Handling Life's disappointments

URL: Managing your Disappointments

Yes indeed, life is full of disappointments isn't it? I am 43 years old and even though I try not to compare myself to others around me I can not help but feel like somewhat of a failure. How said is that? I am my own largest disappointment. I know that other people have disappointed me on occasion. However, I have no control over what other people do other than the occasional opportunity to sway folks one way or the other with regards to decisions that affect your life. What I do have control over is decisions that I make and how I react to those things that happen to me. Life happens and not all of it is pretty you can rest assured of that. How we respond to what life throws at us defines who we are and how successful we are in being victorious in our endeavours. I guess that you could sum this up by saying that as I reflect on the past and where I am now I am disappointed in the fact that I am not in a better place or a better person. I wish that I could have applied 10% of the knowledge that I did have to my life and I would have been in a better place or a better person.
I suppose that all of us can find fault if we look hard enough. There is always someone smarter, cuter, healthier ,stronger, more popular than us. So, what do I do? I try to learn from my mistakes and look to the future to other opportunities to do the right thing and make the right choices. I have to give my disappointments over to God and ask him to forgive me for being such an oaf and to help me to overcome the consequences of my bad decisions in years gone by. I have to learn how to be content in HIM in the mean time. When I compare myself to you or the rest of the world it is easy to see what a miserable failure I am. However when I understand that God is not finished working on me I understand the true meaning of mercy and grace. In God's eyes I am not a failure. I am a workmanship that is in progress. God is my creator, molder and strength. I will chose to leave all of this in his capable hands.

Frustrated parents are us

I have two children who live with me and my wife. One daughter who is 12 turning 13 soon and one son who is 9 working on 10. I seriously doubt that either one of them are going to make it to the next year. LOL... KWIM??
No matter what I do or say my children have decided that they are going to do what they want. When they are confronted about this or that they lie about it. For instance, last night my wife and I come home from date night and I know that someone was sitting at my desk because the keyboard to the computer and the phone are all out of place. I asked them why they could not keep things in their place when sitting at my desk and they both begin to lie about not having been anywhere near my desk. I wanted to kill them both. Why are they lying about such a simple thing. I told them that I did not care about them using the computer because they both have been using it with our permission. However I do expect them to leave my area the way they found it and not messed up. I dont think that is an unreasonable expectation.
The other day Katy, my wife goes outside and calls the children. They are no where to be found. We start calling the neighbors and find out they are across the street in her house. We get the children back home and we tell them for the one millionth time that they are NOT supposed to go into someone's home without asking our permission and letting us know where they are going to be at all times. Our expectation is that we will know where they are at so that we can be aware of what is going on at all times. For whatever reasons our kids just do not seem to care what we say.
I have tried everything that I know to try to communicate to the children that obedience is expected. They know that they know that if they insist on lying to me or their mother that they will be punished. I know that I am not alone in these struggles. How do you deal with lying and outright disobedience? I told my wife the other day that I need to get a prescription for Prozac or something that will just keep me happy all the time and not care about what is going on anymore. It would be so much easier for me to be like a lot of parents that I see that just ignore what the kids are doing and let them just have a free reign in the home. However, I just can not tolerate their decision to just do what they want despite our having set up simple rules and expectations here in our home.
Our desire is that our children will grow up to be responsible, God fearing (respectful), obedient, productive members of society. I think that every parent desires this and that we are not alone. We ask our children to do chores around the home like most parents. One reason is so that they can learn responsibility and another is so that they can contribute some help to our family unit since we both work three jobs between the two of us. Why do we constantly have to stay on them to get them to do the simplest of tasks?

This is me hiding behind the new sound booth at the back of the church while the Pastors wife tells me something. We will be putting a covering over the outside of the booth this week so it will look better.  

Grace Fellowship Church Goose Creek SC, a picture of our new sanctuary.  

Those BLASTED FLYING TEETH 

Flying TEETH are BACK

It is apparent to me and several places on my hands and arms that the blasted "Flying TEETH" are back. Well, that is what I call the dreadful insects that are as tiny as a flea. Flying teeth that look as small as a flea but can fly. The following URL will give you a look at the "noseeums" that I am talking about here.
www.marsci.uga.edu/gsg/Noseeums.html


The blasted Flying Teeth are BACK. I discovered this FACT when I stood outside talking to my partner tonight and felt that irritating sting that accompanies the arrival of the BLASTED FLYING TEETH. I managed to make it back indoors where I am safe for the time being.

My friends, the FLYING TEETH are alive and well because the weather is no longer FREEZING and things are warming up a bit. I was just commenting to someone about how NICE it would be for things to warm up around here. Well, that is what I get for thinking folks. Bite marks and lots of em.

Today has been absolutely gorgeous outside today. It was around 70 degrees with very little humidity and the winds were not ripping through the state either. This would have been a PERFECT day to walk the dogs , take the family to the beach or just about anything you can think about. Of course, if you do think about doing this you NEED to remember the BLASTED FLYING TEETH. LOL... Just remember that Skin So Soft by Avon works wonders. Those little monsters HATE the smell of that stuff. I tell you what, you put that stuff on and you stink for a coons age but atleast the BLASTED FLYING TEETH leave you the heck alone. LOL My next door neighbor , Troy, aka: Paul Bunyon LOVES it when he and I are outside together. No, this has nothing to do with the fact that I might be excellent company or that I might be able to be of any help to him in his many "real man" adventures. He likes the fact that I am a walking insect attraction. I walk outside and the entire insect world thinks that a FREE chinese buffet on stilts has just entered their sector and they all converge on me at once. I can not tell you how many times I have FORGOTTEN about the BLASTED FLYING TEETH and the blood sucking mosquitos that SURROND my house and I will be talking to Troy (Paul Bunyon) and look down at my legs to see that they have turned into a vertical runway for the BLASTED flying teeth.

Today at church I found out that I had FORGOTTEN to ADD about 8 scriptures to the Song Show Plus program that I had built for projection. The pastor was reading off of the back screen and things were going along just fine when he says "Ok, I see that we just ran out of scriptures, let me go to my hand written notes while they work out the technical problems in the back." OOOPSIE... Imagine my surprise when I compare the SSP program scripture list with the MS Word document and found out that indeed there were several scripture left out. If you go to www.songshowplus.com This software allows me to project multimedia content to two digital screens on both ends of the sanctuary. One screen is for the viewing pleasure of our congregation and one is for the viewing pleasure of the pastor and praise team so that they can see information on the back wall of the church. Yes, you could say that I am in technogeek heaven back in the sound booth. Toys toys and lots of toys to play with. Wahooooo, my propeller is starting to rotate faster just thinking about this. LOL.

Song Show Plus allows you to create Slide Shows for announcements and you can also project songs, scripture, video and more. You can also import and use other application data such as MS Powerpoint etc. During our first service in which we used this new software I just created several different MS Powerpoint slides to project on the "Big Screen". As time has gone on I am getting more comfortable with the software and now I know how to use the slideshow creator to create the announcement slide shows etc. We are using Online Bible at www.onlinebible.org and the NRSV translation which our pastor likes to use when he is preaching.

Are you reading this ? LOL. Sitemeter delivers to me via email a status report of how many hits I get on my blog , when folks are reading, how many times per hour and how long they stay. The report in and of itself is pretty nifty because I know that I know that someone is peering at what I am babbling about. However I am noticing that folks are only reading for about a minutue or less and then they are moving on. That tells me that I am not keeping your interest. Hummmmm What to do and what to say now. What can I say other than I am who I am and what you see is what you get. I will try to be as interesting as possible, well as interesting as someone can be who lives in Duck Ditch USA and has FLYING TEETH to contend with.

Liquid Gold

There is something to be said to supply and demand folks. Good grief, how high ARE the gasoline prices going to go? Just the other day I WAS paying 1.72 for a gallon of gas and now it is ALMOST 2.00 per gallon for REGULAR unleaded. If you use medium octane or high octane you are paying OVER 2.00 per gallon for gasoline. Are we motivated to car share yet? What about taking the bus to work instead? Can we say telecommute? Our friends at OPEC are sitting in a very nice place. They hold their finger on the pulse of how much oil leaves the middle east and depending on how tightly they are holding on to the spigot depends on how fast our collective wallets empty out. I put 10.00 worth of gasoline in my car this morning and got a half of tank of gas. I paid 1.91 per gallon for unleaded gasoline. How sad is that people?

How about those HYBRID cars that are coming out now folks? Gasoline engines with electric power plants that suppliment the type of energy source that is available to the engine. Can we say 29+ miles to the gallon for a mid sized passenger vehicle? How many years did that take to happen? If you ask me it took way too long. When will planet earth run out of OIL? What will we do then? I think that it is high time that we spend some of our hard earned CASH on figuring out how to solve some of our social problems here in America and quit throwing it away on worthless endeavors. Yes, I think that it is cool that we can explore the galaxies and spend billions of dollars on computerized telescopes that can view planets that we have never dreamed existed but at what cost to humanity here on earth? Would those billions of dollars be better spent on figuring out how to feed, clothe and house the homeless people here in America or perhaps taking care of veterans of foreign wars perhaps?

Well, that is my rant for the day. If you feel the same way I do feel free to leave a comment. Heck , even if you disagree with me feel free to comment about that too. I certainly do not have all the answers but I do feel that WE collectively should do SOMETHING about this and that. If enough people make enough noise and vote with our resources (cash) then perhaps changes can be affected for the good of humanity.

Check out browster

Check out browster I installed it today and I love it. Instead of having to click on a link you run your mouse over the lightning bolt and it pops up a cached version of the web site so you can preview it. it keeps you from having to hit the back button on your web browser or having to close multiple windows all the time.

Go away old man winter

Dang, it is freaking cold here in the deep south. i am getting tired of this 32 degree weather. Someone needs to find that ground hog and ship him to Michigan or Alaska or somewhere that is stays cold. That way the silly ground hog can see his shadow all the time... LOL...

Ok, now that I have that out of my system i can continue. I have been busier than a one armed man in a paper hanging contest in a wind tunnel. Would someone PLEASE turn off that fan? LOL.... I am sitting here on the couch realizing that in 4 minutes CSI is coming on and it happens to be one of my favorite shows. At 10 pm ER comes on and Katy and I like to watch that as well. I hope that they are not reruns. LOL...

My oh my Katy's kitchen smells awfully good tonight. I can not wait to wrap my gums around the delicious goodies that are going to be coming out of there shortly. Yum Yum....

Ok, that is a wrap for now, i will blather in here more later.

American Family Assocation Online

American Family Assocation Onlinehttp://www.afa.net/hbobillmaher.asp

The above link will take you to the original article that was posted by Donald E Wildman who is the Chairman of the American Family Association. If you subscribe to their newsletter alerts they will make you aware of things that are happening all around us that have an impact on the family and the christ centered beliefs that we hold.

When I read Bill Maher's comments they REALLY got my blood to boiling. Does Bill REALLY think that just because we have FAITH in a higher power (Jesus Christ) that we are all a bunch of blithering idiots? LOL.... You have to love freedom of speech folks. Actually, the freedom of speech is a double edged sword in that it cuts both ways. I have to say that I watch Jay Leno late at night for the pure entertainment value. Some of you are probably raising an eye brow at that because as you know Jay Leno certainly says things and promotes things of the world that certainly do not support Christ centered family values. As a matter of fact Jay Leno thinks that sexual jokes and pornography are an important part of the American lifestyle.

Anyway, back to Bill Maher. I have seen Bill on Jay Leno's show on many occasions. I actually like Bill Maher's style in that he shoots straight from the hip and he does not mince words. He calls the shots as he sees them. There are several guests on the Jay Leno show that are the same way. Dr. Phil is one of those other guests that I like to listen to. Just because I like to listen to what these folks have to say does not mean that I agree or endorse everything. It is like the old saying that goes like this. Pick off the meat and throw the bones away. It is sort of like when you are reading books that are written by authors who have written books on religion. In other words you can go into your local Christian Bookstore and find books on subjects and by authors that do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of the main stream religions or denominations. If they are deemed or categorized as "religious" then you will probably find them in the bookstore. Does that mean that these books do not have anything of value just because they do not happen to reflect your specific theological viewpoint? Of course not, every author has something of value to say , you just may not agree with it at that time. I think that it is important to state here that our theological viewpoints may change from year to year as we are growing in maturity and understanding.

My hope is that millions of Christians will repsond to the comments Bill Maher stated and my hope and prayer is that they will respond with tact and grace. I hope and pray that we do not collectively come across like a pack of rabid dogs that have just had their tails stepped on. But rather I hope that we can share our faith without all of the religious dogma and christianese blather that we are guilty of babbling at people. I hope that people respect the person of Bill Maher while they are disagreeing with his viewpoints of who we are and why we believe in Jesus Christ. I also hope that Christians take the time to pray for Bill Maher , for his spiritual life, for his mind , for his soul. My prayer is that God would use the comments that are made through these e-mails to illuminate WHO Jesus Christ is and that God loves Bill Maher too. Gods word says that THEY will know us by our LOVE one for another. I hope that as we speak our words of truth to Bill Maher that it will be done with a spirit of humility and love.

Gayle and Anthony Keech, friends of ours in Easley SC. This is a nice picture of them that Gayle shared with me recently. 

Singing a country and western song on stage at recent talent show 

Kristina Moffitt at talent show at Sedgefield Middle School. This is a wonderful "real" smile that I just had to share... 

Kristina having more fun blowing on prop... Cheap entertainment. LOL 

My friend Patty gave me a hat that says "Chief Propellerhead" and has a computer on top with a prop that spins. Kristina is having fun trying to blow on the prop here in this picture 

animal wildlife expo

I am sitting here at work watching all the people drive by rushing into the parking garage so they can attend the wildlife expo here in charleston today. here I sit and there they go. lol oh well some folks get to have all the fun I suppose. I wonder how much text the treo will allow me to type before it runs out.... so far so good. I hope the weather is as beautiful where you are because it is gorgeous here. time to make a round so I will sign off for now

happily connected

I am posting to my blog from my treo 600 pcs enabled cell phone. I wonder if this will work right

Out with the old and in with the new

A friend of mine introduced me to Incredimail last year. Last night while using it I ran across a stationary called Celtic Myst which is brown parchment paper and the default font is "Black Chancery". Well, I immediately fell in love with the font. I think that it looks VERY classy to say the least. LOL.... You may be asking yourself the question "how does one fall in LOVE with a font". Well, I dont have the answer to that but all I do know is that I LIKE it so very much. So, Verdana, it has been fun and we have had a long and fruitful relationship but you are out and your replacement is Black Chancery. My friend Patty also told me that when she created a MS Word document using this font that she was unable to use "apostrophes" while using this font in MS Word but here in blogger it seems to work. I also noticed that this font is not listed in the list of fonts but when I type it in under font choice manually it shows up.

I have not written anything in my blog since I passed the A+ exam.... Maybe I have been experiencing some brain fry and have not felt creative enough to babble in here. I told my friend Jorge at work yesterday about Blogs and he said " what in the world is a blog". LOL... I told him that a blog is a web log or sort of like an "online diary". Jorge sort of cocked his head to one side, raised his eyebrow and gave me a "what in the world are you talking about dude" look. He asked me why would someone want to do something like that for the whole world to read? I told him that not everyone has their blog wide open for the general public and that you can lock them down to where only certain folks have access to it. Well, anyway, I guess that was where we left it.

Speaking of blogs, I am still waiting for a certain "someone" to start their blog..... I am not mentioning names here but YOU know who you are dont you???? LOL.... Get to creating that blog and write in it atleast once per week. PLEASE..... Speaking of writing in your blog KATY dear, you have not written much lately either have you?

I guess there is not much more to report here from Duck Ditch USA. Life goes on as usual in that we are doing the daily routine of eating , sleeping, fighting with the kids, going to work and starting the routine over and over again each day. I have not had a day off since we came back from the Happy Days camp on the 15th of last month so that it getting kind of old. We owe we owe off to work we go is our song that we sing each day. We are slaves to debt I guess. As Suze Orman would say there are two types of debt, personal debt and institutional debt. Some debt is good and most debt is very bad. I am like most of us in that I have some of both. My only regret is that I wished I would have read books like hers 20 years ago so that I could have kept from making some pretty stupid financial decisions in the past. Well, you know the old saying and how true it is. Knowledge is power. When you gain knowledge you can move out of the darkness of ignorance into the light and begin to do something, anything to correct past mistakes and stop making the same old errors and having to live through the consequences of those errors. There are nine small books in the series that Suze Orman wrote about finances and I am on the first book that talks about debt. Most of it has to do with Credit card debt etc.. which does not really apply to me but it is GOOD information for those of you out there that do have lots of credit card debt that you are trying to manage.

I am working on my Network + curriculum which I am hoping to accomplish between now and the end of February. I read through four chapters yesterday and I am hoping to go through another four chapters today at work between 3 Pm and 11pm. My goal for 2005 is to have all three of my Comptia exams passed and atleast 3 or 4 Microsoft exams passed. That will give me the A+, Network +, Security + and MCSA. At that point I will have increased my marketability in the IT industry 10 fold. Recruiters and employers apparently love to see certifications taken and passed. It tells them that you know what you are doing. What it really means is that you know how to study and take tests. LOL.... It does not necessarily mean that you will know how to take that knowledge and use it successfully in a real world environment.

Have a great day and a good week....

A+ Certification Complete!!!

I am HAPPY to report that I passed BOTH exams. Whew, I am so glad that is finally over. Now, with that certification and 25 cents I might be able to get a cup of coffee. LOL. Actually, entry level service technicians in the IT field are EXPECTED to have this minimal certification. Anyway, onward and upward. Now I will work on my Network + and Microsoft Windows 2003 server tests. Hopefully I can sit for one of those exams in the next four weeks. The whole idea here of course is not only to increase my knowledgebase and marketablity but also to command a larger paycheck. Can I hear an AMEN ?? LOL

I took the hardware exam first and thought that I did very well on it. I was surprised to find that out of a 515 passing score I make a 560. On the OS exam where I needed to have a passing score of 515 I made a 737. I thought I did much better on the hardware exam and much worse on the OS exam. The important thing is that I did pass. Thank you JESUS!!!!

It has been a LONG time since I took that kind of a test so this will give me the self confidence that I need to KNOW that I can study for the coming up exams and pass them. It sort of takes the FEAR out of studying and passing the exams. KWIM? I guess some folks are just better at taking exams than others.

Have a GREAT weekend!!

A+ exam in one hour....

Ok folks the time has arrived for me to see if I can remember enough of this stuff to pass the REAL tests this morning. I have been cramming for this thing for the last 6 weeks. Yesterday I took several test exams for both the hardware and OS and passed all of them so hopefully that is a good indicator that I will do well today. Each test is 85 questions long and I think that they give you 90 minutes to take the exam. I am taking the hardware exam first and then the OS exam second. I am scheduled to take both exams at two different times this morning. I hope that when I get finished with the hardware exam that they will just let me continue straight into the OS exam without having to wait. Once I am done with this and have my A+ certification I will need to dive into the Network + materials and Microsoft Windows 2003 Server test. That should keep me busy for the next 6 weeks.

The weather here for the last couple of days has been cold and rainy. I guess you could say that this is a typical Charleston SC winter. Thus far we have dodged any ice or snow storms which is nice. People barely know how to drive around here in good weather much less inclimant weather.

Yesterday was pretty easy at work, had one computer to finish up in which I had to add a new modem and configure a Dial up Networking icon for the desktop so that the customer could dial up bellsouth and get on the Internet. I spent most of the day yesterday studying and studying and studying some more. I went to lunch with my favorite bride at Cracker Barrell and then I had an appointment to work on a HP Color Laserjet 4550. Boy was I in for a surprise. The address was in a neighborhood off of Ashley Phosphate rd and Dorchester road. The customer was a couple who are real estate agents that work out of their home. When I got there and was showed into the living room or work area the HUGE HP 4550 was under this tiny computer desk with NO room whatsoever to work. I already knew in advance that it would have to have a good cleaning since I had learned that the Magenta toner cartridge had been dumped all inside this printer. I guess they got ahold of a defectice toner cartridge somehow. When I opened the printer up I was greeted by solid blue toner all over the inside of the printer. The customers house was very beautiful and there was NO WAY I was going to attempt to clean this printer on their living room floor. I could just see the blue toner getting all over everything. When I mentioned this to the wife who had initiated the service call she started to holler and shriek at a loud tone of voice about how they had just spent 400.00 to have this thing fixed and how the last person who worked on it was a bumbling idiot and apparently did not know what he was doing and on and on she went. Then the husband and wife started to fight about the fact that they did not have a place for me to work on the printer and why in the world would I even expect them to have such a place in their home when all they had was nice furniture. Imagine my surprise as I stood there waiting for the high pitched argument and whining to stop so we could figure out how we were going to get the printer moved to a safe place as to save their carpet. We finally managed to scoot the printer on a piece of cardboard through the living room and the kitchen out the door to the garage where it was about 40 degrees. I have to tell you this. I love working on technology and solving problems all day long BUT when you run into customers like these that is when my job becomes a job. Whew.....

Such is the life of someone who serves the general public and provides hardware and software and networking support on a daily basis. :)