The knife I’ve had for quite a few years know and have been extremely happy with; aside from it being dull recently, was a Smith & Wesson Special Ops (something lol). The blade is 3.875″ (3 7/8″), tanto tip, plain edge and black coated. Fantastic knife, has been treated well and treated me well for many years of camping and every day use. Most, if not all of you who have seen me in the last 7+ years have seen me use it, I loved that knife.

Why you may ask do I need a new knife if the one I have works fantastically? Work only allows blade lengths up to 3″ and unfortunately 3 7/8″ is greater than 3″. =p There are of course, two or three solutions to this problem, the most obvious being to leave my knife at home when I go to work and only carry it when I’m not there. Next being to just stop carrying a knife at all. One big problem exists with both of these scenarios … I won’t have a knife on me at work for every day things (opening boxes, packages, food containers, etc.). So! Only one solution exists; buy another knife! =D I’ve held and used a few Benchmade knives in my life and from everything I’ve seen they make an awesome product, so it’s off to their website to find something under 3″.

Ended up buying a Benchmade 858 Mini-Barrage, sweet looking little knife. 2.91″ blade, mini-drop point, plain edge and unfortunately no black coating. Yes, I could have had the black if I purchased a combo edge (front half plain, back half serrated) however I have never been a fan of combo edges. My blade got here today and I had to force myself to put it down so I would come on here and write this. Hoping I’m going to be as happy with this blade, or happier, than I was with my last one. Lastly, have a sexy big picture of the 585 Mini-Barrage and possibly my next knife, the 580 Barrage.

Found this online today; it was awesome, and pretty accurate so figured I would post it here for everyone to look at and hopefully understand.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten
comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like
this.

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the
arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the
cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected.

They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men? The
paying customers?

How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair
share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that
from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end
up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill
by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each
should pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings)
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ( 22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to
drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare
their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a Dollar, too.
It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”

“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I
got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get
anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down
and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they
discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of
them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, this is how
our tax system works.

The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax
reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show
up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat
friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia

Why do songs always remind me of people? $5 to whoever can tell me the name of the person this song reminds me of right now. (:

If this is nothing
If this is everything there is, inside this moment
I would not as for more than this
To dream by what i see through
to make believe i need you
and if tomorrow comes too soon
we will not speak of it today

chorus:
somewhere stars are falling
so close your eyes and make a wish
and when time forgets us
i will sill remember
this

if there is someplace
if there is anyplace to go, beyond perfection
i can’t pretend i want to know
how we could leave ourselves behind
how it could feel to say goodbye
when it’s enough to be here now
to sit with you and watch the sky

(chorus)

to dream by what i see though
to make believe i need you
and if tomorrow comes too soon
we will not speak of it today

(chorus)

Natasha’s Ghost – This

Though airplanes and airports, not so much. I had the pleasure of attending my cousin Caryn’s wedding this last weekend; it was fantastic! Everyone did an amazing job putting it together and I’m glad I was off work and could attend. Thinking that the next wedding I attend with either be mine or I’m going to have to learn to be a preacher because sitting in the audience at every wedding couldn’t be nearly as fun as standing up where everyone is looking at you. (: This is the third wedding I’ve been to, that I can remember, and put together between all three of them I’ve finally had a piece of wedding cake. =D It would be the strangest piece of cake ever created if you were to put all of the pieces and bites together haha.

The flight out to Colorado from El Paso, TX was mostly uneventful; aside from my “driver’s license extension” not being a valid form of ID in Phoenix, AZ. On the way back, I think they were about to give me pilot’s wings because I spent nearly the entire day on an airplane. First the flight from Denver, CO to Salt Lake City, UT … wasn’t so bad of a flight but it was late by a couple hours. After taxiing all the way to the runway they changed our flight plan to add another ~500 miles because of the weather; what’s awesome about that? we didn’t have the fuel to make the flight now, so it’s back to the gate for more fuel. Took an hour to get back to the gate and refueled. ><

Landing in Salt Lake City, UT two hours late caused me to miss the flight from Salt Lake City to El Paso. No big deal, I'll catch the next one ... not quite. There are no more flights to El Paso that day. ): End up on a flight to Dallas/Fort Worth after sitting in Salt Lake City for a hour and a half. Sweet! I love seeing more of Texas (lol ><). From Dallas/Fort Worth at least I have a flight to El Paso; but there's more waiting, and changing gates three times, and the plane going out of service ... so finally the plane leaves at 10:45 pm or so and we land in El Paso at 11:45. I'm almost home! 8 hours after I should have been. Oh, and at every airport I went to, besides El Paso, to get from one terminal to the other (each flight was a separate airline) I had to go through security. Must be pretty good at emptying my pockets and taking off my belt by now .

Had to edit this to add, I think my favourite part of the wedding ... besides the fact that it was a wedding between my cousin and her new husband =p has to have been the slide show. Guess I should have told the person that made it while I was there .....

Work does amazing things to a blog; especially when writing on it isn’t your job. Lots of interesting things have been happening (sort of) and life is moving along wonderfully (almost). Finally got my whiteboard up this last week, only been meaning to do that since the day after my parents headed back to Virginia and my bed arrived so I’m no longer sleeping on a fold out couch. However, the TV and Bluray player are still on the coffee table which is next to the end table they belong on. Almost there!

The actual work that I get paid for is going well, I’ve read a lot and learned even more; this week I am going to start the online training courses. Wish they had set those up for me earlier but it’s probably for the best they didn’t. After looking over the list of stuff they want me to take it should only take most of a week to do … the ones I want to take after that will use up about a month and a half of full time work. Quite a few of the CCENT courses are on there and I would love to take those and finish the track all the way from CCENT to CCNA Security to CCSP and finally to CCIE Security. On top of that all of the Solaris System Admin courses and Oracle DBA courses. Not sure if my brain can learn that much, there could be headaches involved.

Little bit of bad news for these last few weeks. Went out to a celebration party thing at “The Game Sports Bar and Grill”, that’s not the bad news … maybe for someone it is, shows that I’m not a hermit and I am human. :p However, it was decided after the evening was over that I had too much to drink and should leave the car there and get a ride home. I didn’t agree but went along with it, better safe than wrecking my car right? Well, almost. Someone managed to back into the front end of the car while it was in the lot overnight. Not much damage but it looks like it’s going to be around $1000. I’ll be happier when it’s fixed, poor car.

Think that’s about all that’s happened this week, except I never went back to the apartment complex office to talk to that lady; keep telling myself I will, never do. xD OH! and it’s good I get paid at the end of the month as well as the middle because I spent my paycheck from the middle of the month on ammo. :p Shooting range here I come!

Almost forgot the whole reason I was making this post, wouldn’t that have been more embarrassing than the things I say whenever I talk to the office staff here. :p In a few months when I’ve managed to repair the car and save up some money in the event that something else bad happens I’m looking to get my CCL (concealed carry license) but to do that you need a firearm. No, I can’t conceal my AR-15, but in the awesome state of New Mexico I “could” open carry it. Right now the choice is between two pistols, both from CZ (or Ceska Zbrojovka if you feel like trying to pronounce it) the CZ 97BD and the CZ 75D Compact. I’ll add the CZ 75 SP-01 because the integrated rail is nice. The CZ 97BD and the CZ 75 SP-01 are both full sized while the CZ 75D is a compact, might be better to conceal, who knows … I’m tall enough that if I put on a little weight (lol) concealing a full frame may not be as hard as I think.

Guess I’m off to procrastinate more, maybe I should read this DWI course book so I can actually get my drivers license, only has to be done in the next month. >.>

Maybe it’s just me but every time I see her on the January 2009 cover of GQ I quickly navigate away from whatever web page I’m on. Sorry to everyone who likes this picture but I just think it’s one of the worst pictures I’ve seen on the cover of GQ. The pose is weird and the lighting is imo, downright awful. The other picture of her on the cover of GQ in January 2005(?) is much better.

I wish someone had told me work was this awesome before now; I might have been a productive citizen earlier. It took me a whole week but now I understand REGEX, perl and I have a tic-tac-toe game to play instead of working. Haven’t really found anyone that will go out and do things with me; though my boss likes shooting and photography so he and I might go to the range sometime … when I have money for more bullets. Been trying to decide if I should get a suppressor for my rifle or a handgun, anyone have a clue as to which I should get? Going to end up with a handgun / suppressor and a suppressor for my rifle anyways; it’s just the order that matters. OH! and the most important thing … i have fruit loops and cocoa krispies.

Being here is much more fun and awesome than I could have imagined; even though I’ve been here for over a week and still haven’t unpacked the last couple boxes. Some of the days are a little hot but after watching the sunset and feeling the cool night air the days themselves aren’t so bad. Aside from a couple boxes and being too lazy to get my new driver’s license I seem to be all settled in…minus the bed which is on order. Only thing I miss is having people around. Maybe that will fix itself in short time.

After much packing … which was after much procrastinating; I finally managed to pack up everything and will be driving to New Mexico starting tomorrow. It should be fun, even though I’ll be without internet for a few days. Maybe I’ll have something constructive to post when I get the webs back … hopefully a review of the Wabi-Sabi book.

The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura is the first book I’ve reviewed since elementary school and with how much fun I had doing this review I fear it’s been too long since I did one. Hopefully I will continue to review the books I read and can manage to bring my vocabulary back up to where it should be. Enjoy.

The first time I heard of the book was in an article about perfectionism
and having a bit of a fight with perfectionism in my current web project
I thought it could be an interesting book. Upon the book arriving, my
first expectations were quickly put to rest as false; this book is not
full of information telling you what kind of tea leaves to buy, where to
buy them, what kind of tea to drink when. Instead a poetically versed
story describing the history and aesthetics of tea.

For a book with tea in the title a relatively small section is actually
devoted to the actual arts of creating the drink itself. “The Schools of
Tea” is a mere 19 pages long and yet it still tells the entire story
about the progression of preparing tea. I must admit while very
interesting this was probably my least favourite chapter, simply because
I have never had a desire to drink tea until recently. After reading
this book tea has become more than just another drink to pour into a
plastic cup, guzzle barbarically and refil the glass to repeat again. It
is something to be appreciated and enjoyed peacefully.

This is a book that while you may only read it once, every word is worth
reading. Even with no interest in tea, oriental culture or history the
chapters “Art Appreciation” and “Flowers” will open your eyes and give
you a new insight into the admiration and aesthetics of life.