off before the turmoil truly ends.  For most people, if family was all they had they would have very little.

From my own personal experience it seems the women folk have a much harder time tearing away from their family than do the men.  For some reason there’s a gene or some intrinsic need to be connected to the ones that birthed them or they have birthed.  I’ve seen this in many people no matter how bad the child or parent was.  In fact my own life would be completely different had my grandmother not been such a magnetic force on my mother.  In her early twenties after having me, she had the opportunity to move to New Orleans.  She choose not to because my grandmother needed my mother to take care of her.  My mother just couldn’t pull away.

It’s very true that friends, co-workers, lovers and neighbors come and go but that’s why they’re so special.  They have the option of liking you.  No ties, no strings attached.  The most precious thing you can give another person is your time.  Even when you have a best friend that has a falling out with you, your life is still changed.  You’re a different person because of the relationship.

My mother is amazed every time I say this to her…  I could walk away from it all.  I would have no problem packing up my two dogs and my laptop and driving into the sunset.  Can you imagine the possibilities if everyone could step outside the sheltered existence of their family?  Wouldn’t it be great to spend your days with people who don’t know your every fault and can’t recite the history of your life?  I think this is why going to a college in another state is important for young people.

Don’t take this entry as me saying I don’t love my family.  Yes, they are all loons but they’re my loons.  I’m just saying the most important people in your life don’t have to be related to you.  The best family you can ever have is the one you choose for yourself.  It’s that small group of friends who are there for you when your family lets you down.  Its the best friend who’s riding in the car with you to go pick up your son from jail.  It’s that person you call when you’ve just had a fight with your mother and you need to vent.

I think this is an important question you should ask yourself:  Would my family be my friends if they weren’t related to me?

As Stacy notes in her blog, there are the asshole’s out there who want to go straight to the top of the food chain when it comes to something they want.  But there are also those of us out there that just want to get our problems resolved.

As an IT person, I am forced to call stupid people on the helpdesk all the time.  When I have put my brain in a press and squeezed out all the intelligent juice, I have to resort to having some dufus on a helpdesk in India help me with my problem.  “I am understanding your problem to be…”  More often than not, if I’m calling in it means the issue can’t be handled by the first level idiot.  This means I have to struggle thru 30 minutes of broken English before they let me go to Tier 2.  More often than not, the problem is resolved in 5 minutes with this second level person.

There has been a few times in my life when I have been that screaming jerk on the other end of the line.  For some reason, in my head at least, when you raise your voice to the person on the other end of the line it makes more of an impression.  I don’t resort to using profanities or anything, but I do put logic in their face.  This, I have found, is much more stressful for the other person.  It forces them to think about what they are saying before they read the script from the computer screen.

Not only am I a person that likes to speak with a manager, I am also a person that leaves feedback.  Not only bad feedback, but good as well.  There have been a few phone calls over the course of my life where I have asked to speak with a supervisor to give praise to the person that actually solved my problem.  After speaking with a hand full of morons, when you do get someone who can rub two brain cells together it is refreshing.

As you might have guessed, there is a problem with this situation too.  It is those who excel that get moved into more important positions.  It is those who have solved my problems that get made into Tier II, Supervisors, and Managers.  This thereby forces me to speak with the imbeciles that couldn’t troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag let alone solve a dilemma which has already stumped me.

Never send food back to the kitchen when you have a cook who messed up.  You will surely get your cuisine back with some type of extra tid-bit on it.  I know people who have worked in food places and this happens.  Instead, refuse to have the food but as for the Manager or the cook him/herself.  Speak with them face to face like an adult.  For god’s sake get a gift card or something, don’t let that person fix your food again that night.

When errors happen, which they will, they should be brought to that person’s / company’s attention.  Otherwise how are they to be corrected and / or prevented in the future.  Would you find it better to just leave and never return again?  Who does that really serve?  Worse, would be to give the place another chance and have the same error again.

Stacy and I have very different opinions about “The One”.  This is mainly because she’s had “The One” and I never have.  Not that I haven’t used the words, “I love you” or anything.  It’s just that “The One” hasn’t ever smacked me in the face and ruined my life.

Question:

Do you know at least 5 couples in your family/friend/working environment that you would consider truly in love?

To this I’d have to say NO.  A resounding no!  Holy crap are you kidding me NO!  IN FACT I don’t think I’ve met any couple ( still together ) that’s in love.  The couples I’ve met who say they’re in love, don’t really act it out as much as they say it.  At least not to my standards anyway.  This isn’t to say I don’t know people who are married!  I know plenty of people who are married.  Love, not so much.  I think people stay together for reasons much more important than love.  They have kids, a home, a life together, whatever.  There’s a mutual respect that lets each other be who they are but together with the other person.  That doesn’t require love.  Similar to a prison inmate sharing a cell with another.  They might fight at first.  One might make the other his bitch, but they work out thing in the long run.

This is the huge flaw that I see in “The One” theory.  How many more people do you know out there that were married to “The One” until they found the real “The One”?  Explain that Nancy Drew.  Then, they’re willing to drop everything in their lives to be with that other person because they’re in love.  This happens all the time!

Stacy explains “The One” feeling as butterflies, intimate moments, and memories that last forever!  How dreamy!  :-)  It’ll be a break thru when we find the chemical reactions that place emotions over logic.  I don’t see how “The One” differs so much from “The First” or “My Best”.  People never forget their first love, nor do they forget their first time.  These moments take on an exponential feeling if they involve the same person.  But that’s not necessarily “The One”.

If you believe in the premise of “The One”, do they exist for everyone?  If they do, then will they always meet?  What happens if my one-in-a-million doesn’t swim in the pool of the million people I will meet in my lifetime?  How sad is that!  That would mean some people out there would just have to settle for “The Other One”, “The First One That Came Along”,”The One Who Knocked Me Up”, or “The One I Married In Vegas.”

I think it’s a lot easier for people to say “The One” got away than it is to find another one.  I’m not picking on Stacy here at all.  I live a life of dogs, movies, and late night TV.  The prospect of “The One” scares the hell out of me.  If I were to fall that hard for someone and it didn’t work out…  I don’t know.  I’m going to loose it when Icarus kicks the bucket.  I can’t imagine finding the one for me and having them slip thru my fingers.

This is an honest question here, remember I’m emotionally retarded…  Is the love of “The One” more powerful than the love of a parent or a sibling?  It’s impossible to replace that person, but in time you do find happiness.  The pain goes away slowly over time.  The moments occupied by their memory become fewer and fewer.  They’re never truly gone, but no longer keeping you in the past.  Its my experience with loved ones like that, they want you to move on.  To find others who fill your life by the void they left.

Summary:  I think “The One” is whom you make it.  It can change.

Stacy has posted a great question Who Made You

Here is my response:

1. Although he’s horrible, he was an influence on me from a very early age. Johnny Mulkins. He was introduced to me by my mother a long time ago as her new boyfriend. Then she got knocked up and was stuck with him for years. He is the epitome of all that is wrong with the male gender. He has had a tremendous impact on what I do and who I am, or more specifically who I am not. I have used him as a template for what I should not do, who I should not be, and how I should not act. Even during the process of becoming his opposite he ridiculed me and faulted me for not being more like him. I hate you Johnny, but you’re a big reason why I am me.
2. Nickelodeon is the stuff my subconscious is made of. Not today’s Nickelodeon, but that of yesteryear. I grew up watching Nick-At-Nite and Mr. Wizard. This had reruns of great TV shows like I Love Lucy, I Dream of Jeanie, and Bewitched. Most people don’t think that TV has an effect on them, but that’s untrue. I think my morals are more from TV than from interaction with others. There’s a plot, storyline, and moral all in an hour long show. It’s great teaching even though you have to suffer thru the radiation poisoning from the ‘tube.
3. Photography has a weird place in my heart. It’s found its way into my life in quite a few ways. Television is in fact pictures moving at 29.97 frames per second. Since I have this strange aversion to eye contact, pictures open me up to a whole new world. When you capture a moment in film, it can last forever. This has bad and good connotations. If you were stuffing your face at the time of the “snap”, not so good. But… there are those instances where a true personality is captured. I can stare at the photo and take in all of the goodness and flaws. I can see life but still and silent. I have always found pictures to be fascinating and that’s probably why I’m trying to move into that field as an adult.
4. Being laid off at Darwin threw my life into a spiral. It was a new startup company that I left NPC for. I had been working at a phone rep for NPC for a while and basically threw my hands up in the air and quit. The day I left, Brad ( my boss ) asked me if I was sure I wanted to go. I can almost hear the words in my memory. “This place could go under, wouldn’t be better to be able to come back here if you needed?” I was like, “They’re doing great! They won’t go under!” Man, being young and dumb is hard! Anyway, I left NPC and started working for Darwin Networks. I loved that job! The company was full of young people who were all into computer and spoke my language! It was like I had stepped into another reality or something. Then reality fractured for me when they pulled the company together to tell us we were going to be let go. This was during the dot com bust, so I ended up going to another company that went under too. Those were rough times! It changed me because now I respect my job, but I don’t worship it.
5. David Zinner was a guy who I knew at Darwin. I don’t know if this is an event or a person because of the situation. I was in the car driving him to pick up something from somewhere when, during a conversation, I made up a story and told it to him. Saying story is a nicer way to say LIE. Anyway, I was completely caught. I mean like in a way you would be in a crowd and have your pants fall down. It was bad. It really stuck on me for a while too. I kept going over in my head… “Why did I make that up?” I think it made me change in a good way. Now, I don’t make up stuff. In fact, I’m truthful to a fault. Yes, I still have those white lies that haunt me, but in general I don’t lie anymore. I put it out there for people to like or not.
6. Middle school and High School affect everyone’s life. I’m lumping the entire time period into one big event. For some of you out there, High School was the best thing ever. This might be true if you were on the football team, the cheerleading team, the whatever team. For all the other average people, there’s like a 50/50 of having a great time and having a horrible time. In general, High School sucked for me. I had a few friends who drifted thru the years with me, but the small group of us couldn’t stop the onslaught of negativity from the rest of the school. It made me not like education. It’s a good portion of why I ended up dropping out of college and pursuing a life as a business owner. Guess what, when you’re your own boss you meet the education requirements.
7. The Pillsbury Dough Boy. Ahh, what a good friend he has been to me. Thanks to you and your un-ending production of Chocolate Chip Cookie dough, I’m still here today. You have seen me thru the rough times after I was laid off at Darwin. You got me thru the good times like Christmas and Thanksgiving. You’ve given employment to my mom for a while back in the 90’s when we were broke. You’ve given me so much yet I feel as though we are still strangers. I hope you know how much I admire you and hope you continue to make your products. Maybe, one day, all food can come in some type of tube format which can be heated in a jiffy to crisp and fluffy perfection. I am forever indebted.