OrtOrt

This blog has moved

2010-04-30T20:49:00.001-05:00

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I don't post for ages, and then all I do is complain.

2010-04-29T14:38:00.002-05:00

I've got issues with customer service. I don't feel like I expect too much (and if you disagree, let me know in the comments...seriously, I need to be put in my place). Today's issue is in regards to sales. I'm trying to buy an enclosed trailer for my lawn care business.

Here's what I'm looking for. I want to talk to someone knowledgeable about the product. I want to be able to contact someone and get a call back if necessary. I want the salesman to sound like he is actually interested in selling me something. Last, but not least, if you tell me something, you better be telling me the whole truth.

I thought I had found the trailer I was going to buy. I talked to four locations. One was going out of business (Company A), didn't have the trailer I was looking for and wasn't getting any more. The next place (Company B) when I called said he was leaving for the day (at noon on a Tuesday) and would call me back later with all the information I needed. He actually did call me back, but not until 3:00 the next day. The next place (Company C) I left a message only to not get a call at all. Company D I actually went to last saturday and talked to salesman who quoted me a price on the exact trailer I was interested in. Tuesday I called only to leave a message. I never got called back. I called back and finally spoke to the same salesman and I found out what I needed to in order to buy the trailer today.

So today, I drive 20 minutes to the lot to place the order for the trailer. What I was looking for had to be custom ordered. On saturday, there was no extra fee for this request and there were several discounts for this and that. Today, however, a different salesman tells me that the other guy is new and that the price for the trailer is now $300 more. I was lied to. I had budgeted for the price I was told, only to find out it was a flat out lie.

I walked out of the office. Plain and simple, and at this point, I will not be going back, regardless of the price of the trailer. Company B is now looking like a great company because at least they called me back. Company C who didn't call me back, might still sell me a trailer because I'm going to go up there tomorrow and see what they can offer.

Honestly, I don't feel like I'm asking a lot. I'm willing to pay for what I want. In fact, if the guy on saturday would have told me the correct price, I'd be blogging about purchasing a new trailer right now. The money is not the issue, it is about the customer service. If I have issues with the trailer, I want to feel like I can contact the company and trust the response I get.

So there ya go, my latest issue with companies who manage to stay in business without even having to try at making a customer even somewhat satisfied.

The tournament is over

2010-04-07T14:33:00.003-05:00

I know I'm a day or two late on this, but I've been sick the last couple of days and haven't had a chance to update the website with the final standings. As you can see, the winner is a 2 year old, followed by last year's winner and 3rd place goes to the most interesting bracket I get every year.

Pay out is $87, $44 and $14.

Name	Points	Tiebreak
Nash Horton	74	143
Greg Walker	70	145
Wes May-hem	67	145
Kylah Van Horn	66	161
Cristi Walker	66	150
Michael Huffman	66	130
Tim Shelton	63	0
DJ Walker	61	148
Chris Horton	59	156
Whitney Walker	58	167
Kyle Raible	56	156
Blake Bumgardner	55	144
Stephen Shirley	54	135
Phillip Walker	53	154
Craig 1	52	170
Matt Arnold	51	153
Donna Bumgardner	51	148
Nick	51	137
Randy Spellins	50	141
Geoff Owens 2	49	135
Jason Harmon	49	1061
Mike Bumgardner	49	157
Jared Selby	49	150
Uncle/Gary Reynolds	48	166
Craig 2	46	170
Kent Bryant	46	150
Jessica Walker	46	154
Geoff Owens 1	43	127
Eric Chilton	42	143
John Albritton	39	148

Day 8: And we have a Final Four

2010-03-28T18:26:00.002-05:00

The tournament is narrowed down to four teams, and the pool is narrowed down to four people. Wes and Greg are guaranteed money, it's just a matter of how much. And I'm battling a 2 year old to get 2nd place, but only if West Virginia gets to the title game.

I have once again updated the Google Docs file if anyone is interested in the final 8 possible scenarios. Final scenarios

Name	Points	Tiebreak
Wes May-hem	67	145
Greg Walker	65	145
Nash Horton	63	143
DJ Walker	61	148
Cristi Walker	61	150
Chris Horton	59	156
Whitney Walker	58	167
Tim Shelton	58	0
Kyle Raible	56	156
Blake Bumgardner	55	144
Michael Huffman	55	130
Kylah Van Horn	55	161
Stephen Shirley	54	135
Phillip Walker	53	154
Craig 1	52	170
Matt Arnold	51	153
Donna Bumgardner	51	148
Nick	51	137
Randy Spellins	50	141
Geoff Owens 2	49	135
Jason Harmon	49	1061
Mike Bumgardner	49	157
Jared Selby	49	150
Uncle/Gary Reynolds	48	166
Craig 2	46	170
Kent Bryant	46	150
Jessica Walker	46	154
Geoff Owens 1	43	127
Eric Chilton	42	143
John Albritton	39	148

Day 7: Narrowed down to a few hopefuls

2010-03-27T22:00:00.002-05:00

After today's games, the money is down to basically 4 people: Wes, Greg, Nash, myself. Of course, I am relying solely on West Virginia winning their next game. There is still a small chance for Cristi, Kylah or Michael to place 3rd, but all the other scenarios have those four. Here are the standings as of now.

Sorry about the issue this morning with the Google doc link, I fixed it this morning and have updated it with today's results. Here is the link again: March Madness Breakdown

Name	Points	Tiebreak
Greg Walker	61	145
Wes May-hem	59	145
Nash Horton	59	143
DJ Walker	57	148
Cristi Walker	57	150
Blake Bumgardner	55	144
Chris Horton	55	156
Whitney Walker	54	167
Tim Shelton	54	0
Kyle Raible	52	156
Donna Bumgardner	51	148
Kylah Van Horn	51	161
Michael Huffman	51	130
Stephen Shirley	50	135
Jason Harmon	49	1061
Phillip Walker	49	154
Craig 1	48	170
Uncle/Gary Reynolds	48	166
Nick	47	137
Matt Arnold	47	153
Randy Spellins	46	141
Jessica Walker	46	154
Mike Bumgardner	45	157
Geoff Owens 2	45	135
Jared Selby	45	150
Geoff Owens 1	43	127
Craig 2	42	170
Eric Chilton	42	143
Kent Bryant	42	150
John Albritton	39	148

Day 6: The Elite 8 is finalized

2010-03-26T23:59:00.002-05:00

I took the time (lots of time) to play out all 128 possible finishes and see who would win what kind of money. I stored it in a Google Docs file here. You don't need any special software, just click the link and view away. Basically, there is a small subset of people who can still win, but there are lots of different possibilities.

Name	Points	Tiebreak
Wes May-hem	59	145
Greg Walker	57	145
Cristi Walker	57	150
Blake Bumgardner	55	144
Chris Horton	55	156
Nash Horton	55	143
Whitney Walker	54	167
Tim Shelton	54	0
DJ Walker	53	148
Kyle Raible	52	156
Michael Huffman	51	130
Stephen Shirley	50	135
Jason Harmon	49	1061
Uncle/Gary Reynolds	48	166
Craig 1	48	170
Nick	47	137
Matt Arnold	47	153
Kylah Van Horn	47	161
Donna Bumgardner	47	148
Randy Spellins	46	141
Jessica Walker	46	154
Mike Bumgardner	45	157
Phillip Walker	45	154
Geoff Owens 2	45	135
Geoff Owens 1	43	127
Craig 2	42	170
Eric Chilton	42	143
Kent Bryant	42	150
Jared Selby	41	150
John Albritton	39	148

Day 5: Elite 8 begins

2010-03-25T23:22:00.001-05:00

I don't care who you are, the Xavier - Kansas State game was incredible to watch. Granted, I needed Xavier to win, but whatever the case, it was a great game to witness.

Name	Points	Tiebreak
Cristi Walker	54	150
Wes May-hem	53	145
Nash Horton	52	143
Blake Bumgardner	52	144
Greg Walker	51	145
Jason Harmon	49	1061
Chris Horton	49	156
Whitney Walker	48	167
Uncle/Gary Reynolds	48	166
Tim Shelton	48	0
Michael Huffman	48	130
Stephen Shirley	47	135
DJ Walker	47	148
Kyle Raible	46	156
Matt Arnold	44	153
Donna Bumgardner	44	148
Kylah Van Horn	44	161
Jessica Walker	43	154
Geoff Owens 1	43	127
Randy Spellins	43	141
Craig 1	42	170
Mike Bumgardner	42	157
Geoff Owens 2	42	135
Nick	41	137
Eric Chilton	39	143
Phillip Walker	39	154
Jared Selby	38	150
Craig 2	36	170
Kent Bryant	36	150
John Albritton	36	148

Day 4: The standings are upside down

2010-03-21T20:53:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure what to think about the brackets right now. Our leader is a consistent bottom feeder in the final standings (no offense Wes), 2nd place goes to my wife who doesn't exactly keep ESPN in her TV watching cycle, and 3rd place is a tie with one being a 2 year old. It is still too early to play out any scenarios, so as far as I'm concerned, it is still pretty wide open (at least for those that didn't pick Kansas to win). More games next Thursday.

Name	Points	Tiebreak
Wes May-hem	47	145
Cristi Walker	45	150
Blake Bumgardner	43	144
Nash Horton	43	143
Whitney Walker	42	167
Greg Walker	42	145
Michael Huffman	42	130
DJ Walker	41	148
Jason Harmon	40	1061
Chris Horton	40	156
Uncle/Gary Reynolds	39	166
Tim Shelton	39	0
Kylah Van Horn	38	161
Matt Arnold	38	153
Stephen Shirley	38	135
Jessica Walker	37	154
Geoff Owens 1	37	127
Kyle Raible	37	156
Mike Bumgardner	36	157
Phillip Walker	36	154
Craig 1	36	170
Geoff Owens 2	36	135
Eric Chilton	36	143
Nick	35	137
Donna Bumgardner	35	148
Randy Spellins	34	141
Kent Bryant	33	150
John Albritton	33	148
Jared Selby	32	150
Craig 2	30	170

Day 3: I think a few people are doomed

2010-03-20T11:32:00.000-05:00

Only 3 people still have their Final Four team from the midwest bracket. And 12 brackets lost their predicted champion. Sadly, I'm one of those, which means there is a good possibility that my wife is going to beat me.

Name	Points	Tiebreak
Eric Chilton	34	143
Wes May-hem	33	145
DJ Walker	33	148
Blake Bumgardner	31	144
Cristi Walker	31	150
Michael Huffman	30	130
Greg Walker	30	145
Jason Harmon	30	1061
Whitney Walker	30	167
Matt Arnold	30	153
Chris Horton	30	156
Jessica Walker	29	154
Nash Horton	29	143
Tim Shelton	29	0
Uncle/Gary Reynolds	29	166
Geoff Owens 1	29	127
Kyle Raible	29	156
Mike Bumgardner	28	157
Kylah Van Horn	28	161
Phillip Walker	28	154
Stephen Shirley	28	135
Geoff Owens 2	28	135
Donna Bumgardner	27	148
Kent Bryant	27	150
Nick	27	137
Craig 1	26	170
Randy Spellins	26	141
John Albritton	25	148
Jared Selby	24	150
Craig 2	24	170

Day 2: Not nearly as exciting

2010-03-19T00:39:00.000-05:00

Name	Points	Tiebreak
Wes May-hem	25	145
DJ Walker	25	148
Michael Huffman	24	130
Greg Walker	24	145
Stephen Shirley	24	135
Phillip Walker	24	154
Eric Chilton	24	143
Blake Bumgardner	23	144
Geoff Owens 1	23	127
Cristi Walker	23	0
Jason Harmon	22	1061
Matt Arnold	22	153
Geoff Owens 2	22	135
Kylah Van Horn	22	161
Whitney Walker	22	167
Chris Horton	22	156
Mike Bumgardner	22	157
Kent Bryant	21	150
Jessica Walker	21	154
Kyle Raible	21	156
Nash Horton	21	143
Tim Shelton	21	0
Uncle/Gary Reynolds	21	166
Randy Spellins	20	141
Craig 1	20	170
Nick	19	137
Donna Bumgardner	19	148
John Albritton	19	148
Jared Selby	18	150
Craig 2	18	170

Day 1: There is a reason they call it madness

2010-03-18T23:28:00.004-05:00

Not much to say. I just love this time of year.

Name	Points	Tiebreak
Michael Huffman	12	130
Wes May-hem	12	145
Blake Bumgardner	11	144
Greg Walker	11	145
Geoff Owens 1	11	127
Eric Chilton	11	143
Nick	11	137
Phillip Walker	11	154
DJ Walker	11	148
Stephen Shirley	11	135
Jessica Walker	10	154
Jason Harmon	10	1061
Matt Arnold	10	153
Kyle Raible	10	0
Cristi Walker	10	0
Chris Horton	10	156
Geoff Owens 2	9	135
Donna Bumgardner	9	148
Kent Bryant	9	0
Whitney Walker	9	167
Kylah Van Horn	9	161
Mike Bumgardner	9	157
Nash Horton	9	143
Uncle/Gary Reynolds	9	166
John Albritton	9	148
Jared Selby	8	0
Randy Spellins	8	141
Tim Shelton	8	0
Craig 2	8	170
Craig 1	8	170

March Madness 2010 is basically here.

2010-03-15T12:43:00.002-05:00

March Madness is here. As in years past, my time is stretched pretty thin. I'll do my best to collect all the brackets and money before the first tip-off (not including the play-in game), but some might be collected Thursday evening. We will have to run on the honor system, and those that I anticipate receiving that evening, are very honorable people. If you have any issues with this, leave your concerns in the comments section. I will also accept brackets via snail mail postmarked by Wednesday. This is actually the preferred method of receiving brackets as it requires no effort on my part.

I'll put my address, phone number and email address at the end of this section. All you will need to do is print out the bracket from this link (ESPN is my preferred bracket), fill it out, put the bracket and either cash or check for your entry fee (still only $5 a bracket) in an envelope and send it to me.

Daily updates (daily as in game day) will be made on this website with the most up to date scores. I will not longer be doing daily emails, you'll just have to check back here to see who's winning (or how bad your are doing).

Contact Information
DJ Walker
148 Feldspar Drive
Sherwood, AR 72120
GravyTrain6@gmail.com
501-412-7634

A completed bracket should contain the following information:

A prediction for all 63 games of the tournament (the play in game does not count)
The entrants name, phone number, email and tiebreak point prediction. The contact information is only used for payouts. Don't worry about spam, I hate it as much as you do.

To be eligible for the pool money, an entry fee of $5.00 is required.

This fee must be received before tip off of the first game on Thursday (exceptions do apply as explained at the beginning of this post) or in an envelope postmarked by Wednesday before the first game.
Other brackets are readily accepted, however if the fee is received after the tipoff, no prize money will be rewarded to the entry.
All brackets received will be listed among the leaders and prize money eligibility will be denoted. I have found it interesting to see how individuals do, regardless of their interest in college basketball or pools.

Multiple brackets can be entered per person.

Each individual can have no more than 4 brackets eligible for prize money.
For every bracket entered, the entry fee is required in order to be eligible. If only a portion of entered brackets should be eligible, I have to be informed before the first game, otherwise, I will denote the eligible brackets based on the order I enter them in the system.

Prize disbursement will be determined as follows:

1st Place receives 60% of the final pool rounded up to the nearest whole dollar.
2nd Place receives 30% of the final pool rounded up to the nearest whole dollar.
3rd Place receives 10% of the final pool rounded off to complete the total prize pool.

Points will be awarded for winning picks as follows:

By picking the winner of a 1st round game, 1 point is awarded.
By picking the winner of a 2nd round game (correctly placing a team in the Sweet 16), 2 points are awarded.
By picking the winner of a Sweet 16 game (correctly placing a team in the Elite 8), 3 points are awarded.
By picking the winner of an Elite 8 game (correclty placing a team in the Final Four), 4 points are awarded.
By picking the winner of a Final Four game (correclty placing a team in the Championship game), 5 points are awarded.
By picking the winner of the Championship game (correctly predicting the NCAA National Champion), 6 points are awarded.

Tie Breaker

In the case of a tie at the end of the tournament, a tiebreak will be determined by the entry correclty guessing the TOTAL number of points scored by both teams in the Championship game.
If a tiebreaker is not provided at the time of bracket submission, a default tie breaker of 0 will be used.
The winning entry with the closest prediction to the actual total (whether going over or not) will receive the winning prize money. If both entries are equally close, the individual who chose lower than the actual total will be awared first place.
In the case that none of the "Winners" submit a tiebreak predictions (or if the predictions are the same), the prize money will be split between the winners. If Entry A and B both have 99 points after the championship game, and both failed to submit tiebreak points, they will split the prize money of 1st and 2nd place, each will receive 45% of the final pool.

I'm afraid my website might go away for a little while

2010-03-02T11:15:00.003-06:00

Google recently made a change to the way that you can publish your website. I'm in the less than 1% of people who uses the ftp functionality which they are doing away with. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to go forward with the website, so I haven't gotten around to doing anything.

If the website does go away, it will be back, although I'm sure everyone has been excited about the one post per month rate that I've on.

Me and my wife had an awesome date.

2010-01-25T17:00:00.000-06:00

Here's the funny part about this: we went to Playtime Pizza. It's basically the same concept as places such as Chuck E. Cheese, and what use to be Showbiz (man, that place rocked).

Anyways, we decided it would be fun to have a date where we were kids again, and what better place that a big ol' arcade. Of course, there were other things such as go-karts, lazer tag, and rock climbing, but we were interested in the mini-golf and some of the arcade games. Plus, they had mini-bowling which we were looking for.

I had not intended on putting up a review of the joint, but that is probably how it is going to work out. First of all, they had a "100 foot pizza buffet". This is quite misleading, because although it probably is 100 feet long, they only use about 20 feet of it. leaving a gap of about 80 feet between the pizza and the rest of the food such as mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, and a reasonable salad bar. The food is about what I would expect for a free all you can eat pizza buffet (free with the price of admission = $9). We ate when we first got there and had a wonderful conversation about bedroom furniture for our little girl.

After a quick walkthrough of the joint, we decided on mini-golf. They had an indoor 9-hole black light mini golf course. Completely flat, limited obstacles, horrible visibility and poor hole design. Otherwise, it was fun. The art in the rooms were very impressive, especially with the black light. Since we had a coupon for a free attraction, I guess the mini-golf was worth what we paid, but barely.

The lazer tag looked pretty cool, but I've been told by others that the area is too small for the amount of people they allow in each game. The walk climbing wall was very impressive although we didn't actually participate in that activity. They had a go-kart track which looked respectable, but it was just a simple oval track and some of the karts looked severly underpowered.

Once we got into the arcade games, we started with air hockey...which I won. 6-4 was the final I think, but I was afraid I was going to lose at several moments of the match. We were going to compete at the mini-bowling, but due to some confusion on how the thing worked, we decided to share the responsibility of the bowling so we traded frames. We bowled a 77 :(

I played a shooter simulator, but did pretty poorly. I think the sites were out of alignment. After seeing my subpar performance, Cristi decided she would pass. They had a couple other really cool games, but none that were priced where we thought it would be worth it. Either that, or we didn't want to look like a fool. Two almost thirty year olds dancing on the ground might look a bit strange.

That brings us to the ticket earning games. I remembered myself to be a pretty good skee-ball player (I'm friggin' awesome on the iPhone). So that's where we started. Cristi went first because she got really excited when she saw these. Apparently she was a big "gamer" in her younger years. This is somewhat hard to swallow, but I'll say it anyways: Cristi is better than me. and not just better, I mean a whole lot better. Good enough that after my first two rounds, I didn't want to play anymore. She got us a ton of tickets, and I'm pretty sure she had a lot of fun too. (As a side note, Playtime Pizza does not have actual skee-ball, they have Fire-Ball and Ice-Ball. I think that was their names. They were a little different, but the same idea and layout).

To break up our playtime, we alternated between Cristi playing skee-ball and me playing the basketball aracde. Let me say, I'm really good at the basketball arcade. I've got a pure shot and I've played enough aracde bball to know that you have to bank every shot to be good. I actually set the high score on one of the machines at 102, followed by an 88 with my free game. Here's where things went downhill. When I put up that score, the ticket dispenser jammed, so someone came over to fix it. Well, he fixed it and then handed me like 20 tickets. I was not happy because I was getting 25 tickets for putting up 140 point rounds, and I just set the high score with a total of 190. I should have gotten close to 35 tickets for my performance.

I'm not going to lie, I'm still a little bitter about it. I've gone back to 10 year old DJ, but I still want to be recognized for the score. I made sure one of the kids playing next to me knew that I put up the high score that was being displayed, but by golly, I want my tickets.

So, anyways, after we added up all our tickets, we bought a few rings and bracelets for our beautiful daughter and headed on home. Total tally, we spent $20 admission, and then added $13 for the arcade games and attractions for a total of $33. This resulted in two all you can eat pizza buffets, two rounds of mini-golf, some air hockey, bowling and probably way too many rounds of skee-ball and basketball. With our 250 tickets we got 3 rings and 3 bracelets that Makenna has loved, so I'd say that it was worth every single penny and then some (even though I got jipped out of about 20 tickets).

I wouldn't be surprised if we go back sometime, just for the skee-ball and basketball.

DISH, Dish, dish.....

2010-01-13T18:00:00.001-06:00

Yes, it's that time again. Although there is no set schedule, I can't seem to go too long without having an awesome story about Dish customer service. This time around, it started right after we had our roof replaced. In fact, I roughly documented the origination in a previous post.

Just a quick summary, the roof got replaced which required the roofers to remove the satellite and put it back. We lost signal to our Local HD Channels. Immediately my wife and I knew that the dish was slightly off and needed to be adjusted to point in the right direction.

We called and they walked us through a process that would supposedly fix the issue which resulted in us completely losing the HD channels. They wouldn't even show up on our channel guide. We didn't catch this for a day or two as we rarely watch those channels. During this first call, we specifically said that we would like a technician to come out and take a look, but they of course had to walk through a process over the phone first.

After a week or two, Cristi had enough and called Dish back. This time, we again insisted that a technician come out and check our signal. This time, the support person on the phone informed Cristi that our receiver was bad that it was blocking the channels. Of course, they said this even after running tests (just like the first call), and seeing that one of the satellites was not showing up correctly. At this point, you would think something would trigger in them that the dish is just out of line. Cristi was also told that we could hook up an external hard drive to copy off our DVRed programs so we wouldn't lose them when switching receivers.

Instead of fighting with them at that point, I decided to actually give it a shot so that I could then state with proof that they had no idea what they were doing. When the receiver came in, the first thing I did was hook up the hard drive to copy over our shows. At that point, a message popped up letting me know that this had to be activated. No big deal I thought, so I called the number.

This is where things really went downhill. I explained to the guy what I needed and he explained that there was a onetime service charge to unlock the USB transfer feature....$39.99. That's right, nearly 40 dollars, even though the first support person told my wife that all we had to do was hook up the hard drive. At that very moment, I flipped. Without using any profanity, I began insulting him and his coworkers simply because I had had enough of dealing with unintelligent individuals. During this process, I also explained to him the process I had gone through and what I was trying to get accomplished.

Once he experienced my frustration, he apologized profusely, and recognized what I had been saying since day one...THE SATELLITE WAS OUT OF LINE!!!! In fact, he stated this very thing and then told me that we could get this resolved over the phone. Although I didn't believe him for a second, in order to get the technician out to my house, I had to go through the steps one more time. While the steps were going on though, I brought up a few things including the process to return the receiver that Dish had incorrectly sent me and getting the shipping charge removed from my account. After this guy couldn't get it done, he sent me over to an "advanced" technician who promptly said, "Yup, looks like we'll have to send someone out to your house..."

*ANGELS BEGIN SINGING*

At that point, all was right in the world. The guy came out, and fixed in about 45 minutes. He said the dish was off by about 4 inches or so which is why we couldn't even pick up the satellite we needed to get the channels we wanted.

After three phone calls (the last of which took over an hour) and a 45 minute technician visit, the end result was the very thing that cristi and I both new needed to be done. The dish needed to be realigned. The technician visit was free, except that I had to add a 5.99 package to my plan to get that so all that was lost in this go around was high blood pressure, close to 2 hours of my time and about the same for my wife and a $5.99 charge. I guess it could have been worse, but we will see how my next few bills show up considering the issues I've had previously.

New Year's Resolution review

2010-01-04T17:00:00.000-06:00

So, I just remembered that I made some new year's resolutions last year. As documented in this post on January 2nd of last year. I followed up as recently as the end of February, but nothing after that.

Here is the final update of how I did last year.

1) Working out again. This did happen. Me and my brothers have been going for close to 3 months now I think. We are actually starting a new routine tonight, so there are no real signs of slowing down. In fact, I think we have missed 2 workouts and they were both due to the Christmas holiday.

2) Getting up better and going to bed earlier. This is a joke, if anything it has gotten worse. I noted that I was getting up at 7:30 last year. To end the year, my average wake up time was around 8:00 and getting to work just a little after 9:00. Going to bed earlier...hahaha...I usually crawl under the covers between midnight and 2:00 and midnight is very rare.

3) I can't see that I was really eating horribly, although eating could have been better. The holidays, especially with Cristi's mom in town for 2 weeks (and us still eating leftovers) was not a good thing for eating healthy. Considering in 2 weeks we went through 3 boxes of butter, I think I was on the Paula Dean diet. Almost all the leftovers are gone, so I'm going to give myself a passing grade on this resolution.

4) Grass Guys is in good shape. I could have ended the year with a bit more preparation, but a combination of laziness and being satisfied left me with a broken mower, blower and trimmer, still no uniforms that I'm happy with and a lack of marketing material. All these things will be purchased/fixed hopefully in the next two months so they can be written off for the 2010 tax year and before the season starts. I did decide on the insurance bit (with just a tad more research needed) which will help greatly in the commercial expansion. This didn't go so well in 2009.

There you have it. My resolutions last year were pretty vague, but I thought I did pretty well, some of them almost unintentional. The only resolutions I'm making this year is to not shave or cut my hair for a year (I actually plan on breaking this one next weekend) and to play a lot more Call of Duty. I'm pretty sure I can stick with that one.

So...I'm going to let this picture make the announcement

2009-12-26T14:29:00.000-06:00

For those that don't understand the picture and the t-shirt (Jessica and Greg), Cristi is pregnant with our second child. As of now, that is the only news we have. We don't know when we are due, the sex, or anything at all. We go on Wednesday for our first appointment, we might have more news then. If Cristi had to guess, we are looking at some time in August.

I ran out of blog posts...

2009-12-21T17:00:00.000-06:00

A couple of months ago, I had scheduled multiple blog posts to appear every Saturday. I thought I had them through December, but apparently I was incorrect.

Instead of Saturday, here is this week's update. This past weekend was my baby brother's wedding. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say about it. As a guy, it was a day where I got dressed up in tuxedo, posed for a few pictures, decorated the groom's car and then went home. A female on the other hand, might say that that day was beautiful, magnificent and all that stuff. As the brother, it was good day with only minimal conflict (that I was aware of) between families, which I think is common in ALL weddings.

Makenna came so close to actually walking down the aisle this time, but she took two or three steps and froze. For abot 2 seconds I thought she might keep going, but she turned around and started crying. As discussed, I once again walked down the aisle and escorted her, along with the other flower girl who also decided to just stay at the end of the aisle. I guess things could have gone worse, but they definitely could have gone better.

I've been playing a crap ton of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 recently and just yesterday leveled up to Prestige 1. Those that play the game, know what that means. Those that don't play, just know that I'm awesome.

We recently had our roof replaced, and with insurance and discounts, we got the whole thing for free, and actually made around 2 dollars or something due to a miscalculation on the part of the roofing company. The roof looks great (I guess, I couldn't tell you if a roof looked bad), but they did something with out satellite which has resulted in us losing our locals in HD and ESPN comes in and out. We've already called once, and they did fix it to where we could get our locals in standard, but that caused us to lose ESPN sometimes. I absolutely dread calling them back and am beginning to wonder if it is worth it to not have HD locals just so I don't have to deal with them. Along the same lines, I've been documenting my frustrations with Dish for quite some time and I thought I had it sorted out. They had agreed to 10 months of $10 credits after everything was sorted out. That worked great for about 5 months, then the credits disappeared. Sadly, their customer service is so bad, it would take more time to call them and get it straightened out than that $50 is worth.

Christmas is coming up, and I've got all my shopping done except for one very, very good friend of mine and my dog. We know we are getting my dog a new bed, but I have no idea what to get one of my favorite people in the world, how horrible is that?

My wife does her research, and it's interesting.

2009-12-12T17:00:00.000-06:00

Since getting pregnant with Makenna, my wife has really found her calling (at least I feel like she has). She typically spends a majority of her free time researching things regarding natural living, from natural child birth to home remedies. Since my wife (as any female) loves to talk, she shares most of this information with me whenever she gets a chance. I'm not going to say I'm not interested, but it's not on the top of my priority list. I'm pretty sure my wife knows this, and I'm hoping that by her reading this she isn't finding out for the first time.

In the process of her discussing these things with me, I've learned quite a bit. At first, when Cristi said she was going to have a natural child birth, I just shrugged it off and figured that she would be like everyone else where she "tried" to go natural then gave in after her first labor pains and got the medicine. I figured she had seen something that made it sound like a good idea and she went with.

Boy was I wrong, she researched all the medical, physical and emotional benefits and shared lots of good information with me. We went to a natural birthing class and I learned tons. Pretty soon, I was on board with her decision completely, and she went through with it. I could not be more pleased with the results.

After giving birth, breastfeeding became one of her favorite topics. I've read study after study (although I can't currently provide sources, Cristi can provide this at a moment's notice) explaining the medical benefits and she made a good argument for why breastfeeding is such a good idea. Although I was a bit reluctant to continue the breast feeding even after 6 months, the research showed that the ONLY negative to breastfeeding later in life is the rest of American society looking down on this. I was fine that Makenna nursed until she was almost 20 months old, I see nothing wrong with it at all and am very grateful that my wife spent the time to finding out how good it was for her. Notice I mentioned American society specifically; the entire world is light years ahead of where our culture is in regards to childbirth/newborns/infants.

Along the same lines, being in the medical field, she has started researching vaccines. H1N1 vaccine was recently all the rage, as well as just the common flu vaccine. Once again, I don't have sources for this information other than my wife (who I completely trust when it comes to medical information, she should have been a doctor). But apparently, of individuals who receive the flu shot, 7% of people still get the flu. Those who don't take the flu shot, 9% of those individuals get the flu. That's only a 2% reduction in your change of getting the flu. Factor in all the adverse side effects of the flu shot, and I don't see how a trained medical individual can recommend this process.

Here's what amazes me. The things I have mentioned are all things that go against the current thought process of the medical community. Natural childbirth is almost considered taboo in America, especially states such as Arkansas that does not recognize home birth or birth without the aid of a doctor present as coverable by insurance. Vaccines are being pushed by the medical community everywhere you go. Forumla use is pushed on new parents before they even leave the hospital after giving birth. Yet, in each of these situations, the commonly accepted procedure is not the best for those involved.

There are other things as well. Home birth in and of itself for example. Show me one piece of research that shows where a hospital birth, on average is safer for mother and child and I will eat my shorts. Yes, every once in a while there will be a complication with a birth, but without going into too much, the complication is usually a result of medical intervention when it was not even necessary. Even still, the odds of complications are much lower than you would imagine. Remember, people have been giving birth for thousands of years (millions depending on your creation/evolution beliefs) and it seems to me that the human race is still multiplying just fine.

Circumcision has been a hot topic for us as of late. Think about it, can you name one medical reason why a boy less than 12 hours old should have his penis basically mutilated? I think I'll save the rest of this for another post.

Wow, once I started typing this up, it started to get away from me. Apparently, subconciously, these things really mean more to me than I realized. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that my wife has these views based on sound research; yet, even some of her peers in the medical field refuse to listen to the information that is available to them. My point is this, just because society says that something is right, doesn't make it so.

I'm just glad my wife has the desire to research these things, because without her, I'd be in the dark.

Car History...1997 Chevy Tahoe (green)

2009-12-05T17:00:00.001-06:00

The next entry in my Car History series is a 1997 green 2-door Chevy Tahoe. I don't think I have any pictures of this truck. I'm not sure if I never took any, or if I just don't know where they are. Here are a couple of pictures to give you an idea of what a 2-door tahoe looks like.

This truck was purchased not long after the red Sierra was totalled. I remember buying it at Car Wars which is held I think every year at War Memorial Stadium. The same guy that sold me the red truck (and my parent's explorer) was able to find the 2 door tahoe I had always dreamed of. I bought it on the spot, I don't think I even test drove it.

A few things that happened with this truck:

1) I installed the stereo system in this truck as well. I took this one a step further though as I tore out the interior and ran cable under the carpet so I could install my disc changer in the console between the front two seats. I also added a toggle switch that would allow me to turn my sub woofers on and off depending on what mood I was in. Sometimes, I just didn't feel like having a headache after driving. I also had straight pipes on this truck...you can imagine how loud it was.

2) After getting everything installed, my truck was broken into and they stole the deck and disc changer. The cool thing about this is that insurance paid for everything but my $100 deductible. Since my stuff was pretty old, I got upgraded equipment for a very small price tag. At the end of the day, I was happy. The downside is that the day my truck was broken into, I went to a friend's house that night to help him with his homework (if he reads this blog, he knows who I'm talking about). While I was there, it started raining. I thought nothing of it until I went to leave and realized that my seats were soaked. Since one window had been broken during the theft, I rolled the other down. That sucked pretty bad because my seats were cloth. Luckily, it never molded or stunk the truck up, I just had to drive on a wet, cold seat.

3) This truck nearly caused me to kill my middle brother. I had it in the garage working on something. I don't remember what it was, but I remember I was under the hood and I had my back doors opened. My brother was in the process of cleaning his truck (Pathfinder at the time, which my dad currently drives) in the driveway. He was using the vaccuum cleaner and instead of moving the vaccuum, he attempted to back his truck up closer to the garage. He hit the gas hard and wound up slamming into the back of my truck and jacked up the rear door. It still closed and was rainproof, but there was a serious dent. I was pissed beyond belief. Ask him about it sometime, he will explain the level of anger and complete violence in my eyes at that moment.

4) The ending of this truck was on a trip back from Branson, MO. It was a rainy weekend if I recall correctly. At the very least it had rained most of the day between Branson and Little Rock. I should have seen this all coming and pulled over, but I didn't. Here are the events on my way home.

- About 30 minutes out of Branson, I passed an overturned semi that had traffic at a crawl. It appeared that accident had happened probably 45 minutes before I got to that point.

- About half way home, I passed another accident where two vehicles had collided head on. As I was passing this accident, emergency vehicles were just pulling up, so I estimate that I missed this accident by about 10 to 15 minutes.

- About 10 minutes from Conway, I passed another accident, only this one happened in my rear view mirror as I was passing an intersection. You see how this progressed...I should have known.

- Sure enough, as I got to Conway, I came to a stop at a stop light, looked in my rear view and saw an old 60's or 70's model Ford in my rear view...moving fast...and not slowing down...and getting very close very quick.

Of all my accidents, this is the only one that I was ever injured in. On impact, I was looking in my rear view mirror with my head kind of tilted to the side. The hit resulted in my head going forward and hitting the steering wheel. I don't think I went unconscious at that point, but I got out of the truck and checked on the other vehicles. The Ford had pushed me into the car in front of me and them into the next car. Everyone was okay, and the next thing I remember is the cops pulling up and me doubled over. Regardless of whether or not I blacked out for a period of time, I had a pretty good mark on the side of my head.

Of all my wrecks, this was one of my favorites and here is why. As I mentioned, this was an older Ford. It was an older F-350 (I think), and it was built like a tank. I was moving at probably about 40-45 miles an hour when it hit me. The result of the collision left the Ford's drivetrain and other major parts lying in the middle of the road. It was not driveable and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't have put it back together again. On the other hand, I drove home. Granted, the frame was bent in the wreck, but it was still very driveable. This is one more reason I'm a chevy truck guy for life.

Although I had this truck for a while, it is the last vehicle that I would ever total (knock on wood). Also, although I do have memories of this truck, none of them really stick out other than the final days of owning it. I would also decide that the stereo system was no longer needed. I had the insurance include that in the final check I received from them.

My next truck would be very similar (it was the same truck, different color) but it would have a lot more personality.

Items up for sale

2009-12-02T19:04:00.003-06:00

First off, I've got an XBOX 360 with a 20GB hard drive, one wireless controller and headset. Of course, all the cables come with it including the power cable and brick plus component cables or composite if you prefer. It will actually come with one game Trials HD that was downloaded from the marketplace and is stored on the hard drive. It has a 90 day warranty from the manufacturer as this is a new system from Microsoft after I had to get my last console repaired. If you have any questions, you can call me at 501-412-7634. Would like to sell for $175 OBO. It is located in Sherwood, AR.

I also have a 1995 Kawasaki Bayou that I would like to sell. It's been very well used but runs amazing. There is some damage to the four wheeler during an accident several years ago, but other than appearing to lean slightly, I've noticed no problems. Recently had several hundred dollars of routine maintenance work just to make sure it's in peak condition. Would like to basically break even at $700. For more details or a test drive, give me a call at 501-412-7634. This item is also located in Sherwood, AR and can be delivered around the central Arkansas area at no extra charge.

You have to be able to laugh at yourself

2009-11-28T17:00:00.002-06:00

So, right now as I'm typing this, my weight is around 165 pounds. By no means would I be considered "fat" by the average American, but considering my family background, I'm "chunky" as my middle brother calls me. High school was a different story for me. I graduated at 118 pounds.

Please understand, my parents fed me and I ate. And I ate a lot. I averaged 3000 or 4000 calories a day, probably more. I also worked out quite a bit when it came to basketball and other sports. I tried protein shakes and powders and all sorts of special diets to put on weight, but it just didn't work. Instead, I looked like this below. Please don't confuse this with an ad for hungry children in Somalia, I'm not asking for money, I'm just making fun of myself.

Why is it so bad to be different?

2009-11-21T17:00:00.002-06:00

I have mentioned finances multiple times on this blog. I've mentioned the envelope budgeting method my wife and I use, how buying in bulk isn't all that great sometimes, and how some products/services are ripoffs. This last week has really upset me a bit about the whole frugal mindset.

My wife has a wonderful job, I just feel bad for her in regards to the people she has to work with (another post is upcoming on this). Multiple times, my wife during conversation has mentioned how some of her coworkers think she is weird for being so "cheap" and "tight". I'm not going to say they attempt to insult her, but she is almost frowned upon for the way she and I manage our money.

Likewise, my sister-in-law has ridiculed me on multiple occassions for simply price checking items at the grocery store. If I can save $.50 by looking at two price labels and using a little bit of elementary math, why not? Even on this very website, I had a self-proclaimed "super cheap" person say they would not do the things I do to save a little bit of money. Just like my wife, I know that these people (I think both of the people I mentioned read this blog) mean no harm in their comments, and honestly, I am not offended by them. These are just two examples, and I could provide more.

Here's my point, espeically for those people my wife works with. Many of her coworkers are in their 50s and 60s. They are still working with no sign of retirement in their future and still paying on debts that they still manage to accumulate. When my wife and I reach our 60s, we will be retired with absolutely no debt whatsoever (unless we decide to take a loan to purchase our Class A RV), and will have been retired hopefully for quite some time.

Yes, we save where we can. My wife doesn't feel like spending an extra $200 to get a new phone just because she "wants" one. We haven't bought a new car even though our current Accord has over 230,000 miles on it and needs a paint job. We don't eat at Sonny William's Steak House twice a week. For that matter, we don't even eat at Casa Mexicana but every other month or so. Our only major downfall is taking vacations where we tend to spend a lot more for nicer accommodations.

But, neither my wife or daughter have ever gone to bed hungry. We have a comfortable place to sleep at night and we can get to and from wherever we need to go because our cars run. We are always clothed, and typically with very nice clothing.

However, within the next year, more than likely we will be completely debt free with the exception of our house which we will then be able to pay off in about 10 years (on a 30 year mortgage which was a mistake and is a lesson for another time). That's assuming that neither of us ever receive another raise or bonus from our jobs. I should also mention that if we change nothing about about the way our retirement is setup, we'll retire with somewhere between 1 and 2 million dollars in sound investments. We'll be able to live off the interest of our retirement, and pass on the balance of our accounts to our children. As far as I'm concerned, that is some kind of a legacy to leave to your kids.

With that knowledge, someone explain to me why being so different is such a bad thing. We are sacrificing nothing of importance today, to gain everything later so we can continue to enjoy ourselves with no worries. Dave Ramsey has a motto that recently I have really begun to understand better: "Live like no one else, so you can live like no one else."

Car History...1996 GMC Sierra

2009-11-14T17:49:00.000-06:00

The next entry in my Car History series is a 1996 red GMC Sierra extended cab. This was the first vehicle that I ever purchased with my own money. The previous cars had been given to me by my parents, and I'm very grateful for that. In fact, after the Bonneville was totaled, they allowed me to use a portion of the insurance claim money as part of the down-payment for this truck. Here are a few pictures of my actual truck, including one of the speakers in the back.

This truck was definitely my baby. When I purchased it, it was completely stock with only the addition of a Tweety Bird air freshener. As you can see by the pictures below, I added quite a few items. I tinted the windows, added security/keyless entry, I added the bed rails, bed liner and tool chest. I also modified the exhaust to make it sound awesome, straight pipes coming straight out the back with what I believe was 3" chrome tips.

I eventually added the stereo system that was originally in the caravan. It definitely sounded the best in my truck above the other vehicles. The downside is that I no longer had the use of the back seat of the truck. On the other side, it's a pretty tight fit, so not many people ever sat back there anyways.

Over the course of owning the truck, I also fixed the truck several times. Although not a big deal to most, I fixed door handles, the tail gate multiple times, switched out the battery and alternator and I'm pretty sure there were other things that I can't think of right now.

I'm not positive of all the places this truck went, but I know it made several trips to South Arkansas, several to Central Oklahoma, it made it to Houston (to pick up a Soloflex, that's a pretty good story) and it might have been to Memphis a couple of times as well.

I can't describe how much I loved this truck. Needless to say, this truck also got totaled. I was on the way to south Arkansas to visit some friends from church camp, talking on the phone with my future wife, when the rush hour traffic came to a pretty quick stop. The reason for the quick stop? A police officer, who appeared to have an individual in the back of his car pulled attempted to pull into traffic traveling at about 65 miles an hour from a complete stop. The first car had to slam on their brakes, the car behind them stopped in time, but the next car, a silver SUV did not. I slammed on my brakes but slammed into that truck pretty hard. A split second later I was rear-ended and I think one more vehicle was involved after that. Luckily no one was injured, but my poor truck wound up looking like this.

Strangely enough, you will notice I'm wearing the same ACE hardware t-shirt in both pictures. I forgot how much I loved that t-shirt. Apparently, I wore it a lot more than I realized.

After the insurance wrote me a fairly sizable check for the loss of my truck, I began looking for my next truck. This time, I knew what I wanted and had the funds to buy it. My search for a 2-door Tahoe had begun. Oh, the police officer who started the accident, and then left the scene of the accident to my knowledge was never ticketed for his involvement.

AT&T and there stinking modem

2009-11-07T17:00:00.000-06:00

Recently, my XBox360 died. Although that is a story all in itself, short story is that I went ahead and bought a new Xbox 360 Elite. I got it home, hooked it up and realized I couldn't connect to XBox Live. I went and checked our modem and sure enough, we had red lights.

I went through the typical troubleshooting but couldn't get it work. At this point, I was forced to call tech support. Typically, this is a nightmare, but this time around they were very straight forward and told me that I would have to buy a new modem. There is a 1 year warranty and mine lasted 1 year and a few months. Apparently, after reading several reviews online and seeing if I could buy one outside of the AT&T network, this is quite common with this particular modem. So, if you have AT&T DSL service, started saving some extra cash, because it appears that after about 14 months, they just stop working.

After weighing my options, I decided to go up to the AT&T store to see if I could talk them down on price for a new modem ($100 for wireless, $75 hard-wired). Knowing that new customers get a rebate for free equipment, I was hoping to at least get the price reduced by half. I didn't think this was too far out of the question especially after walking in and seeing a large advertisement for the free equipment deal (after rebate of course).

Once I was able to speak to a salesman, I went straight to the point. I explained the situation and told him that basically, I wanted to get my internet back up and going, but I didn't feel that after being a loyal DSL customer for nearly a year and a half, I should have to pay for a crappy piece of equipment that they required you to have. He quickly explained that there was nothing he could do, and amazingly, there was no one he could talk to about it (this of course, seemed like a big fat lie, but we continued anyways).

Next, he suggested U-verse. I think I have written about this before, but the television service that u-verse offers, in my mind is priced higher than just about any other package I have compared. To get the same setup we have now with Dish, u-verse would be an extra $36 a month. This immediately rules out getting tv through u-verse and since we don't have or need a home phone, we don't need that service either.

The salesman explains that if you get internet and tv, there is no installation charge, but if you only get internet, they will charge you $150. I'll repeat that, $150 if you only get internet. I attempted to negotiate the price on the installation, but he again stated that he could do nothing and there was no one that could.

Timing on these also came into play. Basically, he explained that with u-verse, you had to shut off your DSL for 5 days before they could setup an appointment to come setup the u-verse service. This makes no sense to me, but I'm not familiar with this technology, so I can't comment on the validity of this statement. Of course, their scheduling was about 10 days out, so I would be without for over 2 weeks. With DSL, in order to maybe, try to get the rebate, he said I would have to shut off DSL service for 5 days, and then sign back up and hope that they don't notice I just canceled service. Basically, I could wait 2 weeks with no internet and get u-verse for $150, wait 5 days with no internet and hopefully get a free wireless modem, otherwise I could get it that day and pay the $100 and be good to go.

Being frugal, I still felt there was a better way. After not giving the guy an answer, he finally came back with a deal he "just found" that gave a $100 rebate for u-verse internet setup. Immediately, this was the best deal in regards to price. However, Cristi and Makenna were leaving in 3 days and considering my time alone would be spent playing video games online and surfing the web, I couldn't be without for 2 weeks. Finally, the guy said that I could just buy the modem that day, and bring it back within 30 days.

So, with that said, here is how it was supposed to play out. Mind you, this conversation with the guy took 20 minutes or so. I purchased the modem that day. I kept all the receipts and boxes ready to be repackaged and sent back to the store. When my family got back in town, I was going to be taking the modem and canceling my DSL service. As soon as possible, I would request the u-verse internet installation and wait for that to be turned on. I planned on making one last attempt at getting the entire installation fee waived, otherwise I would have just covered the $50 fee (after rebate) and moved on. The price for service is identical so I would have been gaining the option to upgrade speed and have AT&T take responsibility for the hardware. Sounded like a win-win to me.

On the 3rd of November, I decided to put my plan into action. But, before doing so, I thought I would just hook up the old modem, just to make sure it was really broken and it wasn't have a bad day when it "broke". Guess what, it worked just fine. However, I was using the new power cable, so I'm guessing that something was actually wrong with the power cable, and not the modem. I quickly packaged up the new modem, put it back in the box and took it back to get a full refund. That part of the plan went flawless.

I made the mistake however, of trying to get more information on U-verse. I asked how long it would take to get U-verse internet turned on. The lady quickly responded with, "You can't do that". So we had a nice discussion about how u-verse is a package deal and you have to get at least two of the services. I objected stating that the previous salesmen had tried to sell me on just the internet and I had a friend who was using only internet service under the u-verse label. She insisted that you had to get internet packaged with a home phone (which we don't need) or a tv package (which is grossly overpriced).

To summarize, I now have internet, it works fine and for the most part at no out of pocket cost to me. Had I needed to get U-verse, I would have been out of luck (according to the saleslady I talked to), I would not have been happy. For now though, all is good.
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