ZeroCool's Blog - 2old2play

Belated Chirstmas Story

I know it's a little past Christmas but I just found this and wanted to post it...

CHRISTMAS STORY
Pa never had much compassion for the lazy or those who squandered their means and then never had enough for the necessities. But for those who were genuinely in need, his heart was as big as all outdoors. It was from him that I learned the greatest joy in life comes from giving, not from receiving.

It was Christmas Eve 1881. I was fifteen years old and feeling like the world had caved in on me because there just hadn't been enough money to buy me the rifle that I'd wanted for Christmas. We did the chores early that night for some reason. I just figured Pa wanted a little extra time so we could read in the Bible.

After supper was over I took my boots off and stretched out in front of the fireplace and waited for Pa to get down the old Bible. I was still feeling sorry for myself and, to be honest, I wasn't in much of a mood to read Scriptures. But Pa didn't get the Bible, instead he bundled up again and went outside. I couldn't figure it out because we had already done all the chores. I didn't worry about it long though, I was too busy wallowing in self-pity. Soon Pa came back in. It was a cold clear night out and there was ice in his beard. "Come on, Matt," he said. "Bundle up good, it's cold out tonight." I was really upset then. Not only wasn't I getting the rifle for Christmas, now Pa was dragging me out in the cold, and for no earthly reason that I could see. We'd already done all the chores, and I couldn't think of anything else that needed doing, especially not on a night like this. But I knew Pa was not very patient at one dragging one's feet when he'd told them to do something, so I got up and put my boots back on and got my cap, coat, and mittens. Ma gave me a mysterious smile as I opened the door to leave the house. Something was up, but I didn't know what.

Outside, I became even more dismayed. There in front of the house was the work team, already hitched to the big sled. Whatever it was we were going to do wasn't going to be a short, quick, little job. I could tell. We never hitched up this sled unless we were going to haul a big load.

Pa was already up on the seat, reins in hand. I reluctantly climbed up beside him. The cold was already biting at me. I wasn't happy. When I was on, Pa pulled the sled around the house and stopped in front of the woodshed. He got off and I followed. "I think we'll put on the high sideboards," he said. "Here, help me." The high sideboards! It had been a bigger job than I wanted to do with just the low sideboards on, but whatever it was we were going to do would be a lot bigger with the high sideboards on.

After we had exchanged the sideboards, Pa went into the woodshed and came out with an armload of wood - the wood I'd spent all summer hauling down from the mountain, and then all Fall sawing into blocks and splitting.

What was he doing? Finally I said something. "Pa," I asked, "what are you doing?"

You been by the Widow Jensen's lately?" he asked. The Widow Jensen lived about two miles down the road. Her husband had died a year or so before and left her with three children, the oldest being eight. Sure, I'd been by, but so what? "Yeah," I said, "Why?"

"I rode by just today," Pa said. "Little Jakey was out digging around in the woodpile trying to find a few chips. They're out of wood, Matt."

That was all he said and then he turned and went back into the woodshed for another armload of wood. I followed him. We loaded the sled so high that I began to wonder if the horses would be able to pull it.

Finally, Pa called a halt to our loading, then we went to the smoke house and Pa took down a big ham and a side of bacon. He handed them to me and told me to put them in the sled and wait.

When he returned he was carrying a sack of flour over his right shoulder and a smaller sack of something in his left hand. "What's in the little sack?" I asked.

"Shoes", they're out of shoes. Little Jakey just had gunny sacks wrapped around his feet when he was out in the woodpile this morning. I got the children a little candy too. It just wouldn't be Christmas without a little candy."

We rode the two miles to Widow Jensen's pretty much in silence. I tried to think through what Pa was doing. We didn't have much by worldly standards. Of course, we did have a big woodpile, though most of what was left now was still in the form of logs that I would have to saw into blocks and split before we could use it. We also had meat and flour, so we could spare that, but I knew we didn't have any money, so why was Pa buying them shoes and candy?

Really, why was he doing any of this? Widow Jensen had closer neighbors than us; it shouldn't have been our concern. We came in from the blind side of the Jensen house and unloaded the wood as quietly as possible, then we took the meat and flour and shoes to the door. We knocked. The door opened a crack and a timid voice said, "Who is it?"

"Lucas Miles, Ma'am, and my son, Matt, could we come in for a bit?"

Widow Jensen opened the door and let us in. She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The children were wrapped in another and were sitting in front of the fireplace by a very small fire that hardly gave off any heat at all. Widow Jensen fumbled with a match and finally lit the lamp.

"We brought you a few things, Ma'am," Pa said and set down the sack of flour. I put the meat on the table. Then Pa handed her the sack that had the shoes in it.

She opened it hesitantly and took the shoes out one pair at a time. There was a pair for her and one for each of the children - sturdy shoes, the best, shoes that would last. I watched her carefully. She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling and then tears filled her eyes and started running down her cheeks. She looked up at Pa like she wanted to say something, but it wouldn't come out.

"We brought a load of wood too, Ma'am," Pa said. He turned to me and said, "Matt, go bring in enough to last awhile. Let's get that fire up to size and heat this place up." I wasn't the same person when I went back out to bring in the wood. I had a big lump in my throat and as much as I hate to admit it, there were tears in my eyes too.

In my mind I kept seeing those three kids huddled around the fireplace and their mother standing there with tears running down her cheeks with so much gratitude in her heart that she couldn't speak. My heart swelled within me and a joy that I'd never known before, filled my soul. I had given at Christmas many times before, but never when it had made so much difference. I could see we were literally saving the lives of these people.

I soon had the fire blazing and everyone's spirits soared. The kids started giggling when Pa handed them each a piece of candy and Widow Jensen looked on with a smile that probably hadn't crossed her face for a long time. She finally turned to us. "God bless you," she said. "I know the Lord has sent you. The children and I have been praying that he would send one of his angels to spare us."

In spite of myself, the lump returned to my throat and the tears welled up in my eyes again. I'd never thought of Pa in those exact terms before, but after Widow Jensen mentioned it I could see that it was probably true.

I was sure that a better man than Pa had never walked the earth. I started remembering all the times he had gone out of his way for Ma and me, and many others. The list seemed endless as I thought on it.

Pa insisted that everyone try on the shoes before we left. I was amazed when they all fit and I wondered how he had known what sizes to get.

Then I guessed that if he was on an errand for the Lord that the Lord would make sure he got the right sizes.

Tears were running down Widow Jensen's face again when we stood up to leave. Pa took each of the kids in his big arms and gave them a hug. They clung to him and didn't want us to go. I could see that they missed their Pa, and I was glad that I still had mine.

At the door Pa turned to Widow Jensen and said, "The Mrs. wanted me to invite you and the children over for Christmas dinner tomorrow. The turkey will be more than the three of us can eat, and a man can get cantankerous if he has to eat turkey for too many meals. We'll be by to get you about eleven. It'll be nice to have some little ones around again. Matt, here, hasn't been little for quite a spell." I was the youngest. My two brothers and two sisters had all married and had moved away.

Widow Jensen nodded and said, "Thank you, Brother Miles. I don't have to say, May the Lord bless you, I know for certain that He will."

Out on the sled I felt a warmth that came from deep within and I didn't even notice the cold. When we had gone a ways, Pa turned to me and said, "Matt, I want you to know something. Your ma and me have been tucking a little money away here and there all year so we could buy that rifle for you, but we didn't quite have enough.

Then yesterday a man who owed me a little money from years back came by to make things square. our ma and me were real excited, thinking that now we could get you that rifle, and I started into town this morning to do just that,but on the way I saw little Jakey out scratching in the woodpile with his feet wrapped in those gunny sacks and I knew what I had to do. Son, I spent the money for shoes and a little candy for those children. I hope you understand." I understood, and my eyes became wet with tears again. I understood very well, and I was so glad Pa had done it. Now the rifle seemed very low on my list of priorities. Pa had given me a lot more. He had given me the look on Widow Jensen's face and the radiant smiles of her three children. For the rest of my life, Whenever I saw any of the Jensens, or split a block of wood, I remembered, and remembering brought back that same joy I felt riding home beside Pa that night. Pa had given me much more than a rifle that night, he had given me the best Christmas of my life.

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The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

This week is really reminding me of how much my life can be like the movie Office Space some times.

Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

So I don't have 8 bosses hassling me but the whole point about working my ass off for no benefit really hit home this week. The company announced that they were going to reduce the work force by 10% starting in a couple of weeks. Trouble is, they won't be done until probably September. But what really bothers me is that no one knows exactly how these layoffs are going to be distributed. So everyone is in limbo. Morale is in the toilet. Profits are down because we can't seem to make a chip without a bunch of huge bugs these days. Nothing I can do will help with the fundamental design flaws we've been seeing. I really do think it's time to start seriously looking to make a "voluntary career path adjustment". Trouble is, I don't know if I can afford it right now.

Thing is, I haven't been at AMD two years yet. So if I leave, I have to pay back a portion of my signing bonus and relocation expenses. On top of that, I just bought a house in August. And while Austin, TX hasn't been hit as hard by the housing bubble, things are slow and I'm not sure I can get out of my house without having to chunk in a bunch of cash of my own. Cash I don't have ready access to.

So I want to start looking for a safe place to land in case I'm hit by the layoffs but since I don't know if I'm going to get laid off any time soon or not, it's hard to commit to any offers I get. But if I get laid off, I'll be stuck in a position where I need to find something quick or I can get royally screwed with my health insurance. So long as I go from one company to another directly, I can continue health insurance. But if my insurance lapses, it'll be very difficult to get accepted by any new insurance since I have a preexisting condition (diabetes).

But I really think that I'm not going to be one of the people tapped by the layoff so worrying about all this probably won't matter anyway. Which pisses me off more because I'm going through all this uncertainty probably for nothing.

Life's a bitch some times.

So in the mean time, I'm not motivated at all to do any real work. I've been screwing around surfing and playing games all morning...

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I knew it was catching up with me.

So, for most of my adult life, I haven't exactly been living healthy. I ate like crap and was more or less sedentary. Up until a few years ago, I was really just a big fat tub of goo. When I hit 35 two and a half years ago, I decided to start doing something about it. I changed my diet. I cut way back on the junk food. I started riding a mountain bike and playing some racquetball. Well, it wasn't enough. The damage was done. I've been having symptoms for a while and I suspected the cause. I finally decided to go to the doctor to see. I went back to the doctor today to go over my blood work. He confirmed it.

Type 2 diabetes.

But not all hope is lost. In the last two and a half years, I did lose close to 85 pounds mostly through diet and with some exercise. And that, the doctor says, is the biggest hurdle to overcome. Most people who come in with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes are still way overweight and eating like crap. They have a much bigger hill to climb than I do. I'm already halfway there.

I'm going to talk with someone about my diet so I can plan to eat even better than I had been. Our new campus at work has a free fitness center opening up this month so I'll be able to get in a good workout several times a week. I'm looking forward to learning more about this disease and how I can fight it. I just wish it hadn't taken motivation this drastic to get my arse in gear.

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Beating up on the newb...

So, I have had this friend for years. When we both had our rigs up and running we would go rock crawling together. He's the kind of friend who would do anything for you and more, without you even asking for the help. He's a good guy to have as a friend. But something happened yesterday that has me concerned.

First, a little background. We have this mutual friend who has an older compact pickup he put a small block chevy engine in. This mutual friend and I go to the local drag strip and run our cars. His little truck and my 2004 Pontiac GTO. The more my friend works on his pickup, the closer he gets to matching my times in the GTO. I can beat him pretty consistently, if only by a half a second.

Well, one run down the track one night, I got caught sleeping and had a horrible reaction time. Our mutual friend in the compact pickup beats me by half a car length or so. My bad. I messed up and Jay beat me. It happens. No big deal, right?

But my rock crawling buddy just won't let it go. He's been needling me off and on ever since that one race happened. "How much did you spend on that and how much did Jay spend on his and he beat you?" "He has a lot less power in his but he still beat you." Over and over it goes. The thing is, it wasn't even my rock crawler buddy who beat me. It was a mutual friend.

So fast forward to about 3-4 weeks ago. This rock crawler friend of mine finally convinces me to get my Xbox 360. I get Chromehounds since that's what the clan is really playing right now. I get this system so I can hang out with my buddy, his wife and all the other cool people in the clan. It's a lot of fun and I'm enjoying myself. I'm a newbie but everyone is cool and helping me out, showing me the ropes.

A couple weeks into playing hounds, the clan sets up this free battle and for fun we decide to run scouts with machineguns in a free-for-all. I get on the opposite side from my rock crawler friend but that's ok. It's all for fun, right?

Well, we get into the battle. We're exchanging fire and everyone is beating on everyone else. I manage to be at the right place at the right time and I get the kill shot on my rock crawler friend. Sure. He was softened up from fighting everyone at once so I know I didn't kill him single handedly but I got the kill shot.

Remembering the grief he gave me about the one loss in my GTO, I start picking on him back. I mean, it's all in fun right? It's just smack talking right? No one takes it too seriously, right?

WRONG!!!!

Fast forward to last night. I crack off my smart mouth about my lucky kill again. Nothing unusual for a guy like me. Keep in mind, I've known my friend for going on 6 years now and he should know I'm full of it. Well, I guess I didn't know him as well as I thought I did. Apparently he's taking this WAY too seriously. He waited until we got into a battle in hounds. We're on the same side in this match but that didn't stop him. He maneuvered behind me and SHOT ME IN THE BACK THREE TIMES WITH HIS DOUBLE/DOUBLES! Not once. Not twice. THREE TIMES! IN THE BACK!

Fortuntately for me, he's a lousy shot. He hit a couple of my sniper rifles and got some splash damage on everything else but I'm mostly intact. But he's not that bright either and he thought that he had killed me so he keeps walking by. I had stopped because I was close to a cliff and I needed to get my bearings before I slid down a very tall hill. I see him walking by so I decide to return the favor.

Now, I'm not one to talk ill of someone but you would think that an experienced hounds player would remember that double D's do a hell of a lot of area-effect damage. And shooting them at point blank range is not very smart because you tend to do yourself in. But he did it nonetheless. So he was hurting a lot worse than I thought. It only took one shot from one assault rifle to his cockpit (a direct hit mind you) and I blew him to smithereens.

The first time I killed him, it was just happenstance.

This second time, he dug his own grave and I just pushed him in.

Naturally, I'm going to talk major smack now. He's not going to get away from that kind of stunt without me giving him a major wedgie. I'd be breaking a man law if I didn't smack talk him. So I do. I lay it on thick. It's who I am.

So I guess he was really feeling inadequate. Here he is, having played hounds for quite some time. He's really a pretty good player with many accomplishments. But here I am, a newb and I'm slapping him around and calling him Nancy in front of the other clan members. He has to do something to recover his honor. I know it's coming so I play along.

He challenges me to a one-on-one match. I oblige. Thing is, I have no idea what to bring to a match like that. I've never really done anything like that. So after some technical difficulties, I show up at the death match with my hound. The deck is 100% stacked against me but I figure it'll be a good learning experience.

So he brings this fast little hound with some kind of missles and he pushes me around like a 5th grade bully pushing around the 2nd grader, acting all tough and "manly". I take my beating so he can impress all his friends. I manage to kill him once he runs out of ammo and I've died a few times but there's no doubt he's pushing me around at will in his hound that, in his own words, "requires no skill to use".

I'm sure he'll be strutting around, bragging about how he killed me. Yeah, like that was really tough. A clan leader in a refined hound against a newb with a clunky hound. That victory ranks up there with a football team beating the Arizona Cardials. It just doesn't really mean anything. It's just a given. But if it makes him feel better, I guess I'll give it to him. After all, I don't want him to look bad in front of his e-friends.

The thing is though, next time we face off and I put him down, I'll just smack talk again and put myself right back in that situation. But as I get better playing the game and I get better hounds, I know I'll be able to turn the tables on him. My question is, should I just let him keep winning or should I smack him around every time I get the chance?

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Oh yea, I forgot...

I went and put up a web page that has pictures of my Jeeps, GTO and nitro buggy. Check it out at http://www.grimmjeeper.com. It's not much of a web page since I can't design my way out of a wet paper bag but it at least has the pictures.

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My first blog post

So... Yeah. Blogs. I guess that's the trendy thing to do now. I may as well write somthing. It's more interesting than the work I should be doing...

Well, about me. I'm pretty much a computer geek. Always have been. Probably always will be. I'm 36, single and I'm a drone working for the military/industrial complex. I get into and out of computer gaming. I started with a black jack game I ran on my dad's TRS-80 back in 1978. I started with some of the early DOS games like Larn and Empire but text games got boring. I got back into gaming when the first Mechwarrior game came out around 1990. In the mid 90's I got into Civ 2, Quake 2, StarCraft and a few others. Last serious gaming I did was Counter Strike but that's about 5 years ago now. I bought a PS2 to play Tiger Woods golf and had fun doing that but it got old. So I sold the PS2 and all the games I had. My buddy, Nashu, finally convinced me to get an Xbox 360 and I picked it up two days ago. I bought Chromehounds when I bought the sytem. It plays like a much more modern version of Mechwarrior I was playing 15 years ago.

Outside of my work and gaming, I like to work on my Jeeps and my GTO. One of these days, I'm going to finish my Jeeps and actually be able to take them off road again. I have a 1977 Jeep Cherokee. Right now, all it needs is some fixed freeze plugs. The shop that rebuilt the engine messed up the freeze plugs so they leak all over the place. Once they're fixed I'll be able to drive that heep around and even take it on some mild trails for fun. Once that's done, I'll be hitting my 1984 Jeep CJ7 pretty hard. I have it down to a frame on jack stands right now. Soon enough I'll be finishing up the front suspension, building the rear triangulated 4 link suspension, full hydraulic steering, installing the drive train (a fuel injected AMC360, SM465 transmission and Atlas transfer case) and getting the rest of it back together. With the stretched wheelbase and 37" tires, I should be able to go a lot of places. I also have a 2004 Pontiac GTO. It's my daily driver right now but as soon as the Cherokee is back together, it'll be taking over those duties. I ordered a few brake parts for the GTO since it's getting to be about that time. I'm taking advantage of the maintenance to do some mild upgrades instead. Once the CJ is done, I'm going to be putting some effort into upgrades for the GTO. We'll see what happens when that time comes.

I also have a couple nitro RC cars but I haven't touched them in months. I'm giving serious consideration towards selling off everything in one big auction. We'll see.

Well, I'd say that's a good start for a first blog entry.

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