Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. Holly is driving to Wichita Falls today to pickup mom and take her down here. It should be a small Thanksgiving with me, my mom, Holly's mom, George and his family and little Gizmo, although Holly likes to call her Poopsie. I just have 2 requirements for Thanksgiving: turkey and Dallas Cowboys football. Both should be good this year. Holly is learning how to cook a turkey. Hopefully with mom's help it will be good, as long as there is no pen inside the turkey...

As tradition among this blog I like to talk about my ancester, John Alden, on Thanksgivings. He was actually at the first Thanksgiving when they ate duck with the native Americans. Can you believe the house he lived in is still standing? Go to:

http://alden.org/

To see some cool stuff. It is actually some kind of genealogical society. The only advantage to joining one of those is if you have kids and want them to get a scholarship. We are related to Josiah Quincy Bass:
Josiah Quincy Bass
Born in 1845

He is the father of Harry Bass who is the father of my grandfather George Bass who is the father of my father William S Bass.

So that would make Josiah Q. my great-great grandfather. An interesting thing happens when you Google "Josiah Quincy Bass". There is a book that has him in there:

Hon Josiah Quincy Bass
JOSIAH QUINCY BASS was born in Bethel Ohio August 27 1845 where he resided until 1853 when he removed to Mulberry and has since resided at that place being engaged in mercantile business. Mr Bass served four months during the war of the rebellion He held no public office up to the time of his election to the Seventy second General Assembly in 1895 as a representative from Clermont county.

Anyways, it does feel good knowing that your ancestors really made a difference in the world, from the first Thanksgiving up until today. Maybe we can all make a difference the way they did. I know I have a lot be thankful for and I know everything is God's doing. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

So I may be out of a job again. Apparently the boy scouts are letting most of their contractors go at the end of the year. What fun! Thus it is the life of a contractor. Sure we get paid a lot more than perms but we have just a little less job security. For instance I wouldn't be surprised if next year they let employees go. My only regret is that I never wowed them. I am actually working on it, but only after I am gone would they say wow. Anyways, it is not for sure, but there is a 75% chance I will be gone. I should find out in the next 2 weeks. Even though I do the work of 2 developers they don't realize it yet. It is sad as I kind of like it here. I am doing 100% more coding at this job than I did at the IRS. I am a master coder. It is an art form. For instance one of the guys who built the first Apple back in the 80s(I believe it was Steve Woznyak) had to build a floppy drive. He was a master designer as well. What took most people 200 parts to build he did with 50. It is like I am in a field where no one knows what I am doing, not even other developers. I saw a piano player 8 year old genius play the other day and it was good, but I thought to myself, why can't coding be like that. You solve a problem in a beautiful way, step out of the keyboard and take a bow and everyone claps. Back to reality... It's not all that bad. I still get calls from recruiters in Austin and California. time to pack it up grapes of wrath style and head on to California... Maybe we can stay at an Obamaville...

// posted by Brian @ 11/25/2008 11:46:00 AM 1 Comments

Woof woof, woof woof woof. Rowr, whimper, woof. Bark.

Ok, so what I was basically saying was I come in on Friday and Holly has this dog with her. I am like, whaa? And she proceeds to tell me the story. Basically our wedding photographer found this dog.

You see, even though we have been married over 1 year we have yet to get our wedding album done and it has taken probably 40 hours worth of time over the past year just to get our pictures to a point of even putting them in an album. Suffice it to say, we still are talking with him. Anyways, Holly's mom was over there and he had found this dog curled up 2 feet from the curb in Dallas. It couldn't even walk and might've been hit by a car. So he took the dog back to his place and did something to try to contact an owner. So he couldn't take care of it as he was close to being evicted so he gave Holly's mom the dog who in turn gave it to us. I am now contacting the city pounds and am trying to find the owner. I am trying to find the owner. If and only if we cannot find the owner will we decide to keep the dog.

For now I have named her Gizmo or Yoda. She is a 5 pound Silky Terrier - see pic below. I imagine it was a purse dog that jumped out the window of a car that belonged to some Dallas daddy's girl. She doesn't bark like other dogs and is very shy and likes to sleep, my kind of dog. Holly's mom is taking her to the vet today for a checkup. We keep her in the bathroom at night. Although I get the distinct feeling she would sleep in the bed of her owner. She also can eat a whole slice of bologna in one gulp, another good trait.

In other news I watched Texas Tech beat OU on Saturday in my delusional brain. We won and everyone lived happily ever after. At least the Cowboys won. Hopefully we will win on Thanksgiving. We also had our carpet cleaned in the living room. There were stains there for 5 years. Goodbye stains... I'll miss you.

So I am working on this video/audio convergance thing and part of it is using orb.com. A slingbox like software that is now available on the iPhone. Anyways do you see the video below?

So I had a bad morning. I was driving to work and at the stop sign near my house I stop and turn left to go out to Rosemeade, like I have been doing for years. Anyways there is this cop sitting there. I drive on by and think nothing then he turns behind me and turns on his lights. Now, if you know me you know I cannot get out of a ticket to save my life. So I stop and he says "you ran a stop sign" I said,"are you sure?" he then looks at my license and asks if I am wearing corrective lenses and has me turn my head so he can see I am wearing contacts. Anyways I am mad because I feel like I stopped. It is hard anyways to not stop given that I had to make a turn and was in my 2 ton Honda pilot. So I give him my license and insurance and proceed to pull out my iPhone and set it to record the following conversation. I told him as he was giving me a ticket," you realize I made a turn." he says "yes, here's your ticket". Anyways, I then ask how I can go to court and he says it is on the ticket. So now I can either pay $200 for the ticket, take defensive driving for the 5th time in my life, or go to court. I think I will actually contest this one. Holly even has a legal plan at her job. Stay tuned for the Brian Legal courtroom adventure... Oh and as I was driving away another car drives by and a squirrel ran in front of my car and hit the other car and was killed. How was your morning...

So last night I had a meeting with my business coach. You know the one who is part of my alternative board. I wish I would have had her before I started RideSearch. Anyways hindsight is 20/20. She started going over what it is going to take to get RideSearch 3.0 out the door. I have the vision but I need time to develop it. The estimate was 240 hours to develop, or 6 weeks fulltime, or 4 months at 15 hours a week. It equated out $20,000 of my time. Then there is an additional 2 months of marketing the thing and sales. And since I don't do either of that well and would need to hire people it ended up equating to around $250,000 to do it the right way. It would take 6 months of time to do it the way I did things before where I try to do everything myself. I have gone this far and it hurts to give it all up, so I shall continue. Of course I don't have the 250,000 to do it complete, so I shall dive back into development January 1st with a target of June 1st for release. There is always the hope that during this next month when I am working on business plans that I will pitch it to investors, but apparently it costs 2 grand just to get in front of them. See you can't just have a great idea. You have to have a great idea that you are willing to sacrifice for. I have done that. I just didn't sacrifice in the right way. The more you know....

Today I shall talk about TV. I have always been a fan, ever since it was my babysitter growing up. I've learned many life lessons watching Three's Company, Family Ties, Growing Pains and Perfect Strangers. I always liked the sitcoms and sometimes the science based shows like Quantum Leap. I still have a TV Schedule except this time I usually tivo them instead of having to watch them live. I like the Monday night comedies. Worst Week has to be the funniest show on TV. It reminds me of A Christmas Story except it deals with a wedding. I hope they keep it going but I wonder what happens when the week is over? Then I flip over to Boston Legal and watch their political commentary. It is time to end it, all of the characters look like they need to retire. Tuesdays I usually tivo Fringe, although that show is too out there and will probably be cancelled. I even tivo 90210 although I have yet to watch an entire episode. Wednesdays I tivo Christine since it is Elaine's show. Thursday's it is Smallville and Office night. The Office is the second funniest show on TV. Everyone wishes they worked at a place that funny. I still tivo ER even though I have yet to watch an episode this season. Then there is SNL and Lost on Saturday night. Add the Texas Tech football and Dallas Cowboy football games and I am living the American dream - to watch TV and forget there is stuff to do.... Of course I forgot to tivo Peetey's show...

So this weekend was another busy one. This time of year they all are. On Friday Holly and I went over to a friend's house to help decorate for a baby shower they were having on Saturday. Then we went and saw the new Bond movie - Quantum Solace. I thought it was a good action flick but a mediocre Bond movie. The guy who plays Bond is just not cool enough and there weren't any cool Q gadgets. But I did like the plot and I loved the action scenes. This is the one bond movie where there wasn't 15 minutes of no dialog like most of them. The bad guy was kind of a weenie. I wonder when Bond is going to face a bad guy who looks tough as well. I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars.

On Saturday Holly went to a wedding shower in the morning so that left me to go get something for the baby shower in the afternoon. They were registered at Babies R Us and I tell you, I have never seen so much stuff. And out of all 52 sections I could only find one thing that was on the registry. At the baby shower there were about 30 of us and they all gather round and open presents and pull out our present. They open it and it was milk pump bags. I was red and was like "That is the only thing I could find!" and they all laugh and say "you got this?" That was funny.

Saturday night Mr.T was like, let's go gambling. It had been a while since I had done so and Holly was like,"go ahead" so I went with Mr.T to a friends house and we headed up to Winstar Casino on the Oklahoma border. It is a Indian reservation casino. We were also in luck and found out B.B. King was playing there. I got a ticket and went in while Mr.T and Eric went and gambled. B.B. King was good and I could tell he was reminiscent of his former self. The guy kept on talking alot and sounded drunk although he did mention a couple of times that he was not drunk. He is 83 years old and is still up on stage playing and singing. Although he talked for like 10 minutes between each song. It got to the point where I just left, but he is a living legend and an inspiration for blues guitarists out there. I ended up at a blackjack table and was ahead for a while but I always like to gamble and I ended up losing $65, which is what I intended to lose or double. All in all it was a fun time. Winstar is so much better than the casino near Wichita Falls and is better than Shreveport. Next to Vegas it is the best around.

On Sunday we did the usual church/Sunday school thing. This time I am officially volunteered to help Holly in the children's area. I am a pushover. Luckily Holly knows what she is doing. She will eventually make a great mom. Sunday night we went to our classes Thanksgiving and I had my first Thanksgiving turkey of the season. I will have some on Thursday at work, then some Sunday at Holly's grandparents. Then some more turkey next Thursday on Thanksgiving. I am already feeling fat... Maybe I should invest in stretchy pants.

This is a post sent from my iPhone.

So I am in the middle of conquering lunch. It is going ok. Except, you know when I said I had conquered snacks. I forgot that it is an ongoing war and snacks started creeping back into my day like Twix from the vending machine. So now I have to fight two separate battles again. It is easier to conquer snacks when you can eat whatever for lunch, but the second you start going low calorie on lunch the snack attack then hits you. Back in the day it was sufficient to use sunflower seeds. I do have apples at my desk but that is not enough. I guess low calorie means you have to really fight.

So now I am at my desk eating a mini-burger Lunchable which contains 380 calories and actually tastes pretty good, much better than lean quisine stuff. But as I look at what I am eating this is what I see: 1 box to hold it all. 1 tray with plastic wrap to contain everything. 1 wrapper around the buns. 1 wrapper around pre-grilled patties. 1 ketchup wrapper. 1 mustard wrapper. 1 mini-nestle crunch wrapper. 1 capri-sun container. 1 straw wrapper. For a grand total of 9 separate packages/wrappers! For one meal!! Now I feel guilty about eating lunch. I should go out and grill two mini patties, get 2 slices of bread, 1 slice of cheese, no ketchup and a diet coke. Then put it in a reusable lunchbox and probably save a buck and the planet. Thanks Oscar Mayer. I am such a sinner!

So I got the new Star Wars Clone Wars game for the Wii last night. It is good but not as good as the Force Unleashed. Whereas the Force Unleashed had a story line this one was like Mortal Combat for Star Wars. The Force Unleashed was heavy into the force whilst this game is heavy into lightsabers and I still felt like I was just swinging wildly. I guess we will have to wait for real virtual reality before lightsaber work becomes realistic. But then I think, that would mean that I would actually have to hold a lightsaber and swing it a lot and would probably get too tired to play after 5 minutes. Like a virtual reality football game where you would have to do a lot of running to catch a ball.

I was big into virtual reality in the 90s. I remember writing a paper for english class and putting it up on a website that talked about the future of VR. While we have the processor power, it would still cost around 20Gs to get a good system in place. I guess the visor and gloves and running pad would cost a lot. I am just waiting for nintendo or playstation or xbox to come out with a cost effective VR headset, gloves, gun and multi-directional treadmill. I bet it comes out in the next 15 years. Then whoever gets there first would own the world.

So what is in store for the economy? The answer is a resounding I don't know. I suppose I could play the paranoid delusional card and say that the super rich are controlling everything and that they didn't like the oil barons taking everything so they tanked the economy to lower demand to lower gas prices. That is fun. I remember I was on a radio show in July and they gave me a full half hour talking with their host. I spewed out some stuff that I had read how gas prices were predicted to go to 8$ a gallon next year. So everybody gets scared and I realize that prices were high simply because of fear of a gas shortage. Now prices are low because of fear of a lower demand for gas because people will be out of work. Anytime you hear any news man talking about an upcoming depression, that fear that he speaks lowers confidence in the markets. It is amazing how much power the press really has. It is also amazing how much sensationalism drives our economy. I've got to hand it to Donald Trump. I remember them interviewing him right when the markets started diving. He said this is great and that America's money will quit leaving America to go to the middle east. He said he wouldn't be surprised if oil got below $60 a barrel, which it now is. I wonder if his hair piece is from the future... feeding him... firing people...

Oh, so what shall I talk about? RideSearch is still going strong. I get about 1,000 hits a week. It is down from the 3,000 a week when gas was high and I was putting more money into it. RideSearch is not over yet. It is still good considering this site only gets 75 hits a week. I have a feeling my hiatus is coming to a close. First I have to finish one of my other websites and then I will get back on the carpool. I had the vision of the next version before I started back to work. This vision will require time to develop and hopefully some more money to advertise. At least it will make money. One of the great things about my current job is that I am actually getting skills I will need for the next version of RideSearch. It is like it is all coming together. Even changing my mapping to Google Maps will be easier. Since gas is lower I don't feel as much pressure to get it up as quickly and can actually spend time planning and learning. Then I will do better on my TV interviews:
http://youtube.com/ridesearch


I was telling Holly the other day I am in my prime as far as coding skills go. Right now I am expanding my known languages to 35. I am learning Spring.Net, NHibernate, C# 3.5, Community Server 3.5, SiteCore, Silverlight 2.0 and AJAX.Net. It is like I am taking a class except I am getting paid for it. Woot. I guess I like to learn when it is something I am interested in. The day I stop learning will be the day I give up coding and become a dietitian. I've got to keep up with all the young coders. Those whippersnappers..

And now for the weekend update with Brian Bass. On Friday we went to Macaroni Grill and had Italian. Then we rented "Iron Man" and some Wii games. Iron man was actually a good movie. Holly said it was somewhat believable. I made her watch Superman II the night before since she had never seen it. On Saturday we did some errands and went all over, got the cars oil changed, got groceries, went to home depot to look at carpet for the living room. That evening there was a birthday party at a bar and grill and the Tech game was on TV. Tech won again. We are still ranked 2nd in the nation and if we win against OU in two weeks we will go to the championship game. Go Tech! Sunday morning I actually slept in because I had too much to drink the night before. Too much root beer. This place was a beer garden that brewed their own and even made their own root beer. Now I have to say that when I drank one I was like, wow this tastes so good. So I proceeded to drink 5-6 of them. It was then when I realized, some root beer has caffeine in it. As my head started getting tingly and my eyes started widening I realized, this root beer did have alot. Needless to say I was up till 3AM and crashed in bed and didn't wake up till 11 on Sunday. Have no fear, we did get a dose of God that day. We watched Powerpoint on TV and went and saw some of our friends in the play "Godspell". It was a modern day musical of the book of Matthew. It was pretty good. I spent the rest of the evening working on 2 other websites that I will release to the world. I am always thinking. One of these days one of my ideas is going to catch on. How was your weekend?

Well, my sister has arrived safe and sound in Australia. Mom is funny. Whenever she talks about Australia she has to bring up a big Australian gay pride parade she saw on TV and how they are taking everything over there. Anyways, it took Melinda forever to get a visa as they really crack down on people coming in to work. She said the plane ride was fine except for a 30 minute stint where Allie, her youngest, screamed "I don't want to go to sleep" I often wonder how motherhood is treating my sister. Is she up to the challenge? Probably. Knowing her she has probably read many books on the subject and can graduate from motherhood 101. Australia looks to be cool. Holly and I are thinking about a trip around spring break time. Stay at her house, go scuba diving at the great barrier reef, say "crikey" and play with crocodiles. She said something interesting in her email how the moon is upside down there. I am guessing it has to do with them being upside down. I also hear the water swirls in the reverse direction as well. I remember in Wichita Falls at a bar called P2 there was a bartendress who was from Australia. She said it was just like Texas, hot and flat. She also said the men there were mean to the women so they all liked foreign men. I reasoned it was because it was originally a criminal settlement and genetics played a factor. I wonder if she will meet Paul Hogan. He is like their biggest star. Maybe she will stay there longer than a year and her kids would develop the accent. That would be cool. I'd have to practice saying "gday mate!"

Labels: australia

So what to talk about today. The weather outside is pretty good, around 72, no air conditioning running, yea! About 4 in the morning I awoke to lightning shaking our windows. When that happens you have to listen closely for tornado sirens. There were none so I drifted back to sleep. It is supposed to get colder for the next week. I miss the cold. People always remark how I keep my house cold. I suppose it has to do with my extra insulation. Holly is very accommodating as she has blanket near the couch. She understands the logic that my stepfather never did - if you are cold you can put something on, if you are hot no one wants to see you with a shirt off. That segways into shirts. You know, for the past 10 years of working I never thought of getting a laundromat to iron my shirts for me. Holly gave me the idea this year and I have to say, I no longer go to work with a wrinkled mess. I would think that I would be more presentable without wrinkled shirts, but I have also learned that no one really cares. Around here I am lucky if I see 5 people a day and really lucky if I can talk to 2 of them. You would think the Boy Scouts would have comraderie. BTW, what would you do if you were offered a permanent 130K a year Assistant CIO job even though you were on contract? I don't think I could do that. I like contracting. Except for the contractor prejudice I feel king of the castle.

ANCHORMAN: That's it, that's it! It's all over! The Wonka
Contest is all over! The fifth and final ticket has been
found, and we've got a live report coming in directly now
from Paraguay, South America.

PARAGUAY REPORTER: Ladies and Gentlemen, it is finished.
The end has come. The fifth and last Golden Ticket has just
been found right here in Paraguay. The finder is lucky
Alberto Min~oleta, the multimillionaire owner of gambling
casinos throughout South America.

25. BUCKETS' HOUSE

PARAGUAY REPORTER (on TV): Here is the most recent picture
of Alberto the happy finder, the man who has finally put an
end to Wonkamania for all the world.

GRANDPA JOE: Turn it off. Well, that's that. No
more Golden Tickets.
_________


Congrats to Obama for finding a golden ticket. I guess I am now a democrat?? Boy there are a lot of things wrong with my party. Hopefully we can fix welfare, healthcare, lower all taxes, quit spreading the wealth around and quit being hippies...

But in all seriousness it was a very good thing to see hope coming through loud and clear. My credo is keep on hoping and this event lived up to it. We witnessed history in the making. I am glad I voted for him, because it is always better to vote for the winner than the loser, you feel better in the morning. And thank God we didn't have to stay up till 5 in the morning to figure out if Florida knows how to vote. I like his credo "yes I can". I woke up this morning saying "yes I can!" and then went to the restroom.

So today is the big day. When all this election stuff will be over with. I will probably be the last person to vote today as I have to wait to get off of work and there will probably be a line. I often debate on whether to tell people who I voted for. Politics is such a touchy issue. One of the keys in getting people to like you is to give the appearance that you think the way they do. Once I say who I voted for I will have some people who dislike me and others who like me more. For some who they vote for it is a heritage passed down from generations. It doesn't matter who to elect as long as it is their party. For others it is a statement about the current situation - like voting for change. For others it is hinged on key issues like abortion and health care. For others it a mandate about a religious philosophy tying in with their political philosophy. For others it is about money and who gets what and how much. It could be tied to greed or to generosity or to redistribution of the wealth. There are so many issues and that is why for a majority of people voting down party lines is the easy thing to do.

So what is voting for me? Well, it is about all of the above. Unfortunately I have become closer to the political establishment over the past 4 years and now have a deeper understanding of how things work. From standing in front of the Dallas City Council to meeting in the chambers at city hall to discuss the homeless issue to asking questions to our current senator about gas prices and getting double speak back I have learned much about politics and I have learned that it is bad. It is hard to trust all politicians, very hard. There is no integrity, no moral fiber, no consequences and no truth in advertising.

So, first of all I was a die hard Republican, a moderate/conservative one at best. Here in Texas that is a good thing since a majority are Republicans. We vote our pocketbook. It is all about what can the government not do for others to save money and even save me some money. The Republican ideal used to be about smaller government, but over the past 8 years this has proven not to be the case. Matter of fact, a lot of "supposed to be"'s have proven not the case.

The Republicans have pissed me off these past 4 years. Our local ones don't care at all about others and actually have a real love of money, which is the root of all evil. They kicked the homeless away from the businesses and into what looks like a jail. They would destroy land and homes for saving a buck and are environmental only if it spurs businesses. There is no love of peace, no love of others. They have pulled the wool over Christians eyes and somehow people who are supposed to be for peace, for civic duty and helping the widows and less fortunate have been duped into believing that Republicans do this by taking less of their money, letting churches take over all charities and going into preemptive wars based on faulty evidence.

The Republican philosophy believes that business and citizens will have civic duty to take of the things that government should not be involved in. The big problem with that is our society has devolved in these past 30 years to the point where people only care about themselves and the idea of volunteerism is a fringe one. Republicans need to change their philosophy. If they want to win again they need it to be one of a compassionate nature.

So who am I voting for? I am voting against Republicans. I am voting for a change in the Republican party. This does mean I have to vote democrat, even though they are evil as well, but so be it. My experience is with Republicans so I shall vote from that. I even think I will vote Libertarian for the senate since both parties have been dissing one another over TV ads very brutally. So there you have it. I discovered Psalm 120 the other night and knew what I was doing was right.

A Prayer for Deliverance from Deceitfulness

1 In my distress I cried unto the LORD,and heard me.
2 Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips,and from a deceitful tongue.
3 What shall be given unto thee? Or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue?
4 Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.
5 Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!
6 My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace.
7 I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.

Well this weekend was another football weekend and I have to say the Texas Tech/UT game was the most thrilling game I have ever seen. UT was number 1 in the nation and Texas Tech was number 6. Somehow Holly and I had a party this weekend. It started off with Benz saying,"can I come over." Then I called Mr.T and Peetey. Mr.T called our friend Arthur and Peetey brought his family. Then we had some more friends stop by after halftime. All that came out of nowhere. So we went and bought burgers and gilled out. The game was good in the first half and we all could not believe we were ahead 22-6. The rest of the game UT started creeping back. We all had a sense of doom. With 1:33 left in the game UT got a touchdown and made the score 33-32. We were all like, "oh no". Then Tech comes rumbling back and with one second to go a pass was thrown to Crabtree on the 5 yard line and he breaks a tackle and goes into the endzone. We were all jumping up and down and hugging one another. All of the 56,000 fans stormed the field and took down the goal posts. Tech wins it 39-33. We are now number 2 in the nation. If we win the rest of the season we will be the champions!! Go Tech!! Dallas Cowboys, well that's another story...

Labels: Texas Tech