The Random Ramblings Category
Growing dusty
My life has grown dusty. As I look around my office at work, and my desk at home I can see dust building up here and there. The dust is a subtle reminder that life goes on, even when we do nothing or very little. As I look back on my life, I used to…
Workaholics
As I think back over my working career, I can think of lots of people that might be considered workaholics. It seemed to everyone on the job that the workaholic probably had a terrible family life, had problems with the kids, issues with the wife, deep in debt, or just did not have anything else better to do in life.
There was this one job that I think about from time to time. Our scheduled work week was 50 hours – 5 X 10 hour days, and the next week was about 7 hours – 7 X 10 hour days. When the supervisor said “we are a little low on work, anyone that wants to go home can”, well, I went home. the job was working on the night shift. During the summer, there were weeks when I only saw my kids for a few minutes a day. I felt more like slave labor then a modern day worker.
One day the supervisor walks up to me and wants to have a talk. He said something like “when I tell people that they can go home, and you accept, that tells me your lazy”.
Now what kind of carp is that? My supervisor says I can go home and see my family, but for some reason I am supposed to argue to stay at work? How does that work out? to me, that is a pretty screwed up outlook on life. Working 50 – 70, or more hours a week, and on night shift meant I spent very little time with my kids. For some reason, wanting to see my kids and spend time with them meant I was lazy?
Another job I had was working the weekend, 3 – 12 hour days. It might sound great working the weekend, but how was I and the family supposed to go and do anything without a full day off? During the summer was not so bad, but when the kids were in school, we could never go and spend the night anywhere – that meant no vacations.
When the supervisor spewed that garbage out of his mouth, I knew it was time to find another job.
Another job I worked at, we worked 2 weeks of days, 2 weeks of nights, 2 weeks of days, 2 weeks of nights, 2 weeks of days, 2 weeks of nights,,,,,, and so on. The only weekend off we got was the transition week from nights to days. The weekend between our 2 weeks of days we were scheduled to work. That meant the weekend I was off, I was also having to readjust my schedule. Which usually meant I was grumpy with the family.
Unrelated video – Survival Gear – LED Flashlights, Seeds, Lithium Batteries
Smoked briskets for memorial day
Memorial day is next weekend, so lets talk about smoking/cooking briskets. Brisket is a tough cut of meat, but if you cook it on a low heat, and for several hours, the meat becomes tender, and the brisket turns into a great appetite pleaser. Briskets can usually be bought for about $20, and will feed maybe a dozen people depending on how big the brisket is.
Marinate a Brisket
I like to marinate my brisket for at least 12 hours before cooking. For the rub, I am currently using a liquid marinate out of the mexican food section called Goya Mojo criollo Marinade for chicken, pork and beef. While at the deer lease on opening weekend of 2010, a buddy of mine told me about Goya mojo, so I thought I would give it a try. Other ingredints of the rub are a cajun spice and steak seasoning.
The brisket is marinated overnight, put it on the smoker for about 4 – 5 hours, then wrap in foil with the fat layer up. I like to put the fat layer up so that the good meat is in the juice. This helps keep the brisket moist. A lot of people put the fat layer down, which makes the best cuts of meat dry out.
About 6 hours cook time wrapped in foil, then taken out, put on the chopping block, and sliced up. To slice up the brisket, I use an electric knife.
Total cook time is about 10 – 11 hours.
Plague of the early 21st century
I think I finally figured out what the plague of the early 21st century is. Its not swine flu, bird flu, or even Yersinia pestis (the Black Death/Bubonic Plague). The plague of the early 21st century is drugs. Its not just illegal drugs, but also legal drugs that are destroying our society from within. Over…
Open letter to Valve software
I had originally posted this the Steam forums, but I wanted to post it here as well. There was a question about Valve being the greatest developer in the world. Here is my answer: At this time – maybe so. In the 1990s – No. Before November 1998, the best software developer was ID software.…
Time just slips by
Time never ceases to amaze me, and how fast it can slip by. Unlike a car that goes flying down the road that gets the attention of those that see it, time is rarely noticed. Its something that we look back on an say “it seems like only yesterday that such and such happened.”
For some reason, this morning I was thinking of going hunting with my kids. Since its April, deer season is closed. Its not that I wanted to take my kids hunting “right now”, but rather the memories we built while hunting. Like the time that my oldest son shot at a deer, my daughter and I heard the shot on the stand that we were on. It was a cool night, my daughter was wearing a jacket with a hood. When the hood was pulled over her head, the curls of her hair rolled out past the edges of the hood.
Like the time my second son got a bobcat while sitting in the stand with his uncle, my brother.
Like the time my second son and I got a doe. He found the blood trail and did most of the work finding the deer.
Like last year when my youngest son got his 8 point, that was a good night.
But its amazing how fast time slips through our fingers, like sand. Before you know it, the sand is gone. How precious is life that we should waste a second of it, lest we look back in regret. I have lots of regrets in life, and the main one is wasting time. Time that will never be replaced, or returned. Time is not like a tool, that when borrowed can be returned, or rebought.
There was so much that I wanted to do last weekend, and the time just slipped by.
How about a video from the 2010 – 2011 hunting season.
And how about another video from May 2008 with my kids and I went on a camping trip.
Easter Weekend Plans
Good Friday is here, finally. This means that we get a three day weekend – well, most of us anyway. My wife and I are both off for Good Friday, by my step-daughter has to work.
Last weekend my 2 youngest kids and I were talking them coming back to my house for Easter, but it looks like that is not going to happen. My daughter has plans, and my son wants to go visit his brother, my other son.
So what is on the schedule for Good Friday? Not much of anything.
My package of mylar bags and oxygen absorbers are supposed to be here today. The UPS tracking page says the package is out for delivery. Hopefully I will be able to start on some homemade superpails this evening.
My wife is going to wal-mart to pick up some stuff. I asked her to pick up a motor flusher for my boat. The motor has not been cranked in a few weeks and it needs to be ran. Some people might use a trash can, but I do not want to deal with the can, so a set of flushers it is.
Another weekend has passed away
Have you ever had a weekend that you never wanted to end? Well, that is the weekend that I had this weekend. Things kicked off Friday with getting ready for Relay for Life here in Jasper County. TJ went to Beaumont to pick up my kids from my ex-wife for the weekend, so that saved me a LOT of time. After lunch I washed my truck, hooked up the pit, loaded up some stuff, left home about 5pm, drove to the Jasper County court house square, and setup for the relay.
The thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about Friday was washing my truck. Because it was more then just washing off dirt, it was washing off memories. The majority of the dirt on my truck was from driving to the lease during hunting season. So the dirt had built up like memories, good memories. Like when my son got his deer for the 2010 – 2011 deer season. For the deer hunting story, visit this article – our first deer of the 2010- 2011 season. As I was washing the layers of dirt off, I was also thinking about the memories built around the truck over the past few months.
Around 4pm my wife and my step-daughter show up and start loading stuff into the truck. We loaded up the canopy, ice chest, tables,,,,, and other stuff. they left a little before 5pm to go get ice. I left for the court house around 5.
Got to the court house square, backed the pit into place, and started setting everything up. The event started at 7pm, and within minutes we had a line at our table. We were selling hotlinks – on a bun, stick, or flatbread.
In all, we raised a little over $600, which was donated that night.
I dont think there were as many people at this years relay as last year. The weather was great, so I dont know what the issue was.
Conformist
Facebook has this feature where the site will suggest people that you may know, and you will have the option to add the suggested people to your friends list.
While I was scrolling through the list of suggested friends, I came across a name I wish to have never seen or heard spoken again for the rest of my natural life. While we were in school (junior high and high school) the guy and some other people like him were complete assholes. One person in particular taller then most of the other kids, so I guess he thought his height gave him permission to be mean to the other kids. His height just meant that he was a tall asshole instead of an average height or short asshole.
I don’t know if the guy was abused, maybe raped as a child, saw his dad push his mom around, saw his mom push his dad around,,,,,,, who knows. But one thing was for sure, he seemed to have a lot of built up anger. That anger manifested itself in the form of harassment towards other kids.
One of the reasons why I was picked on at school was because of the music I listed to, which happened to be metal. While most of my high school class was listening to 80 pop rock garbage and loving it, I was listening to metal and loving it. To the other kids, since I listened to metal, then I “must” be dong drugs, because you can not listen to metal without doing drugs – or at least that was their mindset anyway.
When other kids do not understand someone, they usually pick on the strange kid. And that is what happened to me. I listened to metal, which meant I was “magically” a drug head (which I was not), so the other kids made it a point to torment me about my alleged drug use and my taste of heavy metal.
Throwing away computer parts
Its time to do some spring cleaning. As I was going through some of the stuff in my sons room, I found the boxes from the last time my sons computer and my computer was upgraded. It was one of those good points in points in time that just you wish you could back to and visit.
In December 2009 my mom asked me what I want for Christmas. I told her what I “really” was to upgrade my computer and my sons computer. My mom asked me how much I needed, I told her around $400. This is what I got for $400.
I must have read reviews for a whole week trying to figure out what the best CPU and motherboard for a given price range was. For my son, I decided to go with a dual core MD 245 that runs at 2.9ghz. For myself, I decided to go with a quad core 620 that runs at 2.6ghz. I do video blogging on youtube and wanted the extra horsepower of a quad core cpu.
The parts were ordered December 12, 2009 – according to my Tigerdirect account.
2 – 2 gig sticks of Corsair XMS2 PC6400 DDR2 800MHz, total price $99.98
ASUS M2N68-AM SE2 GeForce 7025 Socket – $56.70
AMD Athlon II X2 245 2.9Ghz AM3 CPU – $68.29
ASUS M4A785-M AMD 785G Socket AM2+ – $80
AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.6Ghz AM3 CPU – $99.99
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