New schedules

So since my last post, quite a bit has happened. Although I suppose if nothing had - I'd lead a pretty boring life :).

The concert was spectacular. Justin Bench and I attended the Stray Cats / ZZ Top concert on the 15th of August - it freakin rocked! I've been waiting for almost 25yrs to see the Stray Cats in concert. I remember growing up, living in Colorado and my best friend at the time Gero (last name?) and I used to play that we were the singers in the band putting on a concert. I was 8yrs old at the time.

Shortly thereafter of course, the Stray Cats more or less broke up, and Brian Setzer was really the only one that went out and did anything else. He did some incredible music over the years. He kept alive the rock-a-billy sound, as well as integrating a lot of big band sounds into some of his old Stray Cats music. ZZ Top put on a killer show, it was so much fun seeing such an iconic band perform. ZZ Top truly were trend setters and helped pave the way for so many other 'hard-rock' bands of the late 70's-80's. It was fun seeing them bust out their fuzzy guitars and perform 'Sharp Dressed Man'! The only thing they didn't do that has been one of their staples throughout most of their videos was the twirling guitars.

Sometime shortly after the concert, Jaime's mom became very ill with a staph infection, which apparently usually only happens in hospitals, but are incredibly dangerous and life threatening. From what I understand it started on her abdomen and got larger and larger. She eventually ended up in the hospital and they ended up at the same time identifying a cyst in her stomach. They removed the cyst, and now she's on bed rest for at least a month. This has dramatically changed the babysitter situation. Jaime's mom has always been a big help in watching the kids, while Jaime or I are at work. With Jaime living in Bountiful - it has made it... inconvienent to say the least for me to see the kids or spend a lot of time with them. It's not that far to Bountiful, but it's far enough that there's really no easy way to work the situation. Regardless, for about 3 weeks now, I've been able to spend a lot of time with my kids. Each day after work, I generally meet Jaime at her work and pick up the kids. We've spent several days at a friend of mine's place, letting our kids run around together - playing outside, riding Big Wheels, and scooters and generally just wreaking havoc. It's been alot of fun.

I'm not complaining by any means, but it's been a pretty dramatic change in schedules for me and I'm still adjusting. The kids are loving it - and getting more adapted to the idea of seeing me pretty much everyday, with the exception of the odd day that Jaime doesn't work - or I work late. Now if I could just teach my boy to call me Daddy - rather than calling everyone Mommy.

Work is becoming more and more of a joke it seems like. I'm stuck in this incredibly stupid argument/situation with my counter-part Wyman. Wyman has decided in the past year or so - that he deserves to work the morning shift and nothing but. Both of our reasons for needing to work mornings, relate directly to our families. Whomever is working in the evenings, isn't going to see his family. Each of us also have different situations as to why our situation is more dire. He seems to have been trying to convince people for the past several months that he's the guy that is my boss, that he makes the decisions - and essentially under-mining my authority. This is rather irksome - namely because none of it's true. If you want to get right down to it - I'm the senior guy here. When we were first given these positions - I was given the choice as to what schedule I wanted because of this.

So to shorten down this bitch session - now that school is back in for Wyman's kids, he thinks he is owed the mornin shift again. We sat down to try and work out a schedule that worked for the both of us. Or at least I thought that's what we were doing. I suggested several different ideas to Wyman, trying to make this whole situation suck as little as possible, and make it fair. He on the other hand refused to compromise. He was going to have that morning shift come Hell or high water. When I kept politely telling him that wouldn't work - he suggests it should be performance based!! He thinks he does more work, better than me!! This is completely laughable! He is so technically inept it's a wonder that he's still in this industry! He spends his days, doing credit card refunds, and monitoring phone calls (when he doesn't have any idea what's going on), and limiting people on the speed of the internet they get IF he perceives them as a threat (don't mention the fact he doesn't know how to read it!). Anyway, for the time being we're working on trying out a situation where Wyman will handle reports, scheduling, and attendence - while I handle everything else. Hopefully Ponch approves it soon.

Catching Up

Well, to be honest, I'm not even sure why I'm going to continue writing this. I never did continue the 'book' I started writing on my last post, but no one reads this, so perhaps it will serve as more of a history/diary than I originally thought. Rather than sharing this kind of stuff with friends/family - it will act as a reminder to me.

Since my last post, quite a bit has occurred. I was able to get my 2nd signature on my application to the Free and Accepted Masons of Utah for the 1st or Wasatch Lodge. I'm very excited about this - and now it's a matter of handing the application in, and then hopefully during the first meeting they have in September my name will be read and to quote my friend I'll be visited by "the 3 wisemen". 3 Masons that from what I understand, will spend time with me over the course of a month to get to know me, and decide whether I would be a good match for the group.

A few posts back, I mentioned that the Stray Cats & ZZ Top were coming in concert. 2 tickets to the concert were given to me for my birthday, and I took my best friend Justin B. He and I have been rockin out to the Stray Cats since we met at high school. The concert absolutely rocked! I recall growing up in Colorado, at the age of 8yrs old, listening to one of their albums over and over with my friend at the time Gero. I guess you could say that I've literally been waiting to see them in concert for 25yrs! ZZ Top definately stole the show, and not even the Pretenders playing in the middle of the 2 of them with their "anti-war, anti-SUV, non meat eating, tree hugging, free love, treebark tea loving weirdo's" could ruin the concert. It was definately a great time.

Back in July, I got a great early b-day present, by a series of extremely unexpected circumstances, I sold the Durango (which I have loved these past several years), and traded it in for a 2002 Lincoln Townecar LS. And since I'm arguing/talking with myself at this point - "yeah yeah, I know it's a Ford". I had started the whole car search looking for a used Mazda3 hatchback. I wanted a blue one, with the Grand Touring package (leather, sunroof, power everything, etc) - but apparently they were very popular cars, as I couldn't even find one that would've been a 'close-enough' match that I would've settled for. The only one anyone was able to find that was exactly what I was looking for was located in South Carolina! So I was shown the Lincoln, and it blew me away. It's a darker blue, with metal flakes - giving it a great look. Leather interior, top of the line Alpine sounds system, chrome rims, and get this 40k miles! The car is in perfect condition - it had come from California so there was going to be very litte rust if any (there was none), no dings, no scratches, no problems with the interior. Honestly the car is perfect but books at between $24-$26k - which was much more than what I was willing to pay. I was looking for a Mazda because they were cheap, didn't look too bad, and got great gas mileage (that was teh biggest concern). By sheer circumstance, the salesman I ended up working with happened to be the son of a gentleman I work with - and admire. He's a brilliant wireless engineer that's been playing in the WiFi world since the mid-70's! Chad (salesman) called his dad (Gary), and let him know I was down there. Gary did a great thing, and asked Chad to take care of me, get me a great deal, etc etc. What was even better, was the fact that Chad was already doing that. To shorten this up a bit - they gave me almost $5k for the Durango(!!), and sold me the Lincoln for $14.9k! Gas mileage has gone up, car payments have dropped by a little over $200/mnth, insurance goes down - it's fantastic! Once I can get the rest of my life straightened up financially - I'll be saving money hand over fist with this car.
And yes, this is exactly what my car looks like - even the same color! I could probably go on for quite awhile about my new car - but one last thing: it only had 40k miles on it! A better deal I probably could've never gotten, thanks to Chad Smith for really hooking me up and helping me out. I never saw myself driving a 'luxury' car like this - but the more time I spend in it - the more I wonder how I tolerated driving all those other things over the years (besides the Vette of course..)

Again - enough book. I'll try and be a bit more consistent in my postings to myself - cuz I never have any idea what's going on in my life.. ;)

History

**Warning - this will be a long post!!**

So, as many of you know (if anyone is actually still reading this) - over the past few years I've taken a big interest in the history of the Templar's and the Freemason's.  Little did I know that the 2 were associated, however loosely, at the time.
I've always been a closet history buff - it's always been a favorite study of mine, which of course can only translate and explain my love of reading (or maybe the reverse is true).  My senior year in high school I was introduced to a book called "Focault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco.  I remember being intrigued, and fascinated by the story which combined history, conjecture, magic, theology, theosophy, numerology and good helping of fiction.  I can't remember how I discovered the book, but I do recall that I read it for the first time for a book report in my English class.  The report was horrible, as I began writing it - I realized that I had understood nothing of the book aside from what I stated above.  But the book so fascinated me (think of it as a pre-cursor to Dan Brown's style of writing with the Da Vinci Code), that I continued to read and re-read it.  For Christmas a few(?) years later my mother bought me the book.  I remember feeling a little sheepish as the reviews on the book declared it: "Brilliant..Experimental and funny, literary and philosophical.." by the New York Times.  I recall thinking to myself, "Funny? There was humour in this book?".  I realized at that point that I had taken the book too seriously.  How could I not?  The first paragraph of the book goes into describing the absolute perfection of Pi!  Anyway, my interest in the Templar's came from this book - as they were mentioned briefly in relation to the story - a little tid-bit of information that left many more questions than it began to answer.  At that time the Internet was still in it's infancy (as far as I was concerned or exposed to it).  It consisted of BBS boards that allowed 1 or maybe 2 users to connect to another person's computer at a time.  In many ways it was the pre-cursor to today's blogs and forums.  So the only information I could find in relation to the Templar's was really limited to the local libraries - and those books so often contradicted each other, that it was impossible to find an actual story - it all seemed to be more guessing and playing connect the dots when there were no dots.
During the following years I encountered a lot of things that held my interest, a lot of the things ironically enough that Focault's Pendulum addressed.  I read everything I could get my hands on, from "Isis Unveiled" by H.P. Blavatsky, "The Book of the Law" by Aleister Crowley, "Grosses Traumbuch" by Dr. Abdul Azem (Large Dream book, a book about the interpretation of dreams), to books on the Oriental Religions, Middle-East, Celtic, and on and on.  This reading gave me in large, my opinion of Religion as a whole - but that's a whole other discussion.  And with it came my introduction to "secret societies".
With the Internet being a veritable cesspool of information, opinions, theories, and nut-jobs - there was no end to the amount of information available.  But it tended to cause the same problem as I had years earlier with a lack of information - it contradicted itself, points of it were pure flights of fancy, and some contradicted themselves - and this was just in searching for the Templar's!  Plan on several months of reading time if you try searching for "Secret Societies".  You'll encounter everything from the Illuminati to The Royal Order of the Buffalo from Flintstones fame!  But as I was discovering, nearly every search of the Templar's and the volumes of information read, there was nearly always a reference to the Freemason's.  Once I thought I had read what I thought to be the most credible pages on the Templar's (HA!), I started following up on the Freemason's.  I left the Templar's behind mainly because there were so many questions that remained, 1) A year after the inception of the Templar's where 9 monks who had promised themselves to a life of charity, chastity, and poverty among other things - were knighted by the Pope to help guard pilgrims on their way to visit the "Holy Land".  Then suddenly, they appear a year later - a huge force, wealth beyond belief, answerable to none save the Pope himself.  They were knights sure, but that was after the fact.  They were monks first who still held to their original belief.  They were forbidden to shave, bathe, they were held to the strictest of regulations set forth by the church - Hell! they were not allowed within a "hand-span of their mothers or sisters"! 2) Almost 270years later, the Pope and King Phillip of France decided for their own reasons to disband the Templar's, whom in that time had more or less established the beginning of international banking, and a slew of other accomplishments.  They were richer than most kingdom's, in land, possessions, markets and gold.  They were disbanded by accusing them of numerous crimes, heresy, worshipping carven idols - and worse.  The Templar's in France were in a spectacular coordination by the French government were rounded up in one day on Friday Oct 13, 1307 (yeah, it's where Friday the 13th began as an "unlucky day").  They were tortured by the Inquisition into admitting these crimes.  Ultimately they were disbanded.  Many were executed, many died of torture.  This order for the capture of all Templar's was received in England as well - but was essentially ignored, and gave the Templar's there time to prepare.  29days later a papal bull administered by the Pope was received by the King of England and he reluctantly tried rounding up the Templar's there.  By then however nearly all had escaped.  A few were captured, many escaped - and by the restrictions put upon the Dominican Inquisitors - the captured Templar's didn't give into the torture administered to them.  Due to different political situations at the time, especially between Scotland, England and the Vatican - it is suspected, and widely accepted that many of the Templar's made a run for Scotland as a safe-haven to assume new identities, lives etc.

This is turning out much longer than I anticipated, so I will continue this tomorrow.  If you have anything to say, comments to make, disagreements, or want to point out grammatical errors in any of my posts - you can do so by clicking on the "Post Comment" link under each blog entry.

An email from Uncle Len

If you're reading this blog, then chances are you've probably seen this email from Len.  I rarely foward on all the junk I get from people - but this just couldn't be passed up:

HOW DO THEY SURVIVE?

ONE Recently, when I went to McDonald's I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen nuggets. "We don't have half dozen nuggets," said the teenager at the counter. "You don't?" I replied. "We only have six, nine, or twelve," was the reply. "So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?" "That's right" So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets

TWO I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those "dividers" that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn't get mixed. After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the "divider", looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code she said to me, "Do you know how much this is?" I said to her "I've changed my mind, I don't thin k I'll buy that today" She said "OK," and I paid her for the things and left. She had no clue to what had just happened.

THREE A lady at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM "thingy."

FOUR I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked. She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?" "Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked. "No, just this remote thingy," she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries. It's a long walk."

FIVE Several years ago, we had an Intern who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of t yping paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," the secretary told her. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five "blank" copies.

SIX I was in a car dealership a while ago, when a large motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the who le thing generally looked like an extra in "Twister." I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the "cruise control" and then went in the back to make a sandwich.

SEVEN My neighbor works in the operations department in the central office of a large bank. Employees in the field call him when they have problems with their computers. One night he got a call from a woman in one of the branch banks who had this question: "I've got smoke coming from the back of my terminal. Do you guys have a fire downtown?"

EIGHT Police in Radnor , Pa. interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.

NINE A mother calls 911 very worried asking the dispatcher if she needs to take her kid to the emergency room, the kid was eating ants. The dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl and it should be fine . The mother says, I just gave him some ant killer..... Dispatcher: Rush him in to emergency room!


Life is tough;
It's tougher if you're stupid
Or only have a 21st Century public school education

As I was booting my machine this morning, I decided to get my daily dosage of humour from a few different online comic strips I read. The little gem above (click on it for a larger view), made me really laugh.

So apparently I'm under a bit of stress lately. I mean, I knew I was stressed - about a myriad of different things, but I guess you never really pay attention to it until it kicks you in the ass and tells you to pay attention. Usually when it gets to that point - it can be embarassing. The starter on my truck has been trying to die on me recently - and so last night I decided to replace it. I was on the phone and the person I was speaking with asked if I thought I had enough time to do it (it was 7pm). So I walked out, popped the hood, gave it a once over and decided I could get it done before it got dark. To make a long story short, I pulled it out, went to Autozone & got a replacement, ran back home - and put the new one in. This must've been record time! I double checked everything to make sure it was connected up correctly, and then tried to fire it up. *click click vrooom*! Gah! What the hell? I replaced it with a new starter only to have the same problem! In my frustration I drove the Durango up to Autozone to get some "professional" help. As the guy comes out and looks at my truck, I'm explaining my problem, and pointing to the newly replaced part. He interrupts me, and says "So you replaced the alternator?" No, I say - that's the starter. He looked at me a bit odd for a second, obviously realizing I wasn't paying attention. Gently he says, No - you replaced the alternator.

I could only stand there stupidly (there was probably drool racing down my chin), while I stared at my brand new alternator, and the Autozone guy was pointing out to and obviously escaped mental patient where the starter was actually located.

I had so much on my mind, about so many different things, I couldn't recognize the obvious. And of course, since I was replacing the wrong part - everything went smoothly. Tonight, when I go to replace the actual starter, everything that can go wrong WILL go wrong. I remember thinking last night it was odd that Mr. Murphy was absent - and that things were going way too easy.

The more I consider posting to this blog, the more I'm beginning to realize this is nothing more than an online diary open to all to read. So why am I doing this?

Great news = Birthday Present for me!

Yesterday there was a concert announcement made, that quite frankly I never thought I'd ever get a chance to see.  The teaser on the radio stations a few days prior was "Several bands from the 80's have gotten back together, and are coming concert!"  That was enough to get me salivating.  So anyway, Tuesday morning they announced that the Stray Cats, ZZ Top, and The Replacements are coming in concert together on Aug 15th!
I've been listening to the Stray Cats since I was 8years old - rockin out to their Rock-a-billy sound for as long as I can remember.  And ZZ Top - who can't love them?  The beards, the spinning guitars, the bevy of beautiful women their constantly surrounded with - and let's not forget their collection of 'rods!  Perhaps I'll have to pull out the Halloween costume for the concert, and see if I can't rent a Rat Rod somewhere to complete the ensemble.

Something funky in SLC

'UFO' recorded over Salt Lake City
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 06/13/2007 12:21:01 PM MDT

Posted: 12:16 PM- It didn't exactly cause a "War of the Worlds"-type panic, but an unidentified object in the sky above Salt Lake City this morning had people wondering. Still picture here.
Television station KUTV - which has a nine-minute video of the object on its Web site - reports that what appears to be a 100-foot-long air balloon was seen floating above the valley Wednesday morning.
The silver, rocket-shaped object was sighted about 8 a.m., according to KUTV.
Salt Lake Air Traffic Control officials told the station they didn't pick up the object on radar and didn't know anything about it. They told KUTV they would investigate to see if any air traffic rules were broken.
See the KUTV video at http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_164122850.html.


But the best part about the whole story - is a few comments people left about the story:

RECENT COMMENTS:
6/13/2007 2:24:00 PM -- It was the phallic ghost of Joseph Smith, telling the Utah citizens that they were screwed. Another day, another Mormon... [MORE]
6/13/2007 1:53:00 PM -- It's the ghost of the Hindenburg. Oh the humanity! [MORE]6/13/2007 1:47:00 PM -- Wow, a UFO over the city and Rocky Anderson in a near fist fight. I wonder if the two are somehow related? [MORE]

Roosevelts Thoughts on Immigration

This one kind of struck a chord with me about a year back, when all of the issues with immigrations started coming up - and I came across this interesting little speech given by Theodore Roosevelt.  Let me know what you think?

Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag.. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

So the question is - what went wrong, when did it go wrong, and why did we let it happen?

My first blog..

So I've pretty much avoided Blogs and various other related items, typically because I didn't have anything to say to the public at large, and being raised a Lundgren - feelings and such typically don't get expressed.  But now that I've seen a few blogs, family, and friends I've realized it's not so much anyone trying to get their 15min of fame, but reminds me more of a personal diary.  Yes, I realize this is a contradiction from what I stated above, as far as Lundgren's not really being in touch with their feelings and whatnot - so we'll see where this goes.  
My life right now is one of semi-controlled chaos.  Since family and friends are realistically going to be only ones reading this, I won't feel so bad about boring you all with the details.  

First things first - my kids. My daughter Keira, I simply don't know what to say - she's everything I've ever hoped for, and as she gets older - everything I've ever dreaded.  She is an absolute Daddy's girl - which makes me the happiest man on earth.  There is nothing better than to see her and have her come running at me to jump into my arms and tell me she loves me.  I didn't think life really got any better until my son Kole was born.  We got the boy we were hoping for, and I firmly believe that the "Grandparent's Curse" will come true with this one - the curse being "may you have a child exactly like you!".  Kole is an absolute stud even at a year old.  He's got more personality than anyone I've seen in a long time, with the exception of my beloved cousin Ginger ;).

To catch anyone up-to-date that may not be, I currently work for a company called iBAHN. It's a great company to work for, and I feel, lucky? blessed? whichever to be working here.  I'm presently a supervisor over our Level 2 & 3 support groups.  My agents handle a wide variety of things, but the main focus is keeping our Global Network up and running.  It's an intense, non-stop job - but any other way, and I suppose I would get bored.

Aside from work and family - try to keep busy with various different things, but of course being a Lundgren, my next major project will be getting my hands on another Hotrod.

Ok - that's enough for the first post - well see where this goes from here.

To all the family and friends reading this - I love you all, and hope everyone is doing well.

-Justin