After a While

I was sent this poem a long time ago, perhaps 12 years ago now.  I haven't read it in a while, but it holds a dear place in my heart not for the person who sent it to me, but for the meaning it has to me now.  When I first read this over a dozen years ago, I was very young and overly optimistic.  I thought that love conquered all, that all you need is love.  Every few years since then I've revisited these words, and I've been able to soak up a little more of it's solemn wisdom every time.  With every good-bye, whether I've said them or someone has said it to me, I've learned.

After a While

After a while you learn

The subtle difference between

Holding a hand and chaining a soul

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning

And company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn

That kisses aren't contracts

And presents aren't promises

And you begin to accept your defeats

With your head up and your eyes ahead

With the grace of a woman

Not the grief of a child

And you learn

To build all your roads on today

Because tomorrow's ground is

Too uncertain for plans

And futures have a way

Of falling down in mid flight

After a while you learn

That even sunshine burns if you get too much

So you plant your own garden

And decorate your own soul

Instead of waiting

For someone to bring you flowers

And you learn

That you really can endure

That you are really strong

And you really do have worth

And you learn and you learn

With every good bye you learn.

- Veronica A. Shoffstall

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." - Lao Tzu

Joke!

A store that sells husbands has opened in New York City , where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates:

You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the value of the products increase as the shopper ascends the flights. The shopper may choose any item from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!

So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. On the first floor the sign on the door reads:

Floor 1 - These men Have Jobs.
She is intrigued, but continues to the second floor, where the sign reads:

Floor 2 - These men Have Jobs and Love Kids.
'That's nice,' she thinks, 'but I want more.'

So she continues upward. The third floor sign reads:

Floor 3 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, and are Extremely Good Looking.
'Wow!' she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

She goes to the fourth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 4 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Good Looking and Help With Housework.
'Oh, mercy me!' she exclaims, 'I can hardly stand it!'

Still, she goes to the fifth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 5 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Gorgeous , Help with Housework, and Have a Strong Romantic Streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor, where the sign reads:

Floor 6 - You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.

"A whore is a girl who sleeps with everyone... a bitch is a girl who sleeps with everyone but you" - Anonymous

Run for the Cure 2009

After an absence of 2 years from the Run, I've decided it was time I contributed again by rejoining. If you wish to provide donations, you may do so online at https://www.cibcrunforthecure.com/html/p.asp?t=3490676&l=1

Or better yet, if you live in the Edmonton area, you can join my team "My Legs Hurt" and participate in the Run yourself!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I will reply.

I haven't been running in a while, so my goal is just to finish. I'm not going to run competitively this year.

"Do not let what you can't do interfere with what you can do." - John Wooden

Conflict of Interest Part 2

I suggest you read Part I first before proceeding.


"So what does my body language say now?"

Scott turned around to see Jan leaned up against the door frame with her arm up and her hip thrust out to one side.

"With poses like that, I always told you should be a model," he paused, "or at least a porn star."

Jan's fist met Scott's shoulder in such a hurry that Scott actually winced in pain.

"I see your kickboxing lessons are paying dividends," he said, rubbing his shoulder, "anyway, let's get going, we're late enough as it is."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It wasn't the first time he caught himself gazing at her, and it wasn't the first time she caught him either. But every time she did, she just smiled and slowly turned away, her eyes trailing behind, leaving one last glimpse for Scott to steal.

"Want me to introduce you to her? That's Claire. I've known her for years." And without waiting for a response Jan coolly walked over to the girl who was at the bar, and proceeded to strike up a conversation. Scott watched with an interested smirk at first which quickly turned into slightly curious bewilderment when Jan pointed at him and the two girls laughed. He quickly approached the girls in a self-attempted rescue.

"You know, it's not polite to point..." he began.

Jan quickly interjected, "See, he's not as funny looking up close."

"No, you're right," the other girl offered, "maybe I need to see him from further away again to make a fully informed decision."

Scott stood there, dumbfounded, with a look on his face that didn't at all betray his total lack of knowing what to do next. Jan then lifted her arm in the air, pointed down to the ground and swirled a mini 360 with her finger. Scott looked at Jan, then at the girl and they both gave a slight nod. He took that as a queue to turn around and walk as if he was runway model, doing his best model strut down an imaginary catwalk.

"OOoooo and a nice ass too," the girl cooed and both her and Jan laughed. Scott began to turn around and say something, but then the a song began to play in the room adjacent to them. Jan grabbed the girl's arm and started towards the dance floor.

"I love this song," she yelled as she linked Scott in her other arm and dragged them both towards the music.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So yup, there's part 2. I think I'm going to start writing more again, at least, I hope inspiration hits often enough to allow me to start writing more again.

"Sometimes when people forgive you, it is more about themselves than it is about you" - Teal'c, from Stargate SG-1

Tears of the Clown

Sometimes, those who laugh the loudest, are the ones who are hurting inside the most.

A young man goes to see his doctor. He is overcome by a terrible sadness and doesn't think anything will make him feel better. The doctor says, "Why not do something happy, like going to see Grimaldi the clown?". The young man answers, with a knowing look, "Ah, but Doctor", he says, "I am Grimaldi."

"Knowing what you don't want can be as important as knowing what you do want." - Sunrise Seeker

Try This at Home Kids!

Make a fist with your left hand. Put your thumb inside your fist and squeeze tightly. Take your finger on your right hand and stick it as far down your throat as possible. You have now realized you have no gag reflex.

"Out of convicted rapists, 57% admitted to reading pornography. 95% admitted to reading the Bible."

Absolution

I've recently gotten in touch with someone from my past... actually that's not entirely true. Someone from my past actually took time and effort to get in touch with me, and I am glad she did. One of the reasons being that something in my past that I didn't even think would ever come up again, let alone needed sorting out, surfaced. At the bottom of Sorry, I said that I intentionally hurt someone and that she deserved it. Well, this person found me, and she came back into town and we had lunch. We hadn't talked in about 10 years, and she asked me why we lost touch. She seemed genuine, and she told me she forgot why we ever grew apart. At the time, I lied and told her I forgot too. Anyway, she went back home and we corresponded here and there through the 'net. I wrestled with over the next few weeks whether or not I should have told her that it was because of me that our friendship ended, or just lie and insisted that I forgot as well. I decided that a friendship based on lies, even though it might have been a white one, was wrong. I have to live by my own words, "The right thing to do is most often the hardest thing to do." Like any healthy relationship, a solid friendship needs a solid foundation. I reasoned that if I told her truth and we could still be friends after, that would speak volumes about her current character and what type of person she had become. And if she never wanted to talk to me again, that would have been well within her right and I would have understood that too. Well, I bit the bullet and let her know the truth, having no idea how she would react. I expected the worst, but she gave me the best. She knew that she hurt my friends, but didn't know how deep she had cut them. I made the same types of mistakes when I was young. Through the ignorance of youth, and not fully realizing the consequences of actions, we both had hurt people. Growing older has allowed her to see what she did was indeed wrong, and in admission, apologized for her actions. I could do no less than accept the apology and return one of my own for intentionally hurting her. How could I not, having made the same types mistakes she did? I've paid for my mistakes, and she has as well. The catharsis was welcome, for both of us, and now we remain friends.

"There is nothing in a caterpliiar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." - R. Buckminster Fuller

A Reply to Those Who Forward Hoaxes and Chain Letters

I am still receiving hoax and chain emails that have been circulating for at least a decade. How do I know for at least a decade? Because I remember seeing them in my inbox that long ago! Seriously, how do people believe this stuff? I know that some people just forward these emails to a dozen of their friends without a second thought, and that scares me, it really REALLY scares me. Do these people not stop to think about the consequences of their actions? I can only see 3 reasons why someone who fan the SHIT of chain/hoax emails around.

1. They actually believe that by sending the email that they will receive good fortune. My reply to these people would be to drive over to their house, whip out my "Ignorance Be-Gone!! Stick"™, and start applying it to them as viciously and vigorously as possible.


2. They think, "Mneh, it probably won't happen but there's no harm in sending it out anyway right?" To those people I would reply using the same as above, except I would use my "Don't Be So Damned Ignorant Stick"™.


3. They know about but don't give a crap about the network and server degradation these emails can cause and for shits and giggles want to see how many fools fall for it by seeing how many of these emails they get sent back. To these enlightened but dirty sons of bitches, I would like to use my "Enlightened but Dirty Sons of Bitches Stick"™, which is really just a chainsaw.

Anyway, something snapped in me today... instead of just deleting the offending message and sending it into the digital netherworld, I wrote a reply. I think I did this because I am just TOTALLY FRACKIN' (thx BSG!!) SICK of the ignorance and laziness out there on the Internet. This general sloth and lack of thinking is part of the reason why you (and I) get hundreds of spam messages (yes I know about spam filters and all that but that's just not a final solution). It is this same ignorance to why I get called all hours of the day, sometimes spend hours on the phone, and sometimes have to drive across the city and spend a few hours at a family member's house, to have to run 3 separate anti-spyware programs on their computers. It is the reason why companies spend tens of thousands of dollars and sometimes lose hundreds of man hours. Here is my reply in it's entirety. Just my real name has been edited out and replaced with a one you readers are more familiar with.
(edit: Sorry if the above paragraphs sounded very angry, but it was at the end of a long day and I was tired. I know that some people have the best of intentions when they send out those emails. But as a guy who does free tech support constantly for family and friends, these types of emails really raise my ire.)


Hi, my name is SunriseSeeker and I have grabbed all of your email addresses as people who have proliferated this email. It was super easy for me to grab your email addresses. Now imagine I was someone who harvested email addresses for malevolent reasons. Thanks to you, I now have close to a hundred email addresses. If I have saved each one of these types of fake emails and other chain letters I have received over the years, I would have literally hundreds of thousands of email addresses. Now you may be thinking to yourself, but I only send these types of emails to people I know, I trust them. That's not the point. There are at least 3 reasons why emails like this are sent out.

1. To create so much email traffic so that it can literally cause network and email server crashes. You may think you're only sending this email to 15 of your friends, but if your 15 friends send to 15 of their friends, and each of those 15 send to 15 more, I'm sure we've all done enough math in school to get the picture. And yes, there have been cases in history where some Internet Server Providers have crashed due to an overload.


2. People who hate Microsoft and want to flood their systems with phone calls and inquisitory emails asking about this email.


3. As mentioned above, there are people who harvest email addresses for spam, unsolicited email, and other malevolent uses are just WAITING to get their hands on these emails one way or another. Trust me, although you are only sending this email to your friends, the "bad guys" have their ways of getting their hands on these emails. Not only are there email addresses in these emails, but I also see addresses and phone numbers of companies. Now, some of you in larger companies may not know how much it costs your IT department to fight spam and other forms of unnecessary network traffic, but trust me, it's ALOT of money being spent and I know that every penny spent fighting spam is a penny not being added to your paycheque.

So please, STOP sending chain letters, and other hoaxes like this. You may think you're doing your friends a favour by letting them in an "opportunity" like this, but after the invasion of privacy I just demonstrated to you, are you REALLY doing them a favour?

Just remember the old adage, if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

If you're not sure if something you receive is a hoax, remember, Google is your best friend! A quick 20 second search of Microsoft Email Hoax brought up a plethora of results. Here were the top 3.

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/ms-money-giveway-hoax.html
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/microsoft-aol.asp
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/03/microsoft_hoax.html

You may ask why I am taking my time to type out this long email when it would have been so much easier to just ignore it. Sure, I could have stuck my head in the sand, hit the delete key and went on my merry little way. But how am I protecting myself and my friends by not trying to stop this from happening? So as tiny as my single voice is, I am trying to get the word out. BUT, if each of you who receives this email just deletes the next hoax you get, instead of sending it out, you could have saved thousands upon thousands of spam messages sent your friends inboxes, or sent to other people's inboxes using you or your friends email address as the sender. Better yet, if you send this email out to the people who send you the hoax emails, maybe we can start fighting back against the spammers?! Let's combine our voices and let's make a difference! If you're too lazy to do that, then at least don't spread the spam messages. Please, on your friends behalfs, just delete them.

Thanks for taking the time and reading ths email all the way through, I, and I am sure your friends who will be saved from spammers, thank you.

Please excuse any spelling or grammatical errors, it's late here and I am off to bed.

It felt kinda good actually, to have some hope that I might actually make a difference against this ongoing and mountainous war against spam. Hopefully I have just armed a few more soldiers to help me in my fight.

"If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem." - Unknown