hmmm

...why is it if i go to bed at 1am, I feel ready for sleep but it just feels...blah... or...if I go to bed at 9pm getting an extra 3 or 4 hours of sleep in, i find it actually hard to go to sleep and end up watching Law and Order and Sportscenter before finally falling asleep at..oh...say...1am??? but yet I can lie down in all my clothes on my bed at 1030am for a quick 30 minute nap and it feels.....SOOOOOOOOOOOO good?

...looks like the choice of President will...after we get past the eventual, inevitable race crap that will spew out from both sides... boil down to if we want a woman in the White House in charge. Now... I dont have a problem being a woman president, just as I dont have a problem with a Black man being president. I just dont know if this woman is one i would vote for. Of course, there are those who wont vote for her simply because... and that is very unfortunate. But equally unfortunate are those who will vote for her simply because she is white. and aint no way i am feeling Nuke Romney...something fishy about him. I am taking a second look at McCain. I listen to talk radio all day at work and I switch back and forth from Orielly to Air America to Hannity to Sharpton to Combs to the lesser knowns on both sides all day long. and it so nagging to never seem to get anyone who isnt screaming about how the other side is SOOOO bad. Either you aint Conservative ENOUGH or you are too much like BUSH (HATE BUSH HAT BUSH HATE BUSH HATE BUSH...enough already., please...that dog dont hunt anymore). Or we need CHANGE and HOPE...well its time to start telling me some substance in your speeches...the flowery stuff makes me sick. its fine when you are announcing you are running. Now...tell me something...I can read the stuff your aides have on your websites...i want to hear it from you. And if you have been telling me, maybe I'm too stupid too understand... well...i guess we'll really start weeding this out on Tuesday, wont we?

...

sunday, Sunday, SUNDAYYYYY!!!!

so ...like...MOnster JAm was in town and we went to see it. I was curious as to how they would do this in a normal hockey arena and it was really entertaining. I-Man's favorite truck GRAVEDIGGER won the show and as you can see, we had virtually front row seats for the event. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a fun family event for the youngsters, and since everyone seems to have had a girl recently, I'll say that Ryles enjoyed the show too. They also had smaller normal size jeeps and trucks racing the course too. There were motorcycles doing huge jumps and stunts thru the air and some guy jumped from the ceiling while on fire. So, there were a lot of things happening besides the huge trucks.

looking ahead...

...since I am no longer in the eternal summer camp situation that is college, I always try to have something that I am looking forward to..planning...some sort of event to give hope in what is the monotony of the everyday work crap we have to do.... First up for 2008....watchin the local muddawgin event at the Sell-Hi Center. The Monster Trucks are in town and I'm takin the twins to see Batman and the Gravedigger go at it. I am looking forward to seeing how they do all that in this arena.... After that is the Spring Bristol Race, then I get to drive on the track at Darlington. Not sure if I will be taking the Jetta out there, but it will probably be the Jetta since Uncle Wes will be out playin Cowboys and Injuns in the woods somewhere. AFter that will be a visit to John in Florida, Frat Convention, Frat Formal in the ATL after which we will be into May... I like having something to look forward to, and something to be planning...

breakin form...

...Ok...I'll break my moratorium for a moment....

Its amazing what can happen when you just hit a few free throws. Dont have to hit them all (like all the good teams do), but if you make most of them, its makes things a whole lot easier, doesnt it Tiger Basketball?

Overheard last night from I-Man as my son was playing Guitar Hero.... "Mississippi Queen - you know what I mean....Mississippi Queen - she taught me everything" Interesting....

Feeling kicked around by XBOX

...I've been playin Guitar Hero 3 some...a sone here or there when I get a chance and have kinda worked my way to the medium level. Now...I am no great player or anything but i did complete Easy finally and worked thru the first section on Medium, which I have benn haveing some problems with...I seem to have a mental/physical thing in regards to how the guitar is played and since this uses 4 fingers on the left hand, I am having problems getting used to it on Medium. I played an instrument so long that primarily used 3 fingers on the left hand, and I only used the "pinky" finger for another set of notes, not in tandem (well..kinda, but..not really...). So my number 2 finger simply keeps not responding. Its weird, but i really think it has to do with patterns and physical memory that is very ingrained in me... so I have reached this battle against this "Tom" fellow and I keep getting my rear handed to me... I am thinkin I might just leave this game to Jessica and the twins and stick with Forza 2. If I do manage to EVER get past this battle, I know i will never get to the next HARD level. That aint happening....

snow?

so...it snowed and as is typical here, it was gone by 5 pm, but the kids did get out of school and all that... then the second part of the latest storm o the century arrived, and it snowed again, but since the first snow was followed by a day of 60 degree weather, the gound was too warm and all the "5 inches of snow!!!" pandalerium did not come to pass...

...And only one more week of thses candidates pounding the tv and radio with ads. of course, we are now hearing that all the candidates are running out of money for ad space...hmmmm...

...went to the Frat rit the other night. 20 people are in the Pi class... and while i can usually eye these kids and get a good feel for those who wont make it thru the process, this class as a whole impresses me.

...Brown wants me to comment on BILLARY and Osama, but i am waiting to see how this Saturday shakes down.

.... hate the NFL right now..it just saddens me...just so damn sad....

Geetar Heeroe

its kinda interesting within the Guitar Hero game, in that you are trying to mimic a song, when in reality, no 2 songs are ever really alike. Even if you play the notes in band exactly the way the music is written, you wont be as soft as intended, or as loud as intended...or are you really playing at exactly the same speed the composer intended. Thats why i get a little annoyed in the game with the fact that I must play it EXACTLY the way it is. Now..understanding that it is a game, I still get a little annoyed when I get dinged for cutting off to quickly or whatever...anyway...

way too much to say

With these candidates here in South Carolina, and the constant barrage of media crap, I'm a little jaded right now about the political stuff. i think I'm more tired of the media (see NBC, MSNBC,FOXNEWS) trying to tell me who the favorite is, who MUST win or quit, who is baiting who and who is being racial or what.... I am starting to see this as the media trying to influence who THEY want to be running...I mean NBC people have admitted that they are pulling for Obama, and i cant watch any coverage now without seeing a blatant bias on their part against Clinton. What?, Clinton didnt give you guys cookies on the plane the other day? While I dont think that anyone, be it Olberman, Orielly, Russert or whoever doesnt or shouldnt have their favorite (everybody has only one vote) person, i do object to their using their pulpit to try to influence the election. After all, is it fair that the networks seem to obviously favor the candidates who have the most money, who can pay the most money to them for Ad space? While I might think Obama is the best choice, (and i have NOT made that decision yet)I certainly dont think it is in the best interest for NBC to be openly pulling for one candidate and everyday talk about the MUST WIN scenarios for all the other candidates...especially since the actual delegates are so close that they all have. February 5th will be a day that will start to weed out some people for real...THEN you can say that some candidates are in trouble. But watch, whoever loses in South Carolina will be declared dead by the media...

I think I am going to just give up pulling for teams until February, when NASCAR fires back up and my Braves start Spring Training...last sunday was a disaster in hopes of seeing any sort of happy ending to the NFL season, and suddenly the celtics are losing, and the Heat...well...they got old real fast. I'm almost afraid to pull out my Tar Heel Blue UNC tshirt for fear that they will lose 3 of 4 right afterward...

Santa upgraded the PC he got for the twins...it now is about 3 times more powerful than the PC i have. This means that Ryles and I-Man should have no problem playing on Barbie.com or Hotwheels.com now...or making sure Webkinz runs fluidly... meanwhile i have to start thinking about bandwidth...potentially their PC, my laptop, Jessica's laptop and the Xbox could all be connected at the same time, along with the desktop in the bedroom. while this would be rare, i am wonderin how this wil go over when Ryles suddenly can't get her Bratz girl shockwave movie to play right...

this is getting silly

...soo...my only real hope for the NFL season went down in flames today. The Colts imploded and the only team with no fear of the Patriots took the gaspipe. Now, Dallas is currently heading down the same street and my hopes for a fun Superbowl Sunday are wasting away...

...It is somewhat stunning to listen to my twins as they talk to each other. I keep wanting to think of them as 2 year olds, not 6 year olds who can now read and spell and carry on intelligent conversations (occasionally). But they really communicate to each other on an entirely different level than they do with me and Jessica, which is to be expected with someone who you have been beside since your creation...

..Guitar Hero 3 has dominated the Xbox since Christmas, and I-Man has started to get the hang of it and can get through an entire song now, putting him along the same level as me, I guess. But suddenly yesterday Lego Star Wars, THE COMPLETE SAGA came back into favor and I-Man is now Indiana Jones in the game. yeah, I know Indiana Jones wasnt in Star Wars, but..well.. anyway....

...the FRAT has 21 candidates this Spring, which is interesting since there are only like 14 active brothers right now. This happened once before and it created a dynamic that I will have to watch carefully in regards to one subsection of the chapter developing a cliche and issues arising from it. yeah, i know...you cant tell people who to be/not be friends with...but class conflicts, be they real or not, have caused issues in the past...The chapter has swung waaayyyy young and tis shall be interesting...

whoa...what was that?.....

siitin here tryin to get the Rylee/Ian computer up and running when i hear this huge crash and thud and felt a slight rumble...I'm like..."what the hey?"...So, I kinda cautiously go out the front door and look around ..nothing... but I hear an engine running, so i walk around the side of the house and what do i see?... there is a truck sticking out from the side of the deck we have on the side of our house. Well..actually...UNDER the deck...I'm like...again..."what the hey???" and so cautiously take a closer look....door slightly ajar but no one there. i'm thinkin "this fool is tryin to run away?"... at this point i look around tryin to see how this truck is now situated under the sidedeck of the house... i see tracks running from the road through the little fence separating our yard from our neighbors yard.."drunk driver?" i'm thinkin... then my neighbor comes out of his house and is like..."Oh my God!!!" and comes running over. Seems he had left the truck idling and went inside to get something, came back out and didnt see the truck, thought it was stolen and ran back inside to get his phone to call the police and came back out and saw me in the yard and then noticed his truck parked in my side deck. needless to say that we will be either getting the deck repaired or doing away with it completely, since we never use that deck anyway. Insurance-his) will be cutting us a check soon, it appears....

clemson basketball

sigh....(shakin head)...sigh....

shreddin...

So after visiting AJ and Brandy and playing Guitar Hero on their Wii, Jessica decided to get the game for our Xbox360. pretty slick game. And I went onto Xbox live online and downloaded a bunch of extra songs... last night I got another gutar controller and now I can play bass and she can play guitar. Its probably more fun than i thought it would be... I can see now why there is always a crowd around the demo in the store...

look...lets just calm down now...

...i mean...I know theres a big primary coming up here in a couple of weeks and all but....goodness..every other commercial on TV today is a candidate commercial. This is already WAAAAYYYY too old. And the first big test of the season for the Tiger basketball team comes Sunday against UNC. I expect this to be a Clemson win as Clemson always plays well at home against UNC, even when they have had terrible teams. So, a team with talent should (key word here..should) fare well against UNC, especially at home.

And...We're off!!!

Ok...lets start cutting the chaff away from these politicians and get down to the serious contenders.... please...these has been going on on since...well...i think it started the day after the last election. Clarification...again: I am not a gays-must-die... abortion-is-sin-guns-are-cool-shoot-to-kill-at-the-border... tax-all-the-poor Republican anymore than I am a pot smokin, tree huggin, lets give everyone everything for free, gay marriage is cool I hate anything associated with Bush Democrat. I am pretty much middle of the road and my vote is there for the taking. Yes, I admit that i lean to the Right in my thinking. But I am not an automatic vote for either side and I think the majority of the country is obviously the same way as me, which is why we keep seeing 51-49 votes in these elections. Bill Clinton has stepped out of the Arkansas woods and sparked the majority's fancy and until someone from either side does that, we'll get another election basically pitting the major cities against the rest of the country, which is how the last 2 elections have fallen (despite what all the "we got robbed in Florida/Ohio/Wherever people wanna whine about).

Anyway...Clemson crashes and burns in the bowl game and that cloud i have spoken of still exist. There is always.... SOMETHING, and this past season fell to missed field goals. Dont have to make em all, but you cant keep missing them, because they will cause you to lose the close games, which is where Clemson football is now. Hit a field goal in the first quarter, and you aint having to deal with overtime 3 hours later. pretty simple, but... lets see where Clemson basketball takes us...team is supposed to be good, but you know...you KNOW... something whacked will happen this season...

2007 we hardly knew ya!!!....

...Ok...this year, I only am going to offer up one public resolution, and it will cover preety much everything i do for the year....it is the KISS principle, or Keep It Simple Stupid or other variations on the name.... from Wikipedia...

The KISS principle (acronym for "Keep It Simple, Stupid") states that design simplicity should be a key goal and unnecessary complexity avoided. It serves as a useful principle in a wide array of disciplines, such as software development, animation, engineering, and strategic planning. Common variants of the acronym include: "Keep It Simple & Stupid", "Keep It Sweet & Simple", and "Keep It Short & Simple". The form "Keep It Simple, Silly" is sometimes used in situations (for example, explaining the phrase to children) where "stupid" is too harsh.

Complexity should, very simply, be avoided: simplicity becomes a goal in itself. Extra features are not needed; an approach that seems "too easy to be true" is in fact the best way; a very straightforward approach may seem less glamorous and less dramatic but that trivial approach should indeed be taken; surprisingly the very obvious approach is often best


I am going to work at simplifying everything in my life, from my daily routine to the kids to my job to everything. Too much clutter...too much extra stuff...all that matters is my wife, kids, family and friends and that is complex enough to keep me busy. At the end of the day, all the other stuff is just clutter and doesnt matter. now woven into my wife, kids, family and friends are things like the frat, hobbies, etc.... so I aint just going to sit at home all the time. But...ya just gotta keep the important things important and get rid of the clutter...