The Animal ...

The Animal is small. He's pretty set in his ways. If you get near him while he has a toy in his mouth, he growls. If you're under 5 ft tall, he growls. If you're African American, he growls.

He also doesn't like to play with other dogs. There's only about 4 dogs he's ever played with. That's just how he is. He's all talk. He just wants people and animals to respect his space. He never bites or attacks.

Enter Woman's Dog. Doesn't listen to commands ... sweet, but rather boring. About 3-4 times Animal's size. Constantly steals toys from the Animal. If we're playing fetch, she steals the ball and never brings it back. I don't mind playing with her, I like it ... but I'd like it MORE if she'd bring the ball back.

The animal learned real quick that if you don't bring the toy back, the Dude won't go fucking fetch it for you. Game Over.

In any event. Last night Woman's Dog wanted to play with the Animal. She was pouncing around. He didn't want to play with her, so he growled at her. At this point she goes fucking apeshit and attacks him. This is the 4th time this has happened. Last time, his ear bled 'cause she nipped it!

Last night I freaked out though. He was crying and limped off a few feet until I got him. I pet all over his head, to make sure he's ok. And there was blood all over my hand. I started freaking out. If I lost him, I'd rip Woman's Dog's heart out with my bare hands. I'm not kidding.

I took him to the kitchen to get him away and check him out. Thankfully it was just that she bit his ear and it was bleeding. But for a little guy like the Animal, it was so much blood. It stopped after a minute. At which point it was all over the kitchen floor. There was even blood spatter on the dishwasher. It was a pretty scary scene for a dog-parent.

The Woman surprised me. She mentioned giving the dog to a family member. Now, while I wouldn't EVER do this with the Animal ... it really did make sense. I don't like to feel like I'm forcing someone to be a certain way ... but it really would make it safer. I can't leave the Animal with Woman's Dog alone ... for fear of what might happen.

If anything ever happened to the Anima l... I don't know what I'd do with myself.

-Dude

When I'm done

When I'm done with my current project. I'm going to demand a huge fucking raise. Not ask for, demand. If they can't pay it ... I'm leaving like ASAP. I can't deal with this anymore.

My coworkers just don't have the expertise or know-how that is required to do what we are supposed to. I can't be everything ... but my resume is going to look fantastic:

Not-so-good mentor for programming staff (1)
Design Architect
C# Programmer
Solution Installer
Process Analyzer
Bug Fixer
FrontPage Admin
FTP Admin
DBA
IIS Admin
DNS Admin
Server Admin
Email Admin
Patch Installer
Report Runner
Seminar Moderator
Support Representative

Hindsight is 20/20

My best friend and I are always trying to think of ways to work for ourselves. We're still working on it.

We lived together our freshman year of College in 1998. I had just bought a $4,000 kickass Dell. This baby was state of the art sweetness: 400mhz Pentium II processor; 128mb 100mhz ram; 10 gig hard drive; 16mb video card. This puppy was the fucking KING! Toss in a 17" monitor and boy oh boy, I was unstoppable!

Anyways. High speed was something that people didn't have in their homes back then. Home networking was almost unheard of. My best friend and I were talking about starting a business renting network cards to college kids.

That way they could get one only while they needed it, and we could install it for them and make some $ doing the installations too, since people didn't know how to install hardware (most of them still don't). We drew up a business plan and did projected estimates. The first year our overhead was buying network cards. After that the money was a gravy train.

Thankfully we didn't have disposable startup money (See POOR COLLEGE KIDS). We probably would have made decent beer bucks for a couple years, but then the market surely would have dried up.

-Dude

Michael Dell Can SUCK IT

Disclaimer: This shouldn't be considered in a racist or anti-foreigner tone ...

Some history about Michael Dell.

He's a model for American Entrepreneurship. Started with next to nothing, and through hard work was able to establish what it is today.

By 2009 over 20,000 Dell employees will be located in India.

Is it just greed? Money greed that makes someone built on free enterprise put as many jobs as one can overseas?

I can't help but have a bad taste in my mouth over this. Am I wrong?

-Dude

Let the bodies hit the floor

8am Sunday. I probably ate too close to the ride, but I can handle it; no problem.

Roadies usually leave on the dot. There were about 30 people at the meeting spot, which is HUGE for a Sunday group ride. We left a few minutes behind schedule.

Sweet day for a ride. Started out about 65-70 degrees. Crusin' along ... around mile 15 ... a few guys break out to lead an early attack for a stop sign sprint ...

It was right after my pull ... so I was just behind them as they slingshot by ... they always plan this and it gets on my nerves; team tactics ... but whatever ... I like riding.

Suddenly I hear *chink* ... *ooooomph* ... then you hear just metal and bodies hitting the ground. I turn around and see EVERYONE except for like 5 people behind me go down hard. I was crusing about 25mph, so the people behind me were likely in the 20-25mph range.

One guy was out cold. All fucked up, really labored breathing ... sounded like something was in his airway. I'm convinced he has a cracked rib ... or something ... after like a minute, this guys breathing slows down 1/2 speed ... he's still unconscious ... I'm convinced his chest is filling with blood, and we're gonna lose him ...

Few minutes later he comes to. Doesn't remember much, helmet is shattered. Meanwhile everyone else has picked up. A lot of scrapes and cuts, 1 broken wrist, and another guy coughing up blood.

After everything was cleared up, we had 2 ambulances, 2 sheriffs, a volunteer fireman and a fire truck. Three people were taken by ambulance to the hospital, all on back boards.

It was pretty surreal. And it all happened in the blink of an eye.

I'm very lucky to not have been involved. And as a group, we are very lucky that everyone will pull through.

-Dude