Yeah, it's a little word that packs a punch. Some of us (especially me) have a hard time using the word though.

I've run myself into a corner, and I'm starting to pay the price. I have 3 businesses I'm involved in, 2 of which I claim ownership of. Then I've got my day job that I'm starting to get quite saturated with, and I have a few business ideas that I would really enjoy getting off the ground sometime in the next millennium.

I need to cut back, though... A lot! I'm working about 45-50 hours a week at the office to get my bills paid and to help out with somewhat irrational deadlines and workloads due to the staffing being a little short. On top of that, I have somewhere between 5 and 15 projects going for my other business ventures. I quote such a wide range because I seriously have lost count, and one project seems to lead to another these days.

I am really feeling quite buried, and I think I'm going to start considering cutting my losses. I'm going to finish the pending projects, then I will evaluate which company has the most potential to provide me with a comfortable living and which will be more likely to reach that potential.

At this point, I think I'm just going to continue working the way I have, but I need to work in some more personal time. Sure, I go fishing or bowling a couple times a week, but that's usually just a couple of hours. I would write myself a schedule, but I don't want to do that. My day is long enough as it is, and that will just add to it, not to mention the whole "I feel like I'm running out of time" bit. There are a few things for certain though:

- Wednesday and/or Thursday are fishing
- Friday is bowling practice
- Saturday (weather permitting) I am going for a 10-20 mile bike ride
- Sunday night is bowling league

I'm a bit late on announcing this, but yeah.. The previous post was a lame attempt at an "April Fools" joke. Some people fell for it, while others caught on right away.

I doubt I'll ever kill Skudd.com or the Wildebeest, as they're too prominent in certain areas of the web.

So yeah. That's that.

Some town official in Oklahoma threatened one of the CentOS developers with legal action, all because their server wasn't configured properly -- Nothing the CentOS development team had any control over.

Well, in response to the recent spamming attempts on here, I've added a new regular expressions-based banning system. This system will traverse the GET, POST, and COOKIE arrays, looking for matches to certain patterns which I have defined and will continue to update. Primarily, my goal is to block automated scripts from adding their content to the comments, which do not require authentication.

If you happen to see a message stating that you have been banned (which is highly unlikely), and you feel that it is wrong, let me know right away.

I apologize now if this causes any problems for anyone: That is not my intent.

I just ran a query on the database for this site...

mysql> INSERT INTO blog_bans
    -> VALUES(0, '69.231.145.113', '3', '1/6/06', 'If you want to access the site still, you know how to contact me. Grow up and I\'ll let you back in.');

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

"Many Moons VII", grow up.

As of this morning, "Dude" is no longer employed at the shop. I'm not sure if he quit or if he got fired, but either way, it means a little less headache.

I got a call from "Boss Lady" a little bit ago. She had a little story to tell me...

She said that this morning, first thing, she came down to the shop here in town, but she parked across the street where she couldn't be seen from the shop. She then walked across to the McDonald's that is right next door to the shop, and sat there watching for about half an hour. After half an hour of watching "Dude" sitting around and doing nothing, and "Big Dude" doing a little bit of work, she decided to call them up from her cell phone.

When she called, she asked Dude how things were going, and he told her that they were busy cleaning and such. She asked him what he was doing right at that instant, and he said he was busy cleaning, but didn't go into detail. She then told him that it looked to her like he was just sitting around doing nothing, and hung up on him.

As she walked across from the McDonald's to the shop, Dude told Big Dude that he didn't need his mother watching him work. When Boss Lady got there, she told Dude to clock out. He clocked out and stormed out the door without saying a word, got in his vehicle, and left in a big hurry.

Boss Lady told me that she doesn't expect that Dude will be back to work, and that this is "the beginning of the end." She told me that I will be getting my title of "manager" very soon, and that I will be in charge of Big Dude an New Dude.

I was just sitting here, working on a web project, and I got this call that said "Please call us back immidately. It is important that you return this call."

I Googl'ed the number they called from to look for fraud, and nothing turned up, so I went ahead and called them back (it was a toll-free number).

When they answered, it was the typical "this call may be recorded" message, then I got connected with a dude that was calling on behalf of Southwestern Bell.

The dude asked for my dad, and I told him that I was able to speak on his behalf. He asked if I had power of attorney or some crap to speak for him, so I said "yes", assuming it was a telemarketer. He said that he was calling to reconcile a long overdue payment for someone with my dad's name, and I suggested that I have Mom call him back when she got home. The guy said, "Okay, that's fine, but I need to confirm your address..."

Turns out, he was looking for someone who lived on Market Street in Kokomo, which is about 90 minutes southeast of here. To the best of my knowledge, none of my family has ever lived there, with the exception of my brother-in-law.

I told the guy that he had the wrong person, and he said, "Yeah, apparently I do. I'm sorry, sir. We'll not bother you again."

[10:52:24] [teddy] jmoschetti45, this is your official last warning. if you describe something that has caused, or could cause bodily injury to, or others, you will be banned.
[10:52:39] [jmoschetti45] ...
[10:52:57] [jmoschetti45] how long?
[10:53:15] [teddy] for
[10:53:16] [teddy] ev
[10:53:17] [teddy] er
[10:53:30] --- jmoschetti45 (jmoschetti@jmoschetti45.at.preempted.net) has left #neworder (fsck that lol)

People who try to be the social butterfly always seem to get themselves hurt. When they do, they make sure the entire social group knows about it.

Here's a suggestion:
DON'T BE SO FRIGGIN' CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR IMAGE AND DO WHAT'S RIGHT!

That was aimed at nobody in particular.