December 13, 2007

Tech Site

I have finally redone the templates (mostly) for my tech site at TheAppDotNet, including the mascot I won in a blog contest a couple of months ago. I still have to add back in my blogrolls and whatnot but it’s coming along very nicely.

I ended up spending the last seven hours of my only day off this week in a meeting in Anniston Alabama, which really sucked. It’s about the last thing I want to do on my day off but I didn’t feel like scheduling any of my managers off and then making them go to the meeting.

I may put up another post or two but I think I will be hitting the sack pretty soon. I am actually supposed to be doing a couple of reviews for ReviewMe but most likely am going to go past the deadline and just lose them. I hate losing money like that but have just not had the time the last couple of days and the deadline just sort of crept up on me.

Al Sharpton Denounces Fed Probe

The right reverend Al Sharpton today denounced reports of an investigation into his 2004 presidential bid and suggested that federal authorities were retaliating against him for his civil rights advocacy.

Civil rights advocacy?

Al Sharpton is the biggest fucking racist in this country aside from his ‘brother’ Jesse Jackson. They are both a pair of race-baiting haters that wait until they have been out of the news for a couple of months and then jump in with something else calling everyone else racists and bigots. Like now.

According to CNN as many as ten Sharpton associates were subpoenaed on Wednesday to testify before a federal grand jury in Brooklyn on December 26th. Hey, isn’t that when Kwanzaa starts? I don’t guess they will be making it to the grand jury or will find some way to get out of it between now and then. All of my personal pissiness aside, the grand jury probably could have picked a better date for that shit, like after January 1st. If they were to summon my ass on December 24th I would be pretty pissed off.

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Baby Grace Mom Charged With Murder

A couple accused of beating their toddler to death, tucking her into a plastic box and dumping it into Galveston Bay were indicted Wednesday on charges of capital murder.


Why is it that if you want to adopt a kid you have to take classes, go through background checks, and pay out craploads of money but it’s OK for pieces of shit like this to go around popping out children at will? I have this one dude that has worked for me off and on for 13 years or so, except for stints in jail. He has six children by six different mothers and he is with none of them. Maybe I should give him a box of condoms for Christmas.
Prosecutors said they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty against the girl’s mother, Kimberly Dawn Trenor and her husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler II. Personally I think they should be tucked, alive, into plastic boxes and launched into Galveston Bay with web cams that broadcast to all of the DFACS offices so that all of the other child bearing fools out there can be forced to watch what happens to child killing fools. That or maybe just take them up to about 30k feet and throw their asses out of an airplane into the bay. If they survive, then so be it. Why the taxpayers in Texas should be forced to pay for their incarceration is beyond me.
Since the initial charges were filed last month the investigation has continued and police have kept gathering evidence. Based on the evidence the grand jury was asked tp upgrade the charges to capital murder. A three hour hearing was held in which the jury heard testimony from five witnesses including police and FBI investigators and the medical examiner. The jury deliberated for three minutes before coming to their decision. Good for the grand jury. ‘Are they Guilty? Yeah, let’s go get a beer and hang their asses!’ Texas law at it’s finest. We need more of it around the country.
According to Trenor’s lawyer, Riley An Sawyer was killed by her step-father for failing to say ‘please’ and ‘yes, sir’. The lawyer also said that Zeigler was overwhelmed by his sudden fatherhood and didn’t know what to expect from a toddler. Is this supposed to be some kind of excuse? Hell, I was overwhelmed by fatherhood and had a beer (maybe two). You deal with it as it comes.
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Exotic Coffees

I love coffee. Ever since I was about ten I have been drinking coffee and I don’t go very long without drinking it. Heck, I even have it at night. I can usually drink it up until about eight PM or so without having any problems falling asleep. I don’t know that I would consider myself a coffee connoisseur but I certainly love the stuff, hence my motto ‘sleep is just a cheap caffeine substitute’.

I drink everything from canned Folgers as well as Waffle House and Starbucks coffee. Right now my favorite by far is Starbucks but that is because of consistency. Most of the gourmet flavors that I have picked up from the grocery store have a greasy oily taste that I just don’t like. There are some places around to get great coffee though and I found one that I am going to have to try. Apres Cafe has quality exotic gourmet coffee on their web site that is available to order 24 hours a day. You can even call them on an 800 number listed on the web site as well. Along with coffees, they also offer tea and chocolates, a must at this time of year. Who doesn’t like nice dark chocolate. Very soothing.

I am particularly partial to very dark roasts and am pretty interested in trying their Sumatra Mandheling as well as the Midnight Special, one of their darkest roasts. I would also like to try their Kenya AA Lenana. The brew has a deep complex aroma of smoke, grapefruit, berry, hints of butterscotch and dark chocolate.

Apres also offers recurring deliveries, subscriptions in other words, so that you never have to run out of your favorite brand of coffee. At the rate that I drink the stuff, if it’s any good this will end up being a necessity for me. With recurring deliveries they also give 15% off on shipping via UPS ground, you get free samples of their coffees as well as other special offers on coffees and teas.

I’ll let you know how I fare toward the end of the month and compare it to my favorites that I am able to buy locally.

Sponsored by Apres Cafe

Open Trackbacks and Other Nonsense…

I had a pretty long day yesterday so I just now approved some of the track-backs and comments that were caught in my spam folder yesterday morning. They should be showing up properly fairly soon.

We had our annual ‘Santa’s Sleigh’ yesterday for the children of our employees. It’s always been a pretty cool thing which we do but it has evolved over the last couple of years to become a party and even the adults show up now.

What we do is to get a list of all them employees children and their ages. What we used to do is rent an RV and then the division managers and area vice president would make three stops and the kids got their picture taken with Santa and got a gift. Nothing major. With a ton of kids we usually hit Big Lots or something like that because normally it’s a couple of hundred gifts we have to get and we do have a budget we have to keep.

Over the last couple of years it has been turned over to the Division Manager. This year we blocked off the back of one of our parking lots and had a local company come out with the air walk things, popcorn, snow cones, we grilled hot dogs and had other refreshments and snacks. We got a hold of the company RV with our logo and actually hired a Santa instead of one of us trying to pass ourselves off. It was pretty cool and lasted about three hours.

The girls always enjoy it, as did the Marine when he was young. We have many pictures from Santa’s sleigh with all three kids. I suppose I need to scan them at some point.

Although I am off today we have a mandatory holiday meeting I have to attend, which is one of the reasons I am off. I changed my manager’s schedules so that they were all working as I didn’t want to give them any excuse to not be there on time this afternoon. I won’t hear anything new but have to attend anyway. It sucks because I only have one more day off between now and Christmas and that is next Friday. The Marine will arrive home next week as well. I have to pick him up from the Greyhound station next Friday morning.

Next week we have our company Christmas party in Anniston, Alabama for all of the managers and their spouses or girlfriends/boyfriends. It is usually pretty nice. There has only been one that turned out bogus and that was in 2003. My AVP rented a meeting room and had it catered. It ended up more like a meeting than a holiday get-together and there were so many complaints that we have had it at a restaurant each year since then. The manager’s are used to bullshit like that but all of our spouses said they wouldn’t be back if we were going to continue having it there.

Speaking of Vacationing…

It looks like I am going to have to take mine in January. It’s either that or wait until April, which sort of pisses me off. I had hoped to take mine when the wife and kids were out in March but one of my managers already has reservations at Disney, so I decided to take it in the middle of February and maybe go someplace warm, but my newest manager is wanting to go on a cruise in February but was never able to nail down a date or give me any more information so I may just tell him he’s stuck with whatever is left. I have been asking for vacation dates since early October because with ten managers and three districts, not to mention my boss, we have to squeeze everyone in.

My one manager that is going to Disney gave me her requests right away. Two of the three dates overlap what I was hoping to take but she has kids as well so I can work around her’s. My other manager that has been in his store for awhile can’t seem to give me anything definite. I have asked him several times over the last two months and I just called them all a few minutes ago and told them they had to bring me the dates this afternoon at our meeting. His question was ‘all of 2008?’. Well, yeah, that is what I have been f’ing asking for the last two months. The other guy that is new I have only asked for them three times. He just told me it didn’t matter so I am going to sit down shortly and make out a vacation schedule and they can just take any left-over dates that I haven’t taken. I prefer to plan ahead and it irritates the hell out of me that they cannot seem to plan any farther than two weeks away.

Island Vacations Must be My ‘Thing’…

I have spent quite a bit of time on Hilton Head Island over the last eight years or so, ever since our friend moved there with her kids and opened a business back in ’99 or 2000. It’s a pretty beautiful place but one thing I have noticed over the last few years is the amount of growth the area has had. The traffic is horrendous during the summer months. While she lives in Bluffton, only a few miles from the island, it can take more than an hour to get from her house to her work or anywhere else interesting on the island. That whole area north of Savannah has been experiencing tremendous growth over the last few years I guess, which is good for the local economy but it is starting to make vacations seem as crowded as going to Disney World.

Since I enjoy going to coastal areas so much it is a wonder I had forgotten about Amelia Island, in the northeast corner of Florida. It’s only about fifty miles farther for me to drive from west of Atlanta than Hilton Head and it’s also a really nice area. I wasn’t aware until recently that they welcomed tourists as much as they do. Back in the seventies and eighties my mother was responsible for setting up company retreats for her boss and quite often they used Amelia Island. At the time they would fly down to Folkston (where my grandfather’s family is from) in a little plane and then drive the rest of the way to the Island, which is just northeast of Jacksonville. Now you can fly into Jacksonville International Airport and rent a car, or just drive to the island. It’s probably about five and a half hours for me, which isn’t bad at all.

While I will be at work on New Years Eve, there are several things going on down there and it would certainly be a blast to open the new year on Amelia Island. One cool thing that’s going on right now is that several different hotels as well as bed and breakfasts are participating in a lodging special which gives a third night free if you book two nights. Condé Nast readers voted Amelia Island one of the ten best islands in America and they are right. Plenty of restaurants and cool things to do, as well as some really nice golf courses.

Golf really isn’t my thing but checking out old places and taking pictures is. Sometimes I drive the girls (and the wife) crazy with just wanting to tour neighborhoods and walk around. One of the really sad things about historic places like Amelia Island is that over the last 120 years so many areas have lost their charm with the commercialization but Amelia Island escaped that. The Fernandina Beach area has a 50 block historic district with many of the structures dating back to the 19th century, including many old mansions and cottages in the Victorian style.

One thing that lends to it’s charm is the fact that since 1562 Amelia Island has flown under eight different flags, which may be the reason it’s sometimes known as the Isle of Eight Flags Happy

France, Spain, Great Britain, Spain again, the Patriots of Amelia Island, the Green Cross of Florida, Mexico, the Confederate States of America and the United States have all claimed Amelia Island at one time or another.  Wiki has some pretty cool stuff about what is known as the Amelia Island affair,

The Amelia Island Affair was an episode in the history of colonial Florida.

The Embargo Act (1807) and the abolishment of the American slave trade (1805) made Amelia Island, on the coast of Spanish Florida, a resort for smugglers with sometimes as many as 300 square-rigged vessels in its harbor. To Amelia in June, 1817, came Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish adventurer styling himself the “brigadier general” of the United Provinces of the New Granada and Venezuela and general-in-chief of the armies of the two Floridas. A peripatetic military adventurer, McGregor raised funds and troops for a full-scale invasion of Florida throughout the United States, but he squandered the money on luxuries in the United States and as word of his conduct in South American wars reached the United States, much of his invasion force deserted. Nonetheless, he overran the island with a small force, but left for Nassau in September.

His followers were soon joined by Louis-Michel Aury, formerly associated with McGregor in South American adventures, and previously leader of a pirates’ gang on Galveston Island, Texas. Aury assumed control of Amelia, got a legislature elected, set a committee to drawing a constitution, and invited all Florida to unite in throwing off the Spanish yoke. The United States, which had plans to annexe the peninsula, sent a naval force which captured Amelia Island on December 23, 1817, and put an end to the republic. The island was returned to the Spanish prior to 1821.

Wikipedia

I would love to go check out Fort Glinch. The fort itself was built prior to the Civil War and the area is now a state park comprising just under 1100 acres. The fishing pier at Fort Glinch goes out 1500 feet into Cumberland Sound. There are a couple of campgrounds and there are also day use areas as well.