Verizon Wireless... Bunkgrades!!

Well folks, we decided to go totally wireless in our home. We are going to turn of the home phone in a few days to save money. We all have cell phones and now all have local Richmond numbers. It is also time to upgrade our cells...

SO this morning at 8.30am, after I got home from work, we went to the Verizon Wireless store. We got our numbers changed and we were looking at new cells. We thought that when it was time for us to change phones out that we had a $100 credit per phone...WRONG!!!! We are on a family plan. Only the main phone gets the $100 credit and the other people have to pay $FULL$ PRICE for their "new" phone. That really sucked a big one!! Here we all had found new, better, bigger, stronger, faster cells and what a letdown...

They got you by the balls on this one. The fam plan will save money, but not on hardware costs. So choose wisely when trying to decide on what plan to get when making that decision.

This was the phone that I was going to get. It is the LG VX8600.

Wewill see what happens...

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The Shield Season 5....Conscience is a killer!!!

Vic Mackey owns you...

Nuff Said on this topic...

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Candlebox...1993 "Change"

How many of you remember the "Grung" era? Alice In Chains were sill big as well as Pearl Jam, but a new style of music was starting to take hold as well. Candlebox was one of those bands. The had a hard rocking style as well as a pop infulence that was very radio friendly. This one song was a very good one, perhaps the best on their intro album aptly titled "Candlebox"

"CHANGE"
As I stand here
I ponder greater things
You're no longer a part of
A part of your lover's dreams
So much for your Common complications
So much for your Constant desperation
For what's to comeIt's all been written
Down, written down
But I feel that a change is
A change is gonna come
I said I feel so alive nowAnd you know I feel that a change is
A change is gonna come
As I sit here I'll tell you greater things
You're no longer a part of
A part of someone else's dreams
So much for yourCommon escalations
So much for your Constant fabrications
For what's to come
It's all been written down, down, down
I said for what's to come
For what's to come your way
It's all been written
Down, written down
But I feel that a change is
A change is gonna come
I said I feel so alive now
And you know I feel that a change is
A change is gonna come
Keep on time
Keep on time
You run along
Keep on child
Keep on child
You push it on
Keep on my time
I run around for you
Keep on time
Keep on time
You run along
Keep on child
Keep on child
You push it on
Keep on my time now
I run around for you
Run around for you
But you've gotta keep on, keep it on
You don't know yet
You don't know yet
You don't know yet
But you'll feel it in your soul
You don't know yet
You don't know yet
You don't know yet
But you feel it in your soul
Feel it in your soul now
Do you feel that a change is gonna come?
Do you feel that a change is gonna come?
No
As I lay hereI wanna fall asleep
No longer, No longer a part of
A part of your TV screen
A part of your TV dreams
I said so much for your
So much for your
So much for your
Your common complications
So much for your
Constant desperation
For what's to come it's all been written
Down, written down
But I feel that a change is
A change is gonna come
I said I feel so alive now
And you know I feel that a change is
A change is gonna come
Do you feel that a change is gonna come?...


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Moutain Bike Stuff...

I had to go today at Agee's and get my daughters bike fixed. I had to buy a new front wheel skewer as hers toe up and lost all the parts to it. I also had to purchase as adapter for my tire air stems. They were a totally different style and i FREAKED out about them on a Sunday morning as my air pump would not fit them. I cant get them change out either. They had the adapter for them. It only cost 2.99, so not to bad. I Hope to go riding soon, but i work all this weekend...

CIAO

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A Friend Of Bill W’s…Part 1, My Journey Begins.

I am going to do a series of posts over the next weeks on Addiction and Recovery using the 12 Steps or Alcoholics Anonymous. There are many 12 Step programs that can be chosen. I am breaking my Anonymity by doing so, although, I have never hidden the fact from anyone if they asked me about it. If I have one wish for this series it is not to alienate someone from reading my BLOG, but to help an addict or alcoholic out there still suffering and let them know that there is help out there for them.

Many of you don't know, but May 15 will be my 4 year Sober mark. No drinking or drugging. I can’t say that it has been easy or that it has been fun because it has not. Living life on Life’s terms is a very hard thing to do. They say that your stunt your emotional self the first time that you took you first drink or drug. So, if you started when you were 16, then when you finally got sober, you were of the maturity of a 16 year old. If you were 30 when you got sober, then you will have a lot of maturing to do.

I went into treatment in the year 2002 during that summer to La Hacienda (LAHA) in Hunt Texas for 30 days in-house where I met Chris Raymer (Alumni Director LAHA). I will get into him later in this series. I also met some very interesting people, Lawyers, Doctors, Preachers, Housewives; the list can go on and on. It was a hard time of being separated from my house and personal belongings except for my MiniDisc player and CD player to have some comfort from. I went to group meetings, group therapy; We had a family week where my then girlfriend, Mother, and grandmother came to stay. If you did well, you got to go off campus to eat and go to outside meetings, if not, you stayed there. I saw many people fail or get kicked out. Why I was able to “do the deal” so to speak; I guess that it was in God’s plan for me to make it.

Every Sunday was a big meeting in the center where your family could come and visit and you saw people come back to get their chips for being sober for different time periods. 30 days, 60 days,90 days, 6 months, 1 year and so on. They also had different speakers and someone lead the meetings.

For you to “recover” you need to have a total psychic make over. This can happen by the “burning bush” type of the “educational” type. I had the burning bush type. That place gave me a set of tools that enabled me to be able to recover from a “hopeless state of mind and body.” I did not do it alone. My journey was a spiritual one also, because Addiction is a disease of the mind, body, and the spirit. I am not talking church or anything like that. Don't get the two confused, they are not the same. You can be spiritual and go to church, or go to church and never get the whole spiritual aspect of the deal. I tried the church way several years before that and it did not work for me.

For me to start the journey, I had to be totally beat down from the disease! I could not do it on my own, that was evident! Church did not do it and going to meetings but not buying whole heartedly into the program did not work either. I had to do it all or none! No "Half Steps".Finally Step One of the Big Book was easy for me to admit. “We admitted that we were powerless over drugs/alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable” It took a while living as a functional addict to finally admit that. When I did, it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and my way to recovery could begin. I learned that I did not have power over anything! Whatever power that I had, it had been given to me from God!

Don't get overly stressed with the God thing, I will explain this later. Just remember that for a person to “recover”, they have to treat the whole illness; The Mind, The Body, The Spirit. I also will use and interchange Alcohol and Drugs for one in the same during this series because they are the same. It is a disease the is progressive and terminal whose outcomes are Death or Institutions (Mental/Jail).

I am going to close this part for now…Rest assured, more will come. Part 2 Next week.

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Nothing to post about now...

You know when you have lots of things going on in your life and you are under lots of stress, well that is me at the moment. It appears that we are getting closer to finding out what is going to happen with our contracts here at Qimonda. I also found out that 3 of the employes are on different contracts than us, and if our contracts are ended, they will still be working. Yeah, Joy Joy!!

I have been very busy the last 2 weeks. I worked on Saturday night which really blew my weekend all to hell. I was off on Friday, slept that night, had to sleep all day Saturday for work, off Sunday with about 3 hours sleep that day and then my normal shift started today! - There are things that i need to get done around the house, but time is very precious at the moment. I turned the sprinklers on Sunday and tested them, no broken heads!!

I still need to get some fertiliazer and lime as well as snake and bud poision. We need to trim the hedges and once again, reseat the paver stones around the flowerbeds. I think that we are going to place a few steaks and string to keep people from walking in our yrar, mainly kids, to help the seed that was placed last year take hold and grow. These are just a few things that must get done to take care of our house as well as the inside stuff...

Well, i hope to have some interesting stuff to post about later tonight.

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Bombay Dub Orchestra...A Review...

As many of you know, I am a big music collector. The other day on the KLF List, there was a thread about a group called Bombay Dub Orchestra. They sounded interesting to me, so I checked them out. In my opinion, they fall under the Genre of Downtempo.

Now, I am not a big fan of Dub, on a whole. It is a sub-genre of reggae. Most of the dub I have heard was bass laden with slow drums and scattered vocals and sparse instrumentation.

BDO has a different approach to this genre. They have a lot of Trance elements as well as a 28 piece orchestra in the mix and Trip-Hop elements as well. The sounds capes are very lush to the point of being very atmospheric and experimental. The vocals are very tribal with a Mid-Eastern accent. You can hear very neat keyboard sequences and very lush layering of the instrumentation. Some of the songs are very familiar in sound with some ripe for film scoring with a 60s tint to the music. I can totally hear the different elements in the music and the have captured them in a style that works amazingly well in today's music scene. You can hear the dub elements in the bassline and the reverb-drenched, proto-psychedelic sounds of Jamaican dub.

They have a sound similar to Air, but with a 28 piece Indian String section. Their sound is more refined than that of Air's. Another band in this genre would be Thievery Corporation based out of Washington DC. Other significant acts include: Bonobo, Zero 7, Fila Brazillia, The Dining Rooms, Funki Porcini, Tosca, Kristallin, Pressure Drop, Urban Myth Club, Gotan Project, Sofa Surfers, Amon Tobin, Sundae Club, Glideascope, Saru, Röyksopp, dZihan & Kamien and Peace Orchestra.

If you like music to "chill" to in the late evening or listen to during the night, then I suggest Bombay Dub Orchestra as a good album to purchase and support. Lots of this music is produced and never gets to The States or is ever heard of by the general masses of the purchasing public. This is a great album by the U.K.-based duo of Garry Hughes (Björk, Sly & Robbie) and Andrew T. Mackay (VAST, Annie Leibovitz)

It is a shinning star in the sea of music that is today.

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