MSM is porked!!!

Swine Flu!!! Swine Flu!!! Swine Flu!!!
PANIC!!! PANIC!!! PANIC!!!


Does this sound like SARS? or Shark Attack Summer of 2001? or West Nile Virus? or Bird Flu?

So, here are the stats:

• Twenty-six people have died of Swine Flu! TWENTY SIX!!!
• Over nine months, SARS killed 775 people in the whole world.
• Over the summer of 2001, 5 people died from unprovoked shark attacks around the US.
• West Nile Virus killed 124 people in the US in 2007.
• 248 people have died from Bird Flu...in the world...ever.
  

It is horrible that these people are dying, certainly...but the amount of crap in the news about these horrible pandemics is really just silly.

Did you know:

• 36,000 people die each year in the United States from the simple flu.
• 39,800 peopled died in car crashes in the US last year. This was the least number of deaths (as a percentage of population) since the 1920s.
• 6,790,062,216 people live on this planet right now. So, the chances of you dying from Swine Flu is approximaitely 1 in 261,156,239. You are more likely to die from being struck by lightning...indoors.
  

Seriously...stop listening to the idiots on CNN and FOX and television and get on with your lives.

...updated...

Weight Loss Update

Lost 0.6 pounds this week.
Lost 1.0 pounds last week.
I currently weigh 191.8 pounds.

Not getting as much exercising in as I had hoped for. Lame excuses like interviews and networking sessions have interfered. I will have a better plan for this next week and in the weeks to follow. Jamie convinced me to sign up for the BikeMS: Tour de Farms 2009, a 2-day, 150-mile bike ride to support the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. So, I have until June 12-14 to prepare for a 75-mile bike ride followed by another 75-mile bike ride the next day. I have NEVER ridden 75 miles on one day in my life...so, I need to get preparing for this.

Life is really good these days...more details to follow...

Be well.

In one ear...

A couple of days ago, I got an ear infection in my left ear. There is nothing particularly unusual about that. I get them every once in a while...there is a little pain, the pain goes away...and we are done.

So, the infection was progressing as usual...I have the ear pain for a day, and then the pain vanishes.

But, this time, after the pain disappears, something weird starts to happen. All the high-pitched noises that I am hearing are accompanied by an echo, about half-a-second later, in my left ear.

I first noticed it with the cats. When Oreo is screaming for his dinner, he is singing in a chorus, like those famous Buddhist Throat Singers, but with even less appeal.

Then, I noticed that when DS was asking for his Cheerios cereal in the morning, he seems to be asking for it twice.

Then, the worst started to happen. I started to hear music with the extra added echo....and what is worse, the echo is about 1/2 a tone lower than the original music, so all music sounds cacophonous, like the famous Share and Enjoy jingle from the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division.

Okay, now it is time to see the doctor.

So, I went to see my doctor today. Basically, he told me to "suck it up". The infection is gone and my ears will clear up shortly. He gave me some nose-spray and told me that the echo would be a round for a couple of days...or weeks...or months. It was nothing to worry about.

Well, I am happy that it is nothing to worry about, but I miss listening to music in the car. I have no problems with headphones (the echo does not seem when I am listening to my iPod), but the music in the car is downright painful...well, not actually painful, but perfect tritone painful.

Best Benefit

So, one of the many amazing things about Sears was how extraordinarily bad its Benefits package is/was.

As I said, I started with Sears right after Amy and I got married and so we compared our benefits, what we could get with Sears versus what we could get through OfficeMax. In EVERY case, the OMX benefits were better: Medical, Dental, Eyeware, Life Insurance. Everything. And it wasn't just that OMX's bennies are so good...it was really about how bad the Sears benefits were/are.

So, I tell you that I went to my orientation meeting with the outplacement firm that Sears had provided to the laid-off workers with some trepidation. Gee, if Sears is giving us this "Benefit", it must really suck.

Based on my experience today, I was completely wrong.

Sears provided us with 3 months of outplacement service with Lee Hecht Harrison. When I told Amy about this service, she was impressed. "These guys are big in the outplacement world." But, it was Sears, so I had my doubts.

But today was a wonderful experience. It was a 2 hour orientation meeting. The director of the office presented us with everything that LHH's offers (and everything that they don't). He was straight with us about the job market and about what we were going to need to do to find ourselves new jobs. He presented a roadmap for how to get things done, scheduled us into resume workshops, interview workshops, and 1-on-1 meetings with our consultants.

I came away from the meeting feeling pretty good...heck, I came away from it feeling better than I felt coming away from my Sears Orientation.

So, as it turns out, the Best Benefit you can get from Sears is the Benefit they give you when they lay you off.

Who would have guessed?

What a pleasant surprise

I am back...

So, where have I been, you ask?

This has been a very complicated year for me.

Last October, I got married to my lovely wife Amy. We have a fantastic son, who we will call DS (Dear Son) until he tells me that he is comfortable broadcasting his name to the world.

In preparation for the marriage, I decided to look for a new job. I have been a technology consultant for most of my adult life, traveling around the country (heck, around the world) to do my job....and as a single guy, it was pretty okay. But, it is not the life for a married guy and it is definitely not the life for a father of a six-year-old. So, I decided to look for a job in industry, something nearby, something stable, something where I could be home every night and every weekend with my family.

I got an offer at Sears to be a "Delivery Manager" in their e-Commerce group, to manage the delivery of a PIM application for Sears' merchants and Sears' vendors. Heck, what could be more stable than Sears? What could be more "establishment" than Sears? I took the job, and I started the Monday after I got back from our Honeymoon.

The job sucked up my life...completely. I carried a Blackberry, that I could not put down for fear of missing an important email at 11pm or at 5am. I might get scheduled into a meeting at 10am on a Saturday morning...or 8pm on Sunday night. It was worse than the worst consulting gig, because, when you are a consultant, you know that the gig will eventually end and you will be moved onto another project, possibly with a more reasonable client. But when you ARE the unreasonable client, there is no end in sight...ever....

Well, except when they lay you off on the day before your birthday.

So, I am jobless now. And while I cannot say that I am happy about being without a job, I can say that I am happy about being without that job.

I have put on 24 pounds in the last year. I attribute all of that gain to stress eating related to the job.

So, I am back...back with my family...back with Weight Watchers...back with a sense of who I am and what I want.

The job hunt is in progress and seems good so far...(said while knocking on wood). I will let you all know how it goes.

The weight-loss is in progress and also seems good so far...(said while knocking on something low-fat and high-fiber...perhaps wood). I will keep you updated on that as well.

Be well...I know I am going to be.

VOTE!!!!

Find out where you should vote here.

Who you should vote for here. (Hint: Obama)

But, any way you want to vote, make sure you get out and do it....

VOTE!!!

Republicans are so funny...

...but only in hindsight.

Oh, and this non-girly-man might need 7 billion dollars for his state from the Federal Government...now that is faith in free enterprise...