Ugh, i thought – i do not want to go to work today!!

But went, i did. And now, i am sitting outside of the Willamette Noodle Company, one of my favorite places to eat (despite maybe the service not being ALL that great) and sitting outside enjoying this weather.

Everyone says that Oregon has the most beautiful weather during the summer. So far, this is my first experience with it and I have to say, they are right. Now, hopefully it lasts more than a day or so!

Adam more or less said that unless a situation can either 1) make you happy or 2) make you money you should shut the fuck up about it. I know, it doesn’t make sense out of context like this, but essentially, people tend to get really argumentative or passionate about things which don’t really benefit them.

Take for example my latest distaste, that being for Google and the Droid mobile phone operating system. Now, arguing with friends about whether or not the iPhone is better than some other phone device doesn’t make me happy, nor does it make me money. Therefore, i should not bother to do it. There are alot of scenarios like this. Facebook vs Twitter. Kobe Bryant vs LeBron James. PCs and Macs. World of Warcraft and any other video game.  Obama vs tea party. All things i like to comment on, but none of which benefit me in any measurable way.

I’ll just take my iPad, iPhone, Mac, Facebook fetish and keep them to myself. You can like what you like, and i’ll like what i like. It doesn’t mean i’m less of a fan, but i guess what Adam would say is that convincing you to change your mind or adopting a different position, unless it somehow fills me with joy (or cash) is pointless.

I think that there should be a new law passed that simply states that there can only be one vampire show on television at a time. If you like, that law can be amended to state that as long as True Blood is on (and as long as it is good and doesn’t turn into some crappy shadow of itself) that no other vampire are allowed over the airwaves.

You can’t take a leak without hitting a new vampire show these days. That, or movies. There should already be some sort of law against any additional Twilight movies.

Know what makes True Blood great? Blood, gore and sex. That is exactly what makes Twilight lame. There is none of that. And truthfully, that is what is going to make The Gates, a new series on ABC lame. You just can’t be faithful to the vampire m.o. on network television and/or a PG rating.

Back when I worked at TCCWCBN (The Career College Which Can’t Be Named) we spent about 300k a month on Google Adwords. Back then, that was more than almost every online retailer was spending with Google. We’re talking like, 8 years ago, when Google Adwords wasn’t very well known, before Google went public, back when Gmail wasn’t even a glimmer in some dork engineers eye.

And Google was cool back then. They were very focused on helping their clients achieve great results. They made engineers available to talk to clients, and had my team up to visit the ‘Googleplex’ in Mountain View a total of 5 times. I remember being picked up in a limo from the airport in San Jose for christs sakes.

Then things changed. First, management teams on our accounts lasted a year or less and then were out. Either those folks quit Google, or they got moved around someplace else even despite our request to keep our client team intact. The support got more shoddy, even though our spend never went down.

That is roughly around the time i stopped being in love with Google. The attention they gave us was definitely nice, but then their product started to fall into decline.

When you look at Google now, its easy to see that ‘search’ isn’t at the forefront of their company any longer. Google phones? Google TV’s? Google operating systems and browsers? Google’s version of WebMD?

I find it particularly despicable (and evil) that Google had a seat on Apple’s board, then backstabbed Apple, took their ideas, and are now competing with Apple. It is one thing, of course, to decide that hey, we are going to do our own thing. Its another to set up a conference in which you go out there, literally copy everything Apple has been working on for the past 5 or 6 years (phones, browsers, tablet, television) then proceed to slam the same people you’re copying.

I don’t give a shit about Google. Yeah, they drive a lot of traffic to web sites and yes, Adwords is the easiest way to buy your way onto search results. As for their products beyond search? They mostly suck ass. Gmaps and Gmail are good, but simple, applications. I can’t think of anything else that Google does that has been very successful. They can’t take credit for YouTube as it was always successful. Google Wave was a complete piece of shit. No one uses Google Talk. Their social networking projects are abortions. Google apps are second rate. Android is complete trash compared to the iPhone OS. Google TV? It is a Apple TV retread. Who is going to sit on their couch with a keyboard and “search” for shows. TV is difficult? Are you fucking retarded, TV is the easiest its ever been to use.

Fuck Google. Seriously. This is enough to make me want to use Bing.

I don’t remember there being a time when there was so much hate out there. Even I have to admit, i really do hate right-wing ideology. Despise. I was just looking at the morons who were commenting on the White House’s official Facebook page.

The President is a domestic threat to the country. He has caused more job losses. What?

Everything to destroy jobs. Of course.

This genius went to a mexican restaurant to apply for a dishwasher job and was told no cause he couldn’t speak spanish. Yes, he also lived in Arizona. Well, that might be the only believable comment in this whole bunch. Still makes him a moron, though.

I am not so much going to break down our jobs situation for the countless idiots out there who blame Obama for them (even when he came into office under pre-existing depression-like economic conditions) as much as i like to read my own thoughts after the fact. I know it makes no difference  to either people who agree or disagree (once a teabagger, always a teabagger).

Our economy sucks mostly due to two things – the housing market shitting the bed (because under regulated banks offered up loans to people who had no business taking them) and two simultaneous wars that we aren’t winning and that are taking all of our available funds and flushing them down the toilet. Unfortunately there isn’t much that can be done about either of those situations now after the fact. Republicans are standing in the way of financial reform (makes sense for them, i mean, if we can’t fix the problem then we can blame Obama for it later) and of course, the war isn’t going away anytime soon, as pointless as it is.

So we are destined to have another contentious election coming up. Whoever is elected will be reviled by roughly half of the country, and will not be able to make any progress to solving these problems. You can surely bet that when a Republican is voted into office, the calls for their removal will begin the day after they take office. Its just the way it is. Politics has turned into a sport where there are winners and losers. If your ‘team’ doesn’t get voted in, then you are going to stand up and boo and wish ill on whoever is in there. Remember all the religious folks praying for Obama’s death? I foresee that happening again, with whoever is unlucky enough to be elected.

So, i am going to go back to my hypercritical writing style.

Where to start?

There are tons of issues in the news lately to write about so this should be easy:

Arizona – basically, the state sucks. I am glad I don’t live there any longer. The only two things that have stuck with me since leaving are 1) the fact I developed allergies that persist even to this day after moving there and 2) the fact I still have a house there that is being rented out.

Nowadays, I am actually embarrassed to tell people I lived in Arizona due to their stand on immigrants. Notice I didn’t say “immigration” or “illegal immigration.” People can say what they want, but there are a lot of racists in Arizona. I always heard people talking about mexicans and/or hispanics in derogatory tones. These are a people that have come to our country to work – whatever their motivations for doing that may be. It is wrong to stop people in the street and ask to see proof of their citizenship just because they are hispanic. We aren’t doing that for arabs, why do it for hispanics?

Adobe – You guys make second rate stuff. Seriously. If Apple doesn’t want to run your crappy software on top of their phone operating system thats their prerogative. Flash is garbage, there I said it. Make something good and then I am sure Apple will let you play in their sand box.

Gizmodo – hack bloggers – notice I didn’t say “journalists.” You guys paid for a stolen phone and risked legal action all so you could juice your traffic for a few days and sell more banner ad impressions. Hope that was worth it! Its an insult to real journalists that you are trying to hide behind a law designed to shield actual professionals. The public doesn’t have a right to know what secret R&D Apple is doing. Go to hell Jason Chen – or, rather, go to prison.

My lack of an iPad - It is patently absurd that I don’t have one yet.

Today we did some yard work. It was one of the first days in recent memory that didn’t rain, so it made for a great opportunity to get outside and tidy things up a bit. That included weeding, going on ‘poop patrol’ and firing up our garage sale acquired weed eater.

One other thing we have learned? “As-is” appliances left behind is code word for “this shit is going to break on you.” We had a washer and dryer which have more or less fallen apart after maybe a dozen uses and now have to find a new one. Kind of a bummer.

Observations:

Love the neighborhood and the back yard, especially. We live right on a small creek (Glenn Creek to be precise) so walking around in the back yard is kind of like being in the deep woods. We have some big trees, some uneven elevation to make the yard a little more interesting, and of course, the creek which makes a great little ambient noise throughout the day and night.

Love the floor plan of the house. It is more in the 70′s style, but we have a nice kitchen and open view of what we call ‘the green room’ which may end up being our office. It has a fire place which is cool and a perfect place to hang a flat screen television, but its a little small to put our full couch which is why the green room may become an office instead.

The room (red room) which could be a candidate for our living room has a nice big window looking into the yard, with a comfortable window seat. It has more room for the couch, but might be a lesser entertainment room due to the fact the window lets in so much light.

Our bedroom is on the small side, along with both bathrooms. We may end up just splitting these and each of us taking a bathroom (which truth be told is just fine for me!)

Some of the negatives? The oven is really small. I’d be surprised if it could even fit a small turkey, but it is new and modern which is nice I guess. The kitchen floor seems to be at a slight slope so our fridge looks like it is leaning. The cabinets are spacious but they are old. The water pressure to the sink in the kitchen is almost non existent. Finally, our bedroom is painted pink

When I arrived at the house, there was quite simply a staggering amount of work left to be done. My wife had done a lot, including renting our house and coordinating all the movers while working a full time job. However, there was a ton of cleaning to do and besides the major furniture being missing, there was pretty much all of the smaller items to pack and things to trash. Since we were moving into a house that was roughly half the size of our previous, there was just a lot to get rid of.

I personally made 4 car-full trips to Goodwill and 5 “after midnight” runs to nearby apartment complex dumpsters to discard of old mail, refrigerator items and miscellaneous crap.

That first night, i think the two of us slept a combined 3 hours. In all, we did about 20 hours of work in the house cleaning it up over a full day. To put that in perspective – we spent as much time cleaning in 1 day as it took for us to drive from Phoenix to Salem in 3 days (20 hours).

Once we got on the road things got a little easier. We weren’t running around cleaning things, but we were stuck inside a confined space for 3 days with 2 dogs and probably a fourth of our belongings. The drive from Phoenix to Salem took us across the state of Arizona, through Palm Springs and onto Los Angeles, then north through Bakersfield, Sacramento and Redding into southern Oregon, crossing Medford, Ashland, Eugene and finally Salem. 20 hours and 1000 miles later, we pulled up to our new rental house and immediately unloaded the car as we had about 2 hours to return our rental car.

Right now we are ALL relaxing (our dogs curled up on the floor next to us as we lay down in the only real furniture in the house, a window seat in the living room). The days ahead will still be busy, but less stressed as we can now move in at our own pace.

It feels good to rest.

I’d imagine it is going to be weird on a number of different levels:

1. I haven’t seen my house in about 2 months
2. I haven’t seen my dogs in about 2 months
3. I haven’t seen my friends in about 2 months

House wise, i’d expect the place to be in the same condition as we moved into it – totally empty. This was out first home, and I guess technically it still is until we sell it. It will be different to see it stripped of everything. It will also be weird to walk through it with the new family which will be occupying it for the next year. Someone else is going to be calling “The Monster” home.

My little boys… Well, i hope they remember me. I know they will, but wouldn’t it be fucked up if i walked in and they started angrily barking at me? I’d be heartbroken. My plan is to immediately fall to the ground and let them maul me though. That should be nice. It is a little bitter sweet, because i took their sister with me when I left and now she is gone.

My friends! They will be picking me up at the airport and taking me to lunch. That should be a lot of fun, and while I haven’t changed that much (gained about 10 lbs) it will still be a little weird to see them again. I feel guilty leaving them behind, but for the most part talk to them everyday.