I was ready for that bullet that missed.

As many of you know last year I decided to re-market myself in the workforce. I wanted to see if I had a needed marketable skill that could find me another job if I had to. After two plant shut downs you tend to prepare for it and be ready for it.

Vargis / Infotech made a unique little offer to me an that was the ability to work from home. I saw this increasing the quality of life and felt it strengthened my position within my company in case something would ever happen and they shut my office down.

I have felt that an announcement was going to come since probably last September for some reason. There was less interest in what was going on at the Frostburg facility and they were not replacing anyone.

Today, the announcement came and they are shutting down my office in Frostburg in March. An office that two years ago I had full intentions of running never came to fruition and they moved me onto jobs where my skills had already been significantly developed.

Of course, having gone through this not once but twice I was secretly preparing and not giving any hints over what I had felt had been developing over the past six months. I was ready for this announcement. The President and COO both made trips to Frostburg today, but no one bothered to officially tell or invite me.

Reason being, they are giving me two options and I receive both official offers tomorrow. One will be to keep working from home, with an increase in salary. The second is to move to Sterling, Virginia to that office with a salary pro-rated for the DC Metropolitan area.

I have not seen either offer yet nor do I know much of the details, however I should receive them in an e-mail either this evening or tomorrow morning. I know about 95% what my decision will be, however it is nice that there is a chance to relocate at a nice salary to a place where the opportunities would be almost limitless.

For the record, my lease expires today and the new 12 month lease I signed a month and a half ago kicks in tomorrow.

I guess this time I dodged the bullet and set myself up for my next set of goals when and if I decide to persue them.

Baby fart

Tried something new

I'm always open to try new things. Today I tried something new, and never really had an opinion of it before. I actually bought some chocolate soy milk and decided to give it a try.

It was a little more expensive than regular milk, but you can see in on the shelves with a little more consistency now. I tried the product brand Silk and I have to say it wasn't that bad. I kept thinking back to the scene from the movie "The Santa Clause" with Tim Allen and him drinking a glass of milk and the look on his face. He told the little girl the milk was sour and she told him it was soy milk because he had told her the previous year that he was lactose intolerant.

I gave it a try just to see what it was like. I didn't notice much of a difference other than it lacked that dairy after taste that is usually left behind after drinking milk.

If I had my choice between real milk and soy milk, I think I would choose real milk mainly because it's cheaper. I could get used to soy milk, but do you like imitation cheese or real cheese better?

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2007 When

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is
that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see
if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7 Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of
the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have
the
first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for
panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your
coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward
this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9
on this list

A movie I have never heard of but will buy.

I was walking through Wal-Mart a couple days ago and all the TV's were playing previews for this one football movie. I stood there captivated and immediately turned and looked for it.

The movie is called Facing the Giants and from everything I have seen so far, it is a movie that I must own. I have a feeling this is going to be a classic sports movie for the ages. Thing is, before a couple days ago I never even heard of it.

Looks to be very inspirational and a must own DVD.

It's Friday!!!!!

Give me a T

Give me a G

Give me an I

Give me a F



What's that Spell?!?!?!?!?!?



Nothing, it's an acronym.

I hope everyone's week has went well. We are once again at another Friday and the end of the workweek. Next Friday, I will have a certain little rodent in the cross hairs and if the rat sees his shadow again I'm blowing his head off. Anyone for groundhog stew for next Friday's lunch?

Not much has really went on for me this week, horrible weather and just a typical week at work doing a lot of editing. Fun, fun fun.

I'm thinking of either watching a DVD tonight, I think I may watch V for Vendetta, but that is not a solid commitment. I may change my mind.

I'm starting to feel like bear

Have I ever mentioned that I hate snow? It's a time of the year that confines you to being inside and not being able to have the front door open to allow the fresh misty mountain air to emanate throughout your living quarters. I have to resort to candles and renuzit's to remind me of that gentle smell of a fresh spring morning.

This is the time of the year I feel like an ole grouchy bear being awaken from the midst of his hibernation to the unpleasantness of snow, cold weather and near 0 wind chills.

I was watching 24 Sunday night for the first few minutes, I was sitting in the chair and the next thing I know it was 10:05 and I had fallen asleep during 3/4 of the most action packed show on television.

Hurry up softball season.

YUCK!!!!!!

Powerball jackpot

Everybodies favorite waste a buck to dream a little game is reaching that level once again. Powerball currently is an esitmated $240 Million and has an estimated cash value of $114 Million before taxes.

Take a buck, spend it on it but don't go overboard. I've sold literally thousands of tickets and know that that chances of winning were very slim BEFORE they added additional numbers to the pool a few years ago. The odds of winning are

Jack Pot 1 in 146,107,962.00
$200,000 1 in 3,563,608.83
$10,000 1 in 584,431.85
$100 with the powerball 1 in 14,254.44
$100 without the powerball 1 in 11,927.18
$7 with Powerball 1 in 290.91
$7 without Powerball 1 in 745.45
$4 1 in 126.88
$3 1 in 68.96

The overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 36.61.


Have fun, let yourself dream a little bit what you would do if you hit it other than share it with me. Most importantly coming from a guy who has literally sold thousands of these tickets working at the Valley Mart, it is rare to win.

Is it Spring yet?

I hate snow. I hate the cold and I hate winter. I'm ready for the fresh smell of new foliage of the spring. We're not even at Groundhogs day yet.

Steelers are out of the playoffs, so I'm not really interested in the NFL playoffs.


Is it softball yet?

Let's see, what did I do today. I went to Super Wal-Mart (now there's a surprise) and bought by 2006 copy of my tax software. If anyone else uses Tax Cut, we can work together on this and make a few bucks for each other with each of us receiving a $10.00 rebate. I have used Tax Cut for four years now and highly recommend it. It is actually one of the most inexpensive tax softwares out there and it is done by H&R Block . I bought the Premium federal version for $14.95, and if you are reading this and you haven't done your taxes yet, we can each get $10.00 rebates. I no tax expert, but this has helped me get $300-$400 each of the last two years more than if I had done them myself. Sooooo, help both of get that $10.00 rebate.

What else is new for the day? Hmmmm. Have I mentioned that you can get a $10.00 rebate from buying Tax Cut?

The temperature outside is currently a very ugly 22 degrees. Why couldn't that be 82 degrees and it be spring time? Birds singing fresh rain to cleanse the air and softball season.

So, have you bought Tax Cut yet? Did you know you can get a $10.00 rebate? Just in case I forgot to mention that.

OK, NOW

I have the day right, Happy Birthday Nick.

OOPs

Nick's birthday is tomorrow. Brain fart on my end however IO got a chance to speak to Terri for a few Minutes. There is nothing going on at the bar tonight, but she said that the Hillbilly Gypsies are playing next week.

I am going to have to go and catch them next week, before they start hitting the big time.





Muleskinner Blues




Fire on the Mountain.

Happy Birthday Nick

I would like to take this opportunity to wish my brother in law Nick a very Happy Birthday.

American Idol to start again

Ok, it's time once again fro my favorite part of American Idol, that is when the judges initially visit all the cities and get to see all the uh..."talent" first hand to decide if they are going to make the trip to Hollywood.

This is the round when being bad could make you another William Hung

New TV show I am starting to watch

Over the past few years, I have had more than one person tell me about the TV show 24. I made it through the initial two shows last night and am watching the two other shows tonight (season premiere) and I have to say that I have been impressed.

Maybe I have a new drama series that I will finally start watching on a regular basis.

Texas Hold Em Round 4

This afternoon, we held round 4 of our Texas Hold Em Tournament. Today was a double point round and I needed to make up some ground on the points. I ended up finishing fourth overall and the double points round pulled the overall field in a little closer.

Players who had had pretty good games to this point went out early, and those of us who haven;t had good rounds played pretty decent for a change. Norma and Charlie were the final two players, but considering they are married we know what household that prize money was going to before the game ended.

Norma took Charlie out, winning round four.

How in the World

How in the world do you win $315 Million Dollars in the Lottery and be broke four years later? I mean come on, he was a millionaire BEFORE he hit the lottery. He took it in one lump sum of $113 Million AFTER taxes and in four years has blown it.

I have no idea how in the world he could have done this, but if someone would like to give me $113 Million cash I will try my hardest to be penniless in four short years.

Everyone can rest assured that we all would have taken a few trips around the world, and especially to Rio to see the topless babes on the beaches.

Bottled water consumers

The idiots of today with the wallets of tomorrow. I had to post this one, I see so many people buying battled water in convenience stores and have to laugh. First, it is higher priced than the soda that the beverage distributors also distribute, and secondly its tap water. I'm having fun with this.

Why Bush's NSA Wire tapping is defeated by VoIP Networks

Bush claims he needs NSA wire tapping to break up terrorist networks but terrorists are not using the phone network Bush is tapping. They are using private voice over IP internet phones (VoIP) that can't be tapped. This video explains how it works. EDIT: This is actually me testing out a feature from Google that I have never used before and that is posting a google video into a blog. WAAAAAYYYY too easy to do. All you have to do is log in.

TGIF

It's FRIDAY!!!!!!!!

Let the weekend begin!!!!

Happy Birthday Mom

I would like to take this blog and dedicated it to my mother and wish her a very Happy Birthday. I called her this morning, but I found out I was the second one to wish her a Happy Birthday for today, Gerald had beaten me to it when he woke up this morning.

If you have not already done so today, take a minute and wish her a Happy Birthday. You can e-mail her at her yahoo e-mail or you can e-mail her at sandi@george-hall.net.

She has always been one of those people who will unselfishly be there for anyone in need when they need her. I sometimes wonder why she doesn't volunteer at either of the hospitals.

Mom, I hope all of your dreams come true today and that you have a very Happy Birthday.

OK, sometimes you have to see it to believe it

Every once in a while you run across a clip on the internet that is just beyond belief. If I would tell you that I had a movie file of a snake versus a cute little bunny rabbit, who would you put your money on?

Snake V Bunny

Apple Unveils the iPhone

Today, Apple Computers has introduced their newest product and that is the new iPhone. I'm quite sure that we are getting our first glimpse into a technology that probably every person will have in the next 5-10 years.

This is finally an all in one hand held device. It is a cell phone, a high quality music and video device, it's a browser, heck, it does a little bit of everything and I have a funny feeling right now would be a prime time to dump as much money as you have into Apple Stocks because this may be the first 21st century device, that is well, 21st century.

I think it is going to have a 22nd century price tag however, 4 Gigabyte Models are $499 and 8 GB models are $599. However they are not scheduled to start shipping until June of this year, so it will be at least six more months before anyone will have one.

It runs on Macintosh's OS X operating system.

Go Away

Do you believe this crap? I have been very fortunate I guess this time of the year because I have been treated with almost spring like conditions and haven't even had to worry about old man winter showing his ugly face.

I guess that all changed today when he decided to throw me a little curve ball and drop a bunch of this cold cotton looking white stuff all over the place.

I could have been perfectly content in not seeing another snowflake this season, but someone obviously doesn't like me and covered the ground with this cold cotton.

I guess we are pretty fortunate, this really is the first time this year that we have even had the slightest bit of accumulation and we are already into the second week of January. I'm already for the warm weather to come back, the pleasant odors of fresh foliage enlightening my nasal cavity to indicate new and fresh. I'm ready for the sounds of softball, the balls pinging off the bats and being snatched up by the leathery extensions of the hand. I'm ready for spring, and it couldn't arrive soon enough.

This feels wierd

It's is the NFL playoffs and it's one thing that the Pittsburgh Steelers didn't play during the wild card weekend, but now we are getting ready to enter the second week of the playoffs. No Steelers, and worse yet, Bill Cowher has decided to step down as the Steelers coach.

I'm all confused, I don't know what to do when the defending Super Bowl Champions are not even in the playoffs.

Lot's of emptiness in this die hard Steelers fan pro football life.

Movie Review Rocky Balboa

With the Pittsburgh Steelers out of the NFL playoffs, I decided to take in a move this afternoon.


Today I went and saw the movie Rocky Balboa. This was the sixth part in the Rocky series, the fifth Rocky left everyone with a bad feeling and I guess Sylvester Stallone decided he wanted to do a fifth.

I've been following the production of this movie for some time, so I had already seen all the trailers and had actually already read the script. I knew what to expect when I walked into the theater.

The first 2/3 of the movie I am sitting there thinking that this could possibly win another Academy Award. It was captivating and it was a story that covers the last thirty one years as we have watched this character develop. I grew up with the character and you could relate to the characters as if you had lived everything with them.

The new character development was great. They had developed a story line for Mason "The Line" Dixon as well as any character that was ever written about in the series. At first the movie could have almost been about him and I thought they developed a personable side that you could relate to. A small sample

Rocky, had lost Adrien in 1995 and his son had grown up. He has an encounter of meeting the little girl from Rocky I that he walked home and she yelled "Screw you creepo". That story line started to develop into a love affair, but Rocky's inspiration was the past and his long lost wife.

About 2/3rds of the way into the movie it went from a very well set up movie with a great story line, to a B movie rushing to get everything in under budget. Characters went from being someone you could deeply relate to to an actor saying his lines.

I think it started out great, but at some point during production they went from being artistic and making this an A movie, to meeting a budget and making it a B movie.

Like I said, I already knew the script, and where the actors would have gotten a 10 at the beginning, I gave them about a 2 at the end.

Had Stallone possibly sought additional financing and extended it a few more minutes, it could have been Oscar worthy. I was very excited in seeing the movie, but I think they dropped the ball on this one.

I will own this DVD.

A little late, but still funny

WVU men's basketball team puts on a clinic

The 25th ranked, WVU men's basketball team ran its record to 13-1 and 3-0 on the season with a 73-46 spanking of St. Johns this afternoon. I won four tickets on Friday, but no one seemed to want to go so I gave all four of them to Sandy, Kurt, Kyle and Kayla and let them enjoy the day.

I watched the game on TV and we put on a basketball clinic for the world to see. I thought our two 7'0" Centers played very well today and I think Joe Alexander will be an All-American before he leaves here.

This could be a very interesting season.

I will make this fair

Saturday, January 6th, 2007 at 4:00 PM at the WVU colseum, the 25th ranked WVU Men's basketball team will play against St. Johns in a game that is already SOLD OUT. We are talking 14,000 plus fans jammed into the the Colseum to see this contest.

On WAJR this morning, yours truly managed to win four tickets to tomorrows game. Obviouslu I will be using one of the tickets, the other three are up for grabs for the first three people that ask me for a ticket. You can't beat the price, they are free and being that they are promotional tickets, My guess is that they are very seats.

I was initially going to give them to Moke, but he is leaving tomorrow three hours before the game to return to complete his AIT training.

This leaves me with three tickets and in search of three people who would like to go and see a very well coached and very exciting game tomorrow.

Edit

2 of the tickets gone, 1 to go.

Some amazing and interesting research

I have seen and heard of all kinds of research in the name of education. Crazy stuff like psychological experiments on twinkies and methane in air theories that included a bunch of cows farting.

Now, comes the most serious of all the research and the most accurate in relevance to human behavior. They performed a series of small experiments where certain chemicals were introduced to the wood spider and their behavioral patterns were closely monitored.

Wood Spider Experiment.

As you can see, these tiny insects behavior are very similar to human behavior.

I plead the fifth

STAY AWAY FROM THE CHAMPAGNE.


It makes you look stupid.

Welcome 2007

Wow, we are three days into 2007 and this is my first post of the new year. Lets me first start off by wishing everyone a very Happy New Year and I hope that 2007 is your best year yet for everyone.

I pushed 2006 out by spending New years eve with Kim, Robert, Brittany and of course my old buddy Roki.

As many of you know, I don't make new years resolutions, I set goals for myself for the next calender year. Typically for me resolutions last a day or two and they are gone. Goals give me a year to either complete them or reach a certain obtainable point to the completion of a larger goal.

This year, I think I want to send out a challenge to any Blogger reading this. First of all if you are not a blogger and would like to be, I would love to add you to my list of blogs on my sidebar. I'm looking to add new bloggers.

Next, I am going to make a few individual Blogging challenges. To the Active Bloggers that are linked to this blog, I challenge each of you to post a certain number of posts for each of you.

Kim You are the most active Blogger and I will put for the largest challenge to you for 2007. 100 Blogs in the calender year. Easily obtainable.

Brittany 25 Blogs or posts on your Yahoo account. That is two a month and the bare minimum for almost anyone I am challenging.

Val 25 Blogs or my space posts over the next year.

Amy You're one of the active Bloggers-Myspacers and I'm not going to let you off easy. 50 posts or entries into myspace.

Kamey 10 posts for the year. many of us like to know what is going on with your and Daniel's life.

Mom. Holy schnikes where in the heck do I begin. 7 posts in 2005 and not a single solitary post in 2006. Zero posts in a whole calender year. Let's see, lets try to match 2005's total of 7 posts.

Others I would like to see start Blogging.

Pam or George.

Linda, Richard or Bonita from Alaska. We're letting you know what is going on in West Virginia, let us know what is going on in Alaska. You should have time when you get snowed in.

Danielle. You're very educated and very articulate, develop it by becoming a blogger or a MySpace user.

Anyone from the Koon family. Debbie e-mailed me last week, and I would love for someone to start blogging so we can keep up with what is going on there.

Either Sharon or Lynne or both. Everyone would love to know what is going on in the Trevillion or Jacobs world.

Simple as that. The more active bloggers we have the more enjoyable reading we will have. If everyone steps in and contributes it will make this an enjoyable experiance. You're already here reading this, so no excuses.



Here's to a great 2007 for everyone.