Master of This

There are some pretty crazy people out there, let me tell you. These are people that aren’t afraid of anything. People that are almost invincible. I don’t know many of such people, but I do know a couple. One of these people is my older brother.

I’m two years younger than he is, but growing up, the way our birthdays were spaced, we were only a year apart in school. The thing that you have to understand is that our high school only had a total of less than 400 people in it. It was a very small school in the middle of nowhere. Word travels fast around a school that small.

Five minutes after my older brother swallowed a goldfish for five dollars at our junior/senior prom, I knew about it. Two minutes after my friend puked from riding in my brother’s car with him, I knew about it. So it wasn’t any surprise when I found my older brother standing in our kitchen one trimming his nails with a protech godfather knife. Yes, you heard me correctly. Trimming his nails with a protech godfather knife.

He’s definitely one of those people that thinks he’s invincible. That’s all I’m saying.

You ever compare HDTV prices and then start wondering what exactly you are comparing?  Like…what is with the LCD vs Plasma deal?  And what is with the LED thing?  There is so much verbage going on that it becomes pretty confusing pretty quick.  There isn’t anything that allows you to compare apples to apples.  That is what makes buying TVs online so hard.  You can’t just look at pics and be like,

“Oh, that is a much better picture…”

and then buy the Samsung instead of the Sony.  It never works.  There are some pretty thorough reviews though.  So this is how I think you do the TV game.

1. Go to a store and ask a couple of the minimum wage workers who live with their parents what the best options are and why. I recommend this because no one has more time to discuss the mind-numbing nuances that differentiate products that are virtually the separate something like the TV market than high school kids.  I also say this because someone there is going to have a point.  Stop by a few stores, ask a couple people, and you will get a fair idea who knows something and who doesn’t pretty quick.

2. Go online and start hitting the review sites.  Make sure it’s current.

3. No price shop and buy

Do this, and you’ll be successful.  Hopefully.  There’s always a chance of failure but this should help insulate against that.  Let me know in the comments!

I have been thinking a lot about becoming a stock broker. I like fast paced environments, and I kind of feel like it would not be that difficult of a job. Like, all that you do is say buy and sell all day long. Mostly, you just yell it at the top of your lungs to some unknown person that does something with what you say. Actually, I want to be the guy that listens to all of the shouting. I think I would really like that. All day all I would do is say, Hey, I heard you, calm down. Actually, no, I would just yell at everyone to calm down, and I would gain some control over that crazy.

I took a course so I definitely know about the Emini day trading system, which is why I think that I would be really good at stocks. Because I know so much about the emini day trading system, doesn’t that make me qualified to control the crazy yelling that happens on Wall Street? I am pretty sure that yes, it does make me one hundred percent qualified to tell those guys to calm down and tell me in a nice and orderly fashion if they want to buy or sell.

Getting girls diamonds is a great choice.  Girls love diamonds almost universally.  Basically if you can find something small, shiny, and expensive you are going to get along with women fantastically.  I guarantee it.

The truth is I’ve never given a girl a diamond.  I’ve thought about it – actually…I’ve never really thought about it in detail.  I’ve thought about the possibility, but I’ve never gone to a store and like purchased a ring or a princess cut diamond pendant or anything like that.  I am not sure that I am ready for it.  Financially I certainly am not but relationship-wise I certainly am not either.

Giving a girl a diamond is one of those things that is inherently serious.   You can’t give a girl a diamond and not have it imply something.  It is impossible.  Of course you can barely talk to some girls without it meaning something so assuming the girl that you give a diamond you are also talking to, you can expect that it will be inferred to mean something pretty significant.

Why am I telling you this?  Just to force you to think this through, I know you may like watching people get excited, but remember, if you are giving a girl a diamond, she is going to expect it means something serious, so be ready, and if you are, congrats.

Just to be clear, I have very little knowledge of what an XML document actually is.  I am not master of this.  A brief google search leaves me with the impression that it’s something like an HTML or an SGML file.  I think I know what an HTML file is… it’s like the internet, right?  As for SGML… that sounds like something which might require vaccination.

What I do know is that sometimes people want to convert xml to pdf.  A PDF file is what adobe acrobat reads.  C’mon, keep up.

As for why they’re converting xml to pdf, I would guess that has something to do with a request their boss has made.  Or their spouse.  Those seem to be the two main motivations for actually doing anything in this life.  The third, of course being a request by a teacher/law enforcement officer.

Once they have these very important documents in a PDF format, I’m going to assume that they do very important things with them.  They send them over to said employer/spouse/teacher/government official.  Maybe they even have something to do with state secrets.  Maybe Jason Bourne converts XML to PDF.  Maybe he sends them to wikileaks.  Too soon?

There is a lot of judgement that comes with being fat. Yes, I did just write that word: FAT. There is such a negative connotation attached to it that most people that are fat use different words for it to make themselves feel better. For me, though, I think that “morbidly obese” is just as hurtful. But I can say all this because I’ve been there. I’ve looked in the mirror and seen what hurts the most: FAT. It’s gross.

Most people get to a certain point and they get tired of being fat. I say most people because there are some people that want to be fat. There is a woman in England that wants to be the fattest woman alive and is eating five thousand calories a day to try and reach her goal. I think she is killing herself and needs some sense talked into her.

People do a lot of things to lose weight. Some are negative, some are positive. There are tons of diets out there. You want Aitkins? You got it. You want Weight Watchers? It’s right here. Take hcg injections and you should lose 1-2 pounds per day.

Losing weight is good. Dying is not. Consult a doctor before you take hcg injections, start Weight Watchers or go South Beach. Don’t die.

I am somewhat particular about my kitchenware.  I’ve only bought a few things but I am very particular about them all.  I’d like to get some copper pots and pans but for the moment it just isn’t practical.  I’ll do it eventually, but for now I’m going to pass just because I don’t have the housing stability or the cash flow to justify it.

Pots and pans can be expensive, but in a lot of ways you get what you pay for.  A good pot will last you for basically your whole life so look at it as a long term investment.  There are distinct advantages to getting some types of pans versus others.  Conductivity, or in simple terms, how fast the pan heats up, can be a big convenience factor as well as a factor when considering even heating of your food.  Copper is much more conductive than a stainless steel and will heat much faster.  Not only that, copper looks awesome.  Have you looked at these?  It’s like cooking with gold, only it’s more conductive.  If you insist on getting something more conductive I’d consider pure silver, otherwise copper is the way to go.

Good luck with the cooking, until I upgrade my pans I plan on only cooking via the toaster oven.  Wish me luck!

When I was four years old, my family lived in Kansas City. It was a big city, full of people. I don’t think that I realized how big it was until after I moved away, though. We lived on a dead end road in what is now, but wasn’t then, one of the worst parts of town.

It’s interesting what you remember from your childhood and what you don’t. I can give you a detailed map of our house, complete with all the doors and drawing an ‘x’ where my brothers rammed each other into the plaster walls, cracking. I remember somethings about our street, too. There was a gas station on the corner of the road where we would wait for the school bus. The man that ran the gas station was always so nice to us. He let me buy a small package skittles once for seven cents. My parents thought I had stolen it. I hadn’t. The nice man told them when they took me back to return the package.

Our neighbors had a pitbull. At first he was just a puppy. Where they had found blue pitbull puppies for sale, I’ll never know. But they did find blue pitbull puppies for sale and they made him their pet. I don’t like pitbulls. But that is just me.

We moved away when I was six. I don’t miss it.

Now that I’ve gotten married, I am beginning to feel like a real adult. It is kind of crazy. It is only getting worse as my husband has found an awesome job where with benefits. Now we have to decide if we want to go with the SelectHealth plan or the medical savings account options. How much life insurance do we want to get? Do we want to go with the 12 or 24 month eye care plan? What happens if we decide to have a baby in the next year? How will that effect things? Life is kind of crazy being a real adult.

It’s all enough to make me want to hire a financial planner. I think that I should hire a Punta Gorda financial planner, though. I’ll tell you why. You see, a Punta Gorda financial planner probably knows a lot. He is dealing with old people all day long, right? (Isn’t Punta Gorda the senior citizen capital of the world? Oh, and if you live in Punta Gorda and aren’t 70, I’m truly sorry. That is just the impression that I get.) So if you want to plan for your life, why not ask someone that can help you save quickly? I would think a Punta Gorda financial planner could do just that.

I cannot remember the last time that I experienced any ghost tours. Savannah is also a place that I cannot remember visiting. There are so many things that I can’t remember doing! To be honest I don’t know if I have ever been on any ghost tours, but I have been on several scary trips, I am just dealing with the semantics of what those events were called.

I want to remember my life, and all of the fun things that I have done so far. There has to be a way to get my memory going and relive all of those fun experiences that I may or may not have had. I go running everyday to try and keep my body in good shape, but I need something like that, only for my mind instead of for my body.

Maybe I just haven’t done a lot of exciting things, and that is why I can’t remember doing anything that was all that fun. It is a real possibility. Maybe I should go get hypnotized to see if anything cool comes up. If not they can always just add some cool stories in there while I am asleep. I would not mind having fake memories at all.