Monthly Archives ⇒ January 2010

Spammers don't work on weekends

· Brandon Hann

I don’t know about you, but over the years I’ve acquired and/or used over seven or so email addresses for various reasons and although I only use one at a time, I keep the other ones “active” because I never know if someone from my past, who has an old email of mine might want to get a hold of me.

Anyway, across all these emails, I probably get about 50 spammed emails every day. It’s hard to say just how these people got my email(s) in the first place, but it’s a sure bet that all those companies that I’ve signed up for their mailing lists have sold my info to unscrupulous misfits out there.

Above and beyond all that, I started noticing one thing; spammers don’t seem to work on weekends! Here I sit on Sunday evening and just about the time I’d be watching 50+ emails download to my inbox, I get nothing. Maybe one, maybe 2, but generally I only get real emails. I won’t say that I’m complaining, but it reminds me of a line from the movie Layer Cake when Daniel Craig says “England. Typical. Even drugs dealers don’t work weekends.” What’s even more funny and ironic about that statement is that most of the spam I get seems to come from the UK.

Has anyone else experienced this same thing?

Official Countdown

· Brandon Hann

It’s the official countdown to my final hour at Best Buy. I made a simple Flash counter that will keep reminding me how much time is left until my seven-year “career” at Best Buy is over and done with. I have nothing negative to say about Best Buy as a place to work and I’m truly going to miss a lot of people that I’ve worked with at the Fullerton store and others who have moved around the company. You know who you are.

It’s over. This next part is my simple story and some recollections from the past.

I’ve spent the last 7 years in and out of two Best Buy stores starting off as a seasonal digital camera sales rep wearing the blue shirt. I quickly moved up to the black shirt and found myself on the doorstep of my future career: information technology. I saw the birth of Geek Squad; well not the actual birth, but I was there when Best Buy bought them and converted their black shirts over to white button-ups and clip-on ties. I remember being excited for the prospect of branching our services out of the store and into people’s homes. I was already a manager at this point and was promptly given the opportunity to serve as one of the first wave of field agents, but a dark cloud was hovering over me: my horrible driving record. Even though everyone wanted to promote me, I was stuck because of this one thing. I ended up waiting it out and quickly became part of the second wave of agents. At this time I was able to add something new to my uniform; a shiny new badge and Agent #1828 was created. Among the other perks, I also got a free cell phone and a company car.

I worked my way up and up, gaining more and more knowledge and experience as the months passed. I then found a mentor of sorts who taught me more than I could have ever imagined while on the job. At this time, Geek Squad was a fun and exciting place to work. We didn’t know what we were doing because everything was so new and the details hadn’t been ironed out yet. We were literally inventing processes and procedures as we went along.

Of course, nothing lasts forever and sure enough, this time came for me. I was promoted into working specifically with small businesses and the management quickly changed. I feel less and less important in the jobs I did and the whole operation seemed to be more about money and less about the customer. We won’t go into that here, but needless to say, I was starting to feel burned out. In a bit of twisted irony, I lost my opportunity to work as a field agent once again to a tarnished driving record. It was at this time that I was placed back in the store doing what I used to do. A step backward actually turned into many steps forward. This was last February.

I began the search for a job and anyone who’s been looking through this economy will agree that it’s not easy, but they always say it’s easier to find a job when you already have one. I can say that although it took almost a year, I was able to find my ticket out. At first, I regretted having been placed back in the store, but at least one great thing came out of it: I met my girlfriend in that store and she’s been the best thing that ever happened to me.

With that said, things are going to be different from now on. The days are looking better and the feeling of growing up is getting stronger. 2010 is poised to be a great year and if I can help it, I plan to make it my best year yet.

I’d like to thank a few people that have helped me along the way. A few of these people still work for the company while some have moved on to bigger and better things.

  • Nathan Garcia — Thanks for everything you’ve taught me and the many ways you’ve helped me grow as a person.
  • Rich Hames — Thanks for always treating me with respect.
  • Bob Solkol — Thanks for giving me a chance to show everybody what I was capable of.
  • Tom Richards — Thanks for teaching me how to be a better leader.
  • Enrique Gomez — Thanks for always being there for me.
  • Britne Watson — Thanks for always having my back and letting me vent.
  • Henri Padilla — Thanks for helping me take care of business.
  • Scott Giles — Thanks for the interesting conversations.
  • Steve Castner — Thanks for being there when the crap hit the fan and for inspiring me to get out of the “black hole”.
  • The Geek Squad team at Fullerton — Thanks for welcoming me into your ‘family’ and treating me like one of the guys. Good luck to those that plan on leaving soon! And to Alice, thanks for the card!

I know I’m missing a bunch of names here, but you all know who you are! Thank you.

Conan O'Brien

· Brandon Hann

My favorite late night show was always Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The reason for this was simple: here was a guy hosting a show that didn’t seem to follow the normal trends of late night tv. He wasn’t bound by the constraints of network big-whigs and pressure from sponsors. He was on late enough to be able to turn that into a joke itself. This would turn into a level of humility we have never seen before.

I always feared the results of moving Conan to the Tonight Show because his brand of comedy was not that fitting for the 11:35 time slot. The show was good, but not great. Right off the bat you could see how things changed. Before, he seemed more like a free spirit and now just simply a puppet of NBC. It only made sense that the song Will Ferrell played for Conan on his last show was ‘Freebird’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

On a side note, it was interesting to see Niel Young on the show while a Skynyrd song was being played! If you don’t see the connection, it’s the lyrics from Sweet Home Alabama:

Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow

Anyway, it’s sad to see Conan leave, but I’m sure in seven months (when he’s able to appear on tv again), he’ll have a really great show and we all know his fans will follow him wherever he goes.

Leaving Best Buy

· Brandon Hann

I remember about two years ago I started thinking about the day I would leave Best Buy. I used to wonder how it would feel and what I might say when the time came. I ran through a series of different ways it would go down and not one of them was a simple as the reality of it.

Little did I know on October 27th, 2002 that I would be at Best Buy for so long. I had gotten the job out of necessity during a time when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in life. I had just left a job working at a grocery store and after starting at Best Buy, I quickly realized how much better it was. More importantly, I saw potential growth in my field of interest: computers.

I started as a seasonal sales rep for digital cameras. I was already impressive on my third day, as stated by one of my friends. I remember it like it was yesterday. He says to me after just teaching me how to do something, “You better slow down, man; you’re gonna make me look bad!” I’ve always had strong work ethics and I feel that if someone is paying me to do something, I better do it right and quick. It was already paying off.

I will admit that in the beginning, I didn’t know what my future held here. My main concern was getting through the Christmas season of 2002. Afterward, I got the news that I was staying onboard as a part time employee and I kept on selling those digital cameras! I was still young enough at this point to be caught up in the party scene and hanging out with my co-workers produced many friends in my contacts list. We also had a lot of great times.

Over the years, I’ve held various positions that eventually led me to becoming a Special Agent within the Geek Squad. I felt that I had found my calling and I was headed in the right direction with my “career” although I never intended on staying at Best Buy to satisfy it.

During this time, I was working as a field agent in a company car doing IT work for various clients. It was considered by some a dream job and even though it started out as one, it eventually took it’s toll. Retail politics, good people leaving the company, unruly clients and strange management hierarchies all helped to create a less-than-desirable workplace. It became less and less about the client and more and more about the money. Granted, a business needs profit to stay alive, but I don’t think they should go so far as to risk losing good customers as a result. Anyway, that’s another story!

I ended up working back in the store in February of 2009 due to some of this drama and it was then that I realized I was done. I needed to get out of there because I felt I wasn’t going to be able to reclaim my old position and not only that, but I didn’t think that even if I did that I would be helping my future much.

The job search began, but with the economy heading downward, it was glaringly obvious that this move wasn’t going to happen overnight. I eventually found that job and got it.

I am out of Best Buy come January 29th and it has been a long run! I was so happy to be able to walk in there and drop the news that I found a new job. I felt so liberated. I feel a little sad about leaving because its a comfort zone and I’ll be missing quite a few people, but I have so many memories to take with me.

This is a new chapter in my life and I can’t wait to see what happens next! The two best things that happened to me at Best Buy was the experience and friends I gained and the meeting my girlfriend.

Unfair business practice

· Brandon Hann

As a computer user, I can usually separate scams from reality when dealing with things online. I  help people all day long that can never seem to figure out how they get viruses on their computer when they have an antivirus program running or how their FaceBook account was hacked, etc, etc.

Or they wonder why all of a sudden their getting spam and pop up windows telling them they need to purchase some software to fix the problems and then their credit card is now being charged weird amounts of money at random times. The first thing they blame is the computer, then usually the credit card companies and lastly, their email provider. Who they should be blaming are themselves.

This post is particularly interested in unfair business practices by some businesses to extort extra money out of people when it comes to services. In fact, most businesses don’t make much, if any profit on most of the products they sell, so they rely on services and other high-margin items to make up the difference.

One specific issue happens to be the way antivirus (and possibly other software makers) companies try to attach an “extended download” service to their customer’s shopping cart at checkout. Essentially this service claims to allow for the customer to be able to download their purchased software anytime within the time frame as defined by each company. What this implies is that when you purchase your software online, you can access the download for about 15-60 days, but if in the future you restore your computer or get a new one, you will NOT have access to the software in order to re-install it UNLESS you purchased the extended download service–this is simply NOT TRUE!

First of all, this sounds very illegal. If you purchase software, you are entitled to its use as defined by the user agreement and I have never ran into a user agreement that did not allow you to install the software on another computer provided that you removed it from the first one.

Anyway, back to my rant. Let’s clear something up while we’re at it. When you buy software, either online or from a store, you’re not actually buying the software (the disc, the download, zip file, etc.)–what you’re really purchasing is the license to use it and in order for them to verify your “legal usage”, they issue a product key. What this simply means is that you’re able to plug that product key into any matching version of that software.

In the case of antivirus software, if you bought a product key from a 2007 version of the software and have kept it renewed to this day, you do not need to go and purchase a new 2010 version to update your software; you just need to go download the 2010 version and use your key and voilà, you have a legal copy of the software. “But, how can I download the new software?!”, you ask. Well, I’ll tell you…

You can download the software by simply going to the manufacturer’s website and look in the support section. Some make it easy to find, some a little harder. If for some reason, you can’t find it, you can always download the trial version and just enter your full version key to unlock it.

What makes me sick is that they tack these charges onto your shopping cart automatically, so if you don’t catch it and remove it, you might mistakenly pay for it and this can cost anywhere from $4.99-$10. What makes it even more sickening is if you click on the “What is this?” link, you might see something like this:

When you purchase downloadable software from Symantec’s online store, Digital River, Symantec’s authorized online retailer, automatically grants you 60 days from the date of purchase to download your software order.

If you add Extended Download Service to your downloadable software purchase order, Digital River will keep a backup of all the software on your order for ONE YEAR. If you need to re-download your software, or access your Serial Key; it will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for ONE YEAR from the date of purchase by going to www.symantecstore.com/orderlookup.

This is the actual text from Symantec, the makers of Norton AntiVirus. If you read this, you might actually be worried that your software will only be available for 60 days! But how can this be if you’re able to go over to Norton.com right now and download the software? And what about storing your product key? For one, you can store it yourself on your own computer, but if you don’t, you’re able to access it from your Norton account over at www.MyNortonAccount.com at any time anyway–and you’re forced to setup this account when installing!

At least Kaspersky does it a little different. They charge you $9.95 for a backup cd. I still find this to be a rip off, but at least you’re getting something for your money. Also, when you buy this cd, it literally comes to you in a basic cardboard shipper and the disc is a poorly made CDR. It looks like someone made it at home with a crappy cd printer. At any rate, why do you need a backup cd when you can download your program anytime from their site? And when you have this download, you can make your own backup cd! Others that offer physical cds are McAfee ($12.95), AVG ($10.95) and Webroot ($8.95).

I just don’t understand why a company would participate in such a dishonest act. I know there’s an old saying that says “Never let a sucker keep his money.”, but is that how you want to imagine that corporations view the public?

Direct download links for the latest antivirus programs:

Congrats to Webroot as they are the only one from above that does not try and charge you for free downloads!

Lessons learned today:

  • No matter where or what you’re buying online, always, always, always review the entire contents of your shopping cart before submitting the payment.
  • Do not be suckered into purchasing “antivirus” software from popup windows or junk emails. Legitimate companies (if you can still call them that after reading the above) will not spam you for business.
  • Don’t believe the hype! Think logically.
  • Backup your downloads and product keys. They really don’t take up that much room.
  • If all else fails and/or you’re still worried, always buy your software from a retailer. Not only will you get the same price as online, but you will also be saving money by not having to buy that backup disc.

American Idol

· Brandon Hann

I just watched the first episode of this year’s season and I always ask myself why this show is still so popular? I mean, doesn’t having a new idol each year diminish the value of the previous one just a bit more? What ever happened to musicians becoming big and famous naturally rather than fast forwarded to the forefront only to be quickly replaced and forgotten year after year? At least the Olympics let their winners keep their glory for four years!

Anyway, the point to this was really to say that I never really watch the show in it’s entirety. I just watch the auditions because I find it funny when people who have no talent actually think they do. Also, they always throw in those touching stories that sometimes bring your own life into perspective and make you realize that no matter what your problems are, there’s always someone who has something worse going on.

No matter how many stories from American Idol I watch, none compare to that of Sherman Pore. I’ll never forget how this 64-yr old man got a petition signed by over 350 people and then got an exception approved for his appearance on the show due to the current age limit of 28.

Here’s the video and if you want to read more on this story and what happened afterward, this blog entry has it all. By the way, Sherman made an album shortly after his American Idol audition which can be found at Amazon.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wluuaS89z6M

I wanted to summarize the aforementioned blog in case you don’t want to read the whole thing!

Sherman Pore had been told by many people that he had a great singing talent and that he should do something with it. Out of modesty or lack of self-confidence, he didn’t pursue it. Then, people started telling him he should try out for American Idol and of course were astonished at the age limit of 28 for the show. When these people agreed that this was unfair, Sherman asked them if they’d sign a petition saying so.

Sherman’s “lady love” of 20 years had come down with cancer and this little project of obtaining the petition was something shared by the two all the way to her final days. When Sherman got to the audition, he mentioned that having met his goal of getting on the show had eased his love’s passing and “made it a little softer”.

He explained to the panel of judges (along with guest judge Olivia Newton John) that his lady love had passed on Friday. This was two days before the audition and he wanted to sing her a song. He began with “You Belong To Me” and blew it away!

He brought Paula to tears and even received a personal comment from Simon, saying he was a class act. Simon then asked him to come over and shake his hand. Paula and Olivia hugged him and you can just feel the emotion in the air. Watch the video to see.

At the end, Sherman makes a point of saying “I won. I am a winner.”

DomainMonkeys.com

· Brandon Hann

I’ve dealt with my share of registrars in the past, but this one is by far the strangest. I’m writing this blog entry because I want to share my experience with the transferring of a domain I have registered with them while the process is going on to shed some light on any issues that occur for your future knowledge.

First off, I used SnapNames.com to acquire my full name as a domain so I can redirect it to this site. Since SnapNames is a domain backordering service, it needs to utilize many registrars in order to win the backorder race from other services like it. Because of this, any domain you ‘win’ from SnapNames will have been registered at a random registrar and then login details will be emailed to you in order to manage the domain.

The problems arise when you use one registrar for all your domains and you now have this new domain somewhere out there in a space that might not allow the same controls as your preferred registrar. The other problem is that you can’t transfer a domain until it’s been at the current registrar for 60 days.

Anyway, SnapNames registered my new domain over at DomainMonkeys.com and I must say that I’m surprised this company gets any business with the way it’s run and the lack of services and features that you can use on your domains. Regardless, I want my new domain in my GoDaddy account and on Sunday (1-10) I placed a transfer order there. In the past, all you needed to do was unlock the domain from the losing registrar and then retrieve the transfer codes to input into the site, but now, you have to wait for the “Transfer Concierge” to do things.

So I wait. And what happens? Well, because DomainMonkeys’ whois server is not using the standard port 80, no other whois servers can access it and therefore appears down. Now I have to wait for some type of human interaction on GoDaddy’s part to move this thing along.

As of this writing, I’m stuck of step 1 of 4 and the actual message I’m getting is:

Step 1: Initiate
Transfer is waiting for the Transfer Concierge to address a whois data problem. We were unable to get the whois data from the losing registrar. The Transfer Concierge will resolve this issue.
Recommended Action:
No customer action is required at this time.

I’ve already unlocked the domain and have even requested the authorization code, but since I can’t input it, I’m stuck waiting!

UPDATE – Jan 16, 2010

A couple days ago, I was moved up to step 3 which is the Accept or Decline step and normally when you receive an email from the losing registrar that someone is trying to transfer your domain away. At this point you can allow it or not. This is all contingent on two things: 1, the domain is not in “transfer lock” status and 2, you have the correct email address set for the admin contact. I have satisfied both of these requirements. I have the domain in “ok” status and is ready for transfer and I also have the right admin email address.

Easy enough, right? I should have been transferred by now. But no, I’m still waiting for that accept/reject email and there’s no way to force it through at DomainMonkeys.com! So, back at GoDaddy, it says that if the domain transfer is not accepted or rejected within 5 days, the transfer will proceed.

Well it looks like after about 7 days after everything was started, the domain is now resting comfortably in my GoDaddy account. I’m feel much better now.

Review of DomainMonkeys.com

If the first indicator of their professionalism didn’t come from the fact that their name contains the word “monkeys” in it, then maybe a quick look at their homepage did the trick. Here’s a screenshot as of today (Jan 18th, 2010):

DomainMonkeys.com homepage

The rule is and always has been, never judge a book by its cover, but this website is lacking everything but the cover. First off, my impression is that this company is simply one of the hundreds, if not thousands of ‘dummy’ registrars setup by sites like SnapNames.com, Pool.com and whoever else in an effort to add more outlets to snap up all the deleting domains coming out each day. I came to this conclusion because I discovered this site after a successful auction with SnapNames. They also don’t sell any other services or even try to offer you any type of support.

Down to the nitty gritty. There’s five links on the homepage. There’s one for the Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, WHOIS, Support and my favorite: Domain Updates. The first three require no explanation so we’ll start with the support page. It’s a very basic form that you have to manually fill out completely and this is also where you can apparently order new domains, although I wouldn’t recommend it because I can only guess as to where you’re supposed to type in your credit card number. And even after I guessed, I’d probably still be wrong. They do have a support number located at a 303 area code, but I get the feeling that I’d be dialing a rotary phone sitting on a tv tray in someone’s living room.

Updating your domain for those of you who use sites like GoDaddy, Register.com, Moniker, etc. is fairly an easy process and these days, you can probably add all sorts of free services to spice up your cool domain. The best part about DomainMonkeys’ domain update page is the login requirements!

As an example, say your domain is: LEDFROG.COM, your email is: nothing@nothing.com and your password is: passw0rd. This is how you login:

You click on the Update link from the homepage and you’re taken here:

DomainMonkeys.com Login page

In the account verification box, you are to type in this string: ledfrog.comnothing@nothing.compassw0rd

No joke. That’s the login. All three. All together. No spaces. Plain text.

…

Once you’re in, you’re golden until you want to transfer your domain to someone else. More on this later as the developments of my own transfer unfold!

Final decision: I will never use DomainMonkeys to register any new domains and I’m likely to never deal with them again unless I’m forced to by SnapNames.

Vegas '10

· Brandon Hann

I don’t remember the last time I went to Las Vegas, but given my many prior visits and the very short times between them, it has been a very long time since I’ve been there. Gone are the days where my friend and I would each get a free room at the Wynn in which we would acquire adjoining rooms to create our custom suite. Gone are the nights when we would buy a cheap box of Bud Light and walk down The Strip until we found a casino worthy of our monetary donations. And most of all, gone are the days of turning red under the sun while we became waterlogged in the pool.

A new Vegas experience emerged in this new year–maybe it was a turning of the times; a slowed economy, an over-saturated city littered with club after club or simply the over-rated “attractions” that seem to get more boring and dull over the years. Or maybe it was the dim realization that I’m just growing up.

For better or worse, Vegas is just not the same anymore. For the first time since I was too young to gamble, I went to this desert town to enjoy the sights and sounds. I cared less about what hot new club or bar I’d visit at night and cared even less about how much alcohol I could consume in one sitting. I laughed at the sea of cliché people that surrounded us–guys dressed to impress and hitting on girls that wanted nothing to do with them, girls dressed like hookers but not wanting any attention and the real hookers making a living among the crowds of people ranging in age from 10-65. As they say, only in Vegas.

We started our completely spontaneous adventure at 21:30 Friday night, arrived into town around 01:20 Saturday morning and made our first stop at an old friend’s house. It was here we enjoyed a warm climate and reminiscent conversation. We couldn’t stay long because he was on his way to sleep and we had business to tend to.

Our plan didn’t include a place to stay or any particulars throughout the trip. We hadn’t even planned the time we’d return home. All we knew is that we wanted to drink a little and gamble a lot. We drove to The Strip and landed at the Sahara in hopes to find $5 craps tables. We ended up playing some slots.

We were tired. Rather than stay up all night and day, we opted to sleep. This was where the fun began. If anyone has ever had to sleep in a Scion, you understand was a feat this is. It wasn’t enough that it was numbingly cold–it was also a small space and very uncomfortable. The time is about 04:30 Saturday morning and I’m trying to sleep fully clothed and covered only by a second shirt that I brought. At one point, I was laying in the shape of an ‘L’ and draped over the suitcases we had stacked in the back. Everything would have been fine if I had been able to keep my legs from losing circulation.

Somehow I fell asleep and woke up to sound of the song from Kill Bill Vol. 1 blaring from Nina’s iPhone alarm. The day was as normal as any day could be. We ate, met with friends and gambled a bit. The nighttime is what brought us an interesting adventure–it was the darker side of my roommate after being consumed by alcohol–yes, he did not consume the alcohol, but the other way around. We ended up at Bar at Times Square™ in the New York, New York hotel, but instead of paying a $10 cover, we stayed outside and enjoyed the free entertainment. I, myself was completely sober and wanting to go home having lost my gambling money. My roommate had other plans. He was to obliterate himself with tequila and Budweiser while becoming a quasi-celebrity on the thoroughfare by shaking hands, following girls, staring people down, throwing up ‘high-fives’ and dancing like a clown. I will admit, this was comical for a short period of time, but being sober, all this wore thin (very fast) on my patience.

Around 01:00 Sunday morning, I grew tired both physically and mentally and decided to retreat to the car to sleep until it was time to leave. Once there, I managed to brush my teeth using a cup of water obtained at the bar on my way out and laid down to sleep. Not more than thirty minutes after I left, I start getting phone calls from Nina telling me that I need to come help her with Chris because he’s become too drunk to handle himself and is starting to act out in ways that would upset the most liberal of people.

Once I got a hold of him, I moved him back to his car and put him inside to sleep. I went back and got Nina and thought about what to do. We were left with two options: one, stay and sleep a while or two, drive home. It was decided that we should leave. I was the only one that could drive because not only was I sober, but I was the only other one of our group that could handle driving a manual transmission. In reality, I’ve only driven a stick shift once in my life–about 4 years ago! I re-learned this process in the parking structure on the way out.

After getting on the 15 to head home and after finally finding 3rd gear, we were on our way home. The intention here was to make it home in time so Chris can get to work by 10:00 Sunday morning. At the rate I was headed, we were due by 06:30. I can tell you right now that driving tired is just as bad as driving drunk and I do not recommend it to anyone! I can’t say I completely remember the drive home, but I do remember falling in and out of reality, hallucinating and feeling like I was in a dream for the entire four hour drive.

We arrived at almost the exact time planned and I promptly went to sleep.

I took five pictures during the time we were there, which is a far cry from the hundreds I used to take and all five are of the new hotel, Aria. I can say that the next time I go to Vegas, it’s going to be simple. A nice hotel room, nice restaurants, a show or two and my beautiful girlfriend. I can say that I’m almost 28 and I no longer have an interest in finding out how many shots I can take without passing out.

A Most Awesome Christmas

· Brandon Hann

Better late than never.

I wanted to tell the story of Christmas Eve 2009. For anyone following my previous FaceBook notes have read how I feel about the wonderful girl I’m dating and how very lucky I feel just to know her. Some people will go an entire lifetime having never known someone that they can trust completely and someone who they feel much respect from. I think this is unfortunate. I have to go on a small tangent here and say that I’m not sure why people settle for some things in life. Maybe it’s a job or it’s a living arrangement or simply a relationship. I hear more and more people complaining about the “problems” in their life, but then appear to do nothing to try and revert or remove these problems. This is especially true of relationships. I think people are impatient or feel like they can’t do better, so they make the best at what they have. Fortunately, I’ve never been this way and I vowed I would not settle for anything in life that does not make me happy.

Ok, moving on!

My girlfriend draws. She actually draws a lot and she’s very stingy about who gets her drawings, if anybody at all. In fact, she does maybe three drawings a week and I only possess two. Aside from that, she always asks me what she should draw next. For the longest time, I’ve asked her to draw a picture of Elvis for me and she always complained that it would be too hard to do.

Anyway, for Christmas, she brought over to my family’s house a really, really large box for my gift. I couldn’t begin to guess what it was. She wanted us to open our gifts in front of everyone, so we did. I opened this big box and found all sorts of things inside. All the little gifts were related to each other and they all had something to do with Elvis–some books, a cd, a dvd, coffee mug, etc. Then I unwrapped the large gift at the bottom and discovered this:

Elvis drawingI couldn’t speak a word, but everyone else thought it was absolutely amazing. I thought it was much more than that, but for the first time ever, I couldn’t say what I wanted to say and for the briefest of moments, time stood still. I couldn’t stop staring at it and at that moment I felt that feeling again. The one I felt the day I met her. It’s a feeling I can’t explain, but it’s similar to what I imagine winning the lottery would be like.

It is the best gift I’ve ever gotten.

New look!

· Brandon Hann

I decided to change the theme to something a little more interesting and one that incorporates new widgets and design features. In my search for free WordPress themes, I came across this one from WooThemes and am happy with the results so far. With that said, if you seen any problems or things not showing up correctly, don’t worry, I’m just ironing out the kinks.