I will try to be amusing after the serious post yesterday… I will discuss that further in the future

1. What’s for dinner tonight?
Hrm, I took care of all the week’s leftovers last night so tonight calls for a new meal. I am thinking maybe Chinese or Pizza - Movie night. Not sure yet!

2. What is the first movie you remember seeing?
What comes to mind is the first movie I ever saw at a theater and it The blue bird.

3. Are you more likely to stop at an accident or drive by?
Drive by I guess, because most of the time the EMS is already there… if I was a witness or saw someone in trouble I would stop.

4. What are you going to be for Halloween? What was your favorite costume as a child?
This year I think I will be Lestas (a vampire for those non Ann Rice clued in people). As a child my favorite was a Batman costume, not sure if I would ever post that picture but I do have it.

5. I hear the stores have Christmas stuff up. What do you think of that?
Crazy, this year flew by… Cielo is already thinking of Christmas presents.

6. Do you park on the same spot every day?
For the most part, it depends on how early I am to work… after lunch is a toss up.

7. Michelle is in Tennessee home of Elvis. Elvis: Love ‘em or leave ‘em?
Impartial, don’t mind to listen to his music if someone else is playing it, but I would probably never buy an album.

8.What is your favorite sport and why?
This is hard to answer, but here I go. I love soccer and it is probably my favorite sport to play and watch live, but I also love motorcycle racing, specially MotoGP. I have more experience with Soccer so I guess that one wins. I still love both Baseball and football, Basketball for me died after Michael Jordan stopped being a bull.

Meme by Meg found via SmoochDog.

My family brought me home today cradled in their arms.
They cuddled me and smiled at me, and said I was full of charm.

They played with me and laughed with me, they showered me with toys.
I sure do love my family, especially the little boys.

The Children loved to feed me, they gave me special treats,
They even let me sleep with them and snuggle in the sheets.

I used to go for walks, often several times a day.
They even fought to hold the leash, I’m very proud to say.

These are things I’ll never forget -a cherished memory.
I now live in a shelter -without my family.

They used to laugh and praise me when I played with that old shoe.
But I didn’t know the difference between the old ones and the new.

The kids and I would grab a rag, for hours we would tug.
So I thought I did the right thing when I chewed the bathroom rug.

They said that I was out of control and would have to live outside.
This I did not understand although I tried and tried.

The walks stopped one by one. They said they hadn’t time.
I wish that I could change things, I wish I knew my crime.

My life became so lonely, in the backyard, on a chain.
I barked and barked all day long, to keep from going insane.

So they brought me to a shelter but were embarrassed to say why.
They said I caused an allergy, and then kissed me goodbye.

If I’d only had some classes, as a little pup.
I wouldn’t have been so hard to handle when I was all grown up.

“You only have one day left”, I heard the worker say.
Does this mean a second chance? Do I go home today?

~1991 Sandi Thompson

I think spammers have always been smart, or at least the ones that constantly try to find loop holes in the software designed to keel them out. The latest release of wordpress has made it a lot easier to deal with spam, if you have a strong, twicked blacklist you can keep spam under control. I battle with spam all the time and deal with anywhere from 100 to 1000 spam comments day. 99% of them are caught by the spam filters in place and are deleted with the click of a button. Lately I have been getting a different kind of SPAM, it is almost human and best of all bilingual. Here is the latest comment from them and if it did not have one of the words linked to their site (which I already removed) I would have never known it was SPAM.

It looks like a site is actually having people SPAM blogs with real comments… its sad. I like the blogsphere because it is a place to share ideas with others, and the more and more I blog the more I miss the old times when my audience was somewhat limited to people I knew either online or IRL. Now, I have to read comments with skepticism and almost have to follow every comment back to its origin in one way or another if I want to leave the comment up. I did away with my tagboard after a series of porn Spam attacks, it was just not worth my time. I have no problem with self promotion of a new blog, or any other kind of linking except when it leads you back to filth. I really don’t have the time to deal with Spam that way, and I wish I could review 100 comments a day to find the legitimate ones… for now if you are new around here, and you comment but it does not get posted, send me an e-mail and I will try to fish your comment from SPAM.

I first heard this story reading a time management book. The latest encounter with this analogy was while camping with Cielo and Ty in a little joke newspaper printed locally in Harrisville. The story goes something like this

Start with a bucket, some big rocks enough to fill it, some small stones, some sand and water.

Put the big rocks in the bucket - is it full?

Put the small stones in around the big rocks - is it full?

Put the sand in and give it a shake - is it full?

Put the water in. Now it’s full.

The point is: unless you put the big rocks in first, you won’t get them in at all.

The joke version uses beer instead of water and it is supposed to teach that there is always space for a little alcohol in your life, but this analogy is a lot more powerful than that and I think America as a whole could benefit from it. The way I interpret it is the following. The big rocks represent your family, your morals and anything else that should not be compromised in life. The small stones represent, money, career, and other material things that while necessary should never take precedence over what is really important. The sand is basically everything that is can be considered a problem, disagreements, and other activities that might not be as important but still require attention. Water represents everything else in life like the person that cuts you off during rush hour on your way to work, the person at the fast food restaurant forgetting to hold the onions on your burger, or the shoelace that breaks as you tie your shoes.

So many times we fall pray of the water, letting something so small in comparison to the rocks but that we let affect our mood or outlook on the day. Things that should never drive us do it so effectively at times. Use this analogy to evaluate your priorities and see if you are spending as much time thinking about the rocks instead of everything else combined.

Even though I should not answer, since the last time I tagged Michael he conveniently chose not to answer… to be honest I think he is scared to answer

7 Answers to 7 Questions

7 things I plan to do before I die:
~Get Married
~Have Children
~Learn at least 5 languages
~Visit Barcelona
~Own a boat and a beach house
~Publish a book
~Earn a Black Belt in at least 2 arts

7 things i can do:
~Ride a motorcycle
~Speak 2 languages fluently
~Fold my tongue
~Make eatable food
~Understand various geek dialects
~Swim above average
~Parallel Park

7 things i cannot do:
~Ski
~Play the guitar as well as I would like to
~Quit eating so much and get in shape
~Visit Colombia as often as I would like
~Pronounce W words in succession
~Know when to stop talking
~Think twice before opening my mouth

7 things that attract me to another person:
~Intelligence
~Sincerity
~Kindness
~Hope
~Confidence
~Humor
~Opinions

7 celebrity crushes - I really don’t like celebrities that way… what about 7 favorite actors
~Ed Norton
~Morgan Freeman
~Charlise Theron
~Robin Williams
~Dakota Fanning
~Ben Stiller
~Vince Vaugh

7 Things I say the most
~Back in Chicago
~I know this guy
~Bah! Instead of Bye
~Really
~You know
~Thanks. (Close probably 90% of my work e-mails that way)
~Well, yes and no

7 bloggers I am tagging:
Cielo
Daniel
Marchal
B.O.B.I.
Kelly
Tony
IceColdFever

Ever since I stopped training TaeKwonDo, there has been a huge void in my life that has been difficult to fill. Martial Arts are so much more than what most people might think. The saying for the people that have practiced a martial art is that it is a way of life or “Do”. Well, I am going to start the difficult journey once again (Finding another martial art school that is) some day. In the mean time I want to give my thoughts in the subject and hopefully help others.

Finding a Martial Arts school is not so much about finding the best facilities, or the most popular art at the moment. You can always count on an ancient martial art becoming the latest fad, which is kind of ironic in a sense. To me finding the best Martial Arts school requires finding the best Master. I found the best teacher in the world, he is now a very good friend of mine, but I have moved out of the area and I still need to get back to training. It is not a requirement but hopefully finding the right school for you will also mean finding a good master.

I want to start with defining what this little article is not. You are not going to find a “What is the best martial art” information here. That is a whole other topic that is extremely subjective. I am going to try and look at the subject of finding a martial art school in an objective way. Even though in this guide I will touch on different arts a little bit, it is not meant to be a “how to choose a martial art guide”. To me that is the wrong approach to martial arts. Also this guide is for the beginner that wants to start looking for a local school. If you have your heart set on a style, then find the best teacher regardless of location.
» Read the rest of the entry..

Mr. Marchal, who has been kind of quiet in recent days has come back and tagged me to do a meme. Since I am a gentleman and reply to challenges here are my answers.

1. Name something you are doing now which you would never had thought possible when you were 16.
I never dreamed when I was 16 that I would be writting in a regular basis. I never kept a journal of any kind, and now look I am a blogger.

2. The last totally useless thing you bought:
I really don’t buy that much stuff, and even when I do it has to go through a methodical process of review reading, online pricing and just overall geekiness about it. Last truly useless thing I bought would have to be…

3. A nickname of mine nobody uses any longer:
Gato - Cat in Spanish, that was my High School nick name back in Colombia and it is no longer in use.

4. A major aim in your life your are still hoping to achieve:
Get married and have a couple of children; also be Solvent, rich would be nice but solvent is my aim.

5. The most stupid thing you did as a child:
I tried to fix my AC Adapter for my Atari 2600 when I was probably around 9. Since I had no idea what an AC adapter was or what electricity meant, I just pretty much put live current into the Atari and it smoked ala mission impossible.

6. A poster I had in my room (which might even be slightly emebarassing today)
I never really had my own room growing up, so no posters… that saved me from embarrasment I guess.

7. Your “biggest” appearance in the media (TV, radio, newspaper)
My name has been mentioned in the paper a couple of times back in my highschool days, besides that nothing.

8. Associations or Clubs I belonged to as a child:
none

9. Your favorite joke at the moment:
Tony posted some funny stuff.

10. Where do you know the person who tagged you for this from?
The blogsphere.

As for tagging somebody: Cielo, Pol, Evil Atari, April and Mo… would you like a try?