Joke of the Day

When my wife was pregnant with our first son, the worry of stretchmarks was tossed around quite a bit in the beginning. Luckily, she actually didn't get any stretchmarks and hasn't since. I actually never knew that vertical lines made you look skinnier. Funny thing is, the shirts that I have that involve stripes all have horizontal stripes. Maybe that's why I don't look like I'm losing wait.

Don't Forget This

My whole like, I've never needed a passport. Even to go on my LDS mission, I didn't leave the country, technically, so I didn't need a passport. Although, I still think that West Virginia and the western part of Virginia are their own country. I did finally have to get a passport to go to Cancun, Mexico on a company trip. We had to rush order the passport, even though it would have come in plenty of time. Wasted a $100 bucks on the rush order. In any case, double check that you have your passport before going to the airport if you plan on actually leaving the company.

Condos

I tell ya, after staying the weekend in a condo by the lake, it's going to be very hard to go back to camping out in a tent. I mean if you use condos like Outer Banks rentals to spend the weekend, you don't come back smelling like campfire smoke and you don't have something stick on your shoe. In addition, you have less stow-away critters in your camping equipment. I'm telling you, condos by the lake are definitely the way to go. It also helps when it rains, too.

Salt Cookies

I had this great idea this evening to make cookies. I haven't made cookies in a long time and I thought it might compliment the evening better. So, my wife suggested snickerdoodles. I decided to make a double batch since the cookies might disappear really fast. After wrestling with the dough being too sticky, I finally was able to get the cookies cooked. My wife took the first one and immediately handed it to me and told me that I put something wrong in the cookies. Before the cookie made into my mouth, I could taste something wrong. The problem? I actually had rolled the individual cookies in salt instead of sugar. Needless to say, all the cookies were coated in salt. What a wonderful way to end the day. Note to self: Taste white granular stuff before rolling cookie dough in it.

Joke of the Day.

One of the things that has bugged me most in past jobs that I have had is that managers and owners don't communicate honestly with their employees. It's as if they think the employees won't understand or they mind run away in fear. Believe me, many employees would have some good ideas if only the management would open up and trust them a little. There would definitely be less turnover in some jobs and the employees might actually feel they were wanted and appreciated. Open communication in all levels of a business is the key to running a business that employs satisfied employees.

Joke of the Day

I heard the other day that there is some controversy over an athlete going to sponsor for Frosted Flakes instead of Wheaties. I guess the controversy rises over what some say is the athlete sponsoring a less healthy cereal. You know, you can eat whatever you like as long as you exercise. Yes, it is true. You can eat what you want as long as you exercise it off. We as American's, however, want to eat whatever, but we don't want to work it off. We just want a magic pill to eat to take it all away. Well, you can have the pill, and it may make you skinnier, but more often than not it will take years off your life. So, lose pounds with a pill and lose years off your life or lose pounds with exercise and possibly add years to your life. Your choice.

Forgetful Computer

We need more computer memory for our desktop computer. It is over two years old and has never been upgraded. I believe the only ting we have done to it is add our old hard drive to it and that was no easy chore. There are times when the computer will just freeze up for no reason and it won't even be doing a lot. And it is a pain to get it working again. Most of the time we just leave it on all the time so we don't have to deal with getting it working again. That isn't exactly a cheap solution, but it beats shouting obscenities at the computer to get it working again.

A Bed For The Little One

The wife and I have started looking at new baby things for the baby that is coming in November. We have looked at crib bedding, excersaucers, and baby swings. The one thing I know we need is a new baby swing. The one we have now is supposed to swing itself, but that doesn't work anymore. We have the room for a baby nursery, but no budget to really go all out on the room. It would be great to send thousands of dollars on baby stuff, but I have the feeling that our other boys may play with that stuff more than the baby will.

A Different Kind Of Vacation

I hear people going on cruises all the time and they all seem to have a great time. That is one of the vacations I would love to go on in the future. I'm thinking either a Carribean, Alaskan, or Hawaiian cruise. They seem to have it all on those boats. They have swimming pools, buffets, activities, not to mention the great views all day. Plus, most of them stop at islands so you can spend time on the beach. A cruise sounds like the perfect all-in-one vacation.

My Mistake, You Pay For It

A few months ago, the story broke that the natural gas provider here in the Salt Lake Valley, namely Questar Gas, had installed meter transmitters on a number of customers meters. These transmitters were supposed to make it so the meter readers didn't have to walk up to the meter to read it anymore. The transmitter would just talk to a computer program and tell the computer how much gas the customer was using in a month. Well, it turns out, they installed about 500 of them wrong, causing them to transmit the amount divided by two. When Questar finally figured it out, they had the gaul to try and bill those customers for that mistake. Keep in mind, this data had been transmitted wrong for 2 years. One customer opened up her bill and it was over 2,100 dollars. That was 10 times her usual amount. There have been complaint over complaint about the way they are handling THEIR mistake. Their latest plan is to bill every single Questar customer, that's including the ones who weren't read wrong, an extra 70 cents to make up for their losses. That's okay, right? Wrong. Questar, you made the mistake. Your employees were the ones making the mistake and not paying attention. Yes, you lost money, but that was your mistake. I could see if the customer was purposely setting the transmitter wrong to try and cut their bill, but that is not the case at all. It was YOUR mistake. I don't care how you try and justify it or try and make up the costs. The bottom line is, you made the mistake and you should pay for it. The customer did nothing wrong and they should not be punished for your laziness and your mistake. Why don't you do the right thing, man up to what you did, and take the costs in the tailpipe. Your mistake, you pay the consequences. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be at all merciful if we asked you for some of our money back from the bills we have paid you. And I know you would penalize us for forgetting to pay our bill for a couple of months. There would be penalties on us for our mistake. Well, the penalty for your mistake is taking the costs and swallowing them. Don't make the customer pay for something they didn't even do.

Joke Of The Day

How's that for an environmental policy, huh? To be honest, I love where I work. It is honestly the first real job that I have had that actually appreciates their employees and do all that they can to keep them happy and to keep turnover low. And the amazing thing is, it actually works. They're turnover is low and their employees are happy. i don't see too many looking at the grass at the employer in the classifieds. If you and you are not happy at your job, there are better jobs out there. But, they won't look for you and grab you by the hair and drag you there. You have to actually take the initiative and go after that great job.

When It Rains....

How better to end a vacation than a bad day at work. FOr one, I could not focus when I was at work today. Then, as I'm getting ready to go, I gt a call saying I broke the latest patch. Then, to tap it all, as I'm driving away from work, I decide to drive on the shoulder to get to the light instead of waiting in the 3 city block long line. Well, apparently some cops were thinking I would do the same thing and caught me. I got a 92 dollar ticket for doing something that everyone does everyday. IN fact, as I'm trying to get back on the road after being pulled over, I saw 5 or 6 more cars do exactly what I did. And, no, they did not get pulled over. The cops didn't even blink. Happens all the time. Everyone around me could be breaking every rule in the book, but the minute I even think of doing the same thing, I get in trouble and everyone else gets away with it. Utah, you suck.

Joke Of The Day

Okay, I wouldn't suggest doing this to get ahead at work.  I thought it was just interesting to note that in today's society, we never seem to point out when someone is doing something right.  We only bring attention to them when they are doing something wrong.  I love where I work because they do all they can to recognize you for what you are doing right.  Perhaps's people today would be much happier and less dependant on pills if people told them as many things they are doing right as the number of things they tell them they are doing wrong.

Time For A Vacation

My company has business condos that they allow their employees to reserve for up to a week. One of the condos is in Bear Lake and it is always booked. Somehow, for some reason, it opened up for this weekend. They put everyone's name who wanted it into a cup and drew out a name. Somehow, my name got pulled out and so we are now going to Bear Lake starting tomorrow until Monday. It is going to be so much fun. The resort has all kinds of things like miniature golf, an ice cream shop, and two pools. Plus, it is right by the lake. The condo is fully stocked with dishes, all we need to bring is food and clothes. Also, they have things for the beach that you can use like coolers, tents, and chairs. It will be so fun. We are all excited. Time for a weekend vacation.

Joke Of The Day

With the economic news these days, one needs to save their money.  The last thing I want to happen is to let life pass me by and then I get to retirement age and can't retire because my scenario is like the cartoon above.  Social Security won't be around when I need it, even though I pay up the ying yang for it (that's a post for another time).  In fact, it may even be a topic of a late night talk show host's joke.  Moral of the story, SAVE, SAVE, SAVE.  In case you are wondering, I haven't saved much up to this point.

Not Like The Old Days

We have our big 50" plasma tv that we got as a display item nearly a year ago. Shortly after we got it, it started having trouble turning on. The problem would go away for a little while and then come back again. Well, this last week, it turned off and would not come back on, no matter what we did. We finally had to call a repairman to come look at it. It cost 49 dollars for a guy to come over and take 5 minutes to figure out the problem. Apparently, the power supply board inside the tv has gone out. This seems to be a common thing with this brand. To fix it, it's gonna cost 500 dollars. And, of course, the part is on back order meaning our big tv is just sitting on the wall like a picture until the part comes in which could be anywhere from a couple weeks to a month. Why can't things just work like they used to in the old days. Our previous tv was nearly 15 years old and had no problems before it finally gave out. I guess motto for manufacturers these days is to just make it as cheap as possible and hope nothing bad happens. Well, when these bad things happen, some of us don't like paying for someone else's strategy of making cheap parts.

Joke of the Day

These days even free stuff isn't free. Like last year when we won $10,000 from a game show, we still had to pay "gift tax" that was like 30-40% or something to the government. I have never understood how they government earned a single penny of that money I won, but evidently they think they are entitled to even gifts and winnings that they had no connection to.

No connection

So today our Internet connection stopped working. My wife called me up bored out of her mind because it hasn't worked all day. On top of that our TV won't work either. So she actually had to find other things to do, like clean. We are supposed to have someone come see what the problem is but so far they haven't shown up, so I'm using the library computers. Thank heavens for free internet there.

Best Part About Sundays

What is really sad and quite ironic is the fact that my favorite part about Sundays is the end. I love just sitting around on Sunday night and watching a good movie or watching a good tv show. The house is usually quiet and cool and you can feel the breeze outside. This Sunday has been great because the house is mostly clean, the house is cool, and we are watching Friends. It's just really sad that my favorite part about Sunday is the end because that part doesn't seem to last that long.

EBillMe

There is a great new online payment site out there called eBillme. I was able to try out this great site. With eBillme, you go to their site and buy from one of the online shopping sites they list, select the eBillme payment method, and then pay through your bank's bill pay service. If you need information, it is all on their website. If you already pay your bills through your bank's bill pay to pay most of your bills, it's just as easy as setting up a new receiver and them getting paid through that. I ordered Season 3 of The Office, because my wife got me Seasons 1 & 2 for my birthday and I'm just craving to have more Office episodes to watch. It was easy to choose what I wanted to get from tigerdirect.com, select the eBillme payment option during checkout, and then get my payment set up through bill pay. They send you the bill with account number and eBillme's payee information, you simply enter it all in and in just a few minutes it's all ready to go. It only takes about 3-4 minutes total to get everything done. An added benefit is if you order with eBillme more than once, you don't have to enter all the payee info into your bill pay again so it will go even faster. One last thing that is good about this system is that you can track everything you spend through them right from your bank account. Check it out at www.ebillme.com.

Love Your Pets

For as long as I can remember, I have always had pets. Growing up, we had like 11 cats and we had names for all of them. The cats eventually went the way of the earth (that's what you get for living next to a busy highway). We also had a dog forever. He ended up getting too old to keep going and we had to say goodbye to him. We now have 3 cats, Stars, Stripes, and Colors. Stars and Stripes are white and we got them on the 4th of July. Colors was a kitten that was found by a co-worker who couldn't keep him and then was named by our 3 year old. We keep them in the house so hopefully they will last as our pets for a while.

There is a great new website out there where you can brag about your pets to all the other pet lovers out there. It's kindof like a pets lover's version of MySpace. You can share stories, videos, and pictures of your pets. With this website, you can give advice to other pet lovers on how to better your pets or help other pets. You can even help animal shelters just by using this website. As you use the website, shelters receive food and cash to help support pets who currently don't have a home. It is truly a website for those who love their current pets and want to show them off as well as a website for those who want to help all pets as a whole. Sign up for an account at zootoo.com today.

Weekends

I swear weekends need to be longer. By the time you finish getting everything done that you want to, the weekend is over. This weekend, for example, I spent most of Saturday cleaning the patio and our grill. Once that was done, I had to sit for a while. Then, we went shopping for groceries and then visited my wife's family to say goodbye to some foster kids that are leaving because they are getting adopted. Then, today, we spent the morning in church and then I spent the rest of Sunday cleaning up the family room and kitchen. Honestly, by the time you get everything done and can finally relax, the weekend is over.

Tied With The Wife

Between the wife and I, we have two trophies total for the sports we have played our entire life. My trophy is a baseball trophy I got when I was 12 or 13 for winning the championship in baseball for our age group. I'm not sure how much I contributed to that trophy because I was the 10th man on a 9 man team. I alternated right field. My wife on the other hand has a medallion that came with a nice trophy for winning 3rd in her division in a 5K race. I think she contributed much more to that than I did to mine. That's ok, though. Me and the wife excel at many other things besides sports like making cute kids.

Is There One That Works?

It seems anymore that diet pill reviews keep popping up in the news. Some are good reviews are some are questionable. The ones that aren't so good seem to show up in the news in the form of a recall or in the form of a lawyer advertising his services to get compensation for your suffering. For those of you out there trying to find the perfect diet pill, if you find one that appears to work, please do a ton of research on the kinds of things it may cause before releasing it on the market.

A Huge Perk

One of the great things that caught my eye about my job when I saw it advertised is the classifieds was that it gave free insurance benefits to it's full time employees. That is huge. With that you don't have to worry about finding things like NC health insurance, dental insurance, and vision insurance, and finding the right one for the right area. Plus, with the insurance being free, we don't have to worry about finding the cheapest. I really wish I could share this with everyone because there are a lot of people you need this.

It Needs To Be A Paid Profession

I've heard story after story that if a housewife was paid for all the stuff that she actually does, it would be one of the highest paid professions in the country. I definitely believe it. I spent the latter part of the afternoon and early evening cleaning the family room and cleaning the kitchen. It's exhausting work and it really needs to be a paid profession. I can't imagine going to an employer and doing the same work and not getting paid for it. It would be unheard of. Hats off to you housewives out there. You definitely needs to get paid for what you do!!!.

Joke of the Day

I tend to hear voices in my head, too. Then, when I start thinking about where the voices are coming from, I find out they are my wife and kids. I am so gld I have a wife. A lot of the time, when I am trying to work on something or fix something, she takes one look at the problem and finds a better way to fix it. It usually is a much easier way and it works better. Next time there is a voice in your head and it's your wife, try listening to it once in a while.

The Big Ten

It has now been 7 weeks since I started my weight loss program from work. 16 weeks to go. I am now down 10 and a half pounds from when I started. That is a 6% drop in weight. In doing some math today, I found that if I kept this pace up, by the time the contest ended, I would have lost 20 percent of my weight and weigh only 136 pounds. I'm actually hoping I don't get down that much because that would not be healthy for me. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and see how much I end up losing. I have also noticed that my gut size has gone down and some pants of mine don't fit that well. that means that I am losing inches as well as weight. I'm hoping I will be able to keep this up. If anything, I will definitely be healthier in the end.

Joke Of The Day

There is an episode of The Office that I love. Dwight is put in charge of coming up with the office's new health insurance plan and he cuts it to the most basic plan with practically no benefits to it. Everyone revolts and it just gets crazy with him trying to make them tell him their illnesses and such that they want covered.

I'm so glad my company has a great health plan. We have no premiums or deductibles, and good coverage. It really makes a company great when they offer such good benefits for their employees.

Joke Of The Day

One thing I hate about online passwords is that every site seems to want different criteria to set up your password, like exactly 8 numbers and letters and it has to start and end with a number, or 6 numbers ending in a letter, or junk like that. I have a hard time remembering a bunch of random numbers and letters for 20 different sites, so I prefer to use a basic one and change it just a little depending on the site's requirements. But it's hard when there's no way to remember which site has what requirements so I have to go through my whole list of possible passwords before I can log on. And of course by then they lock you out for trying to log on too many times in 5 minutes or something.

Joke Of The Day

I thought this joke was super funny with me being a software engineer and all. I work for a company that makes software for 911 dispatch and highway patrol. The software isn't cheap by any means. The main reason for that is they have about 60 software engineers working on stabilizing the software and creating new features. I tis no where near 150 million dollars, but I guarantee you, it has a few 0's in it.

Joke of the Day

People are saving less and less these days and that's really, really scary. We need to plan for our future, especially financially. For me, Social Security won't even exist even though I pay a good portion of each paycheck into the system. I don't want to be the guy who is 65 and still working or working at McDonald's or Walmart. To have a bright future, we need to save money today.

Late Night Post

Okay, it's late and I need to get to bed, but I need to get a post up before I dose off. I don't know how my wife does so many late night posts without falling asleep. I almost fell asleep trying to figure out what to write. It is not easy to get your mind to wake up and write coherent thoughts on a blog post. Maybe I should leave the late night posts to my wife so I don't write something I can't take back.

Joke Of The Day

AHH, employee satisfaction surveys. How do you answer those truthfully? On one hand you want to be truthful so that problems may get fixed. On the other hand, if you answer truthfully and management finds out what you said, you may be in trouble. We have a similar thing at work. If you submit an IT task, they send you a survey to fill out once it is done. If you place your name on it and submit it, you are entered into a drawing for a $25 dollar gift card. How do you say something honestly and still be able to get your survey into the drawing? To answer without repercussions, don't place your name on the survey. But if you don't put your name, no chance of getting the gift certificate. Oh, the decisions.