I knew that we would be getting our money around the time that Molly’s birthday would happen and just by pure happenstance she had the week before Presidents Day off. I quickly took the time off as well, determined to spend the week at home and hang out with her instead of working from home and just letting the week go to waste. Then I thought about a trip with her. Some place that she had never been too before, a place that she would appreciate. A place that I vaguely remembered, but had an excellent time at when i was a kid. Washington DC was that location.

My parents took Joe and I to the Smithsonian when we were kids and I still remember it, little flashes, nothing concrete, but this was a plan and it started rolling from there. Maybe this is where I got my love of history, I am not sure, but I do know that she will be immersed in it. She has been given a little notepad to carry around with her to put notes in and is required to write 5 things she learned every day while we are gone. This will be accompanied by pictures of the locations with her little blurb. I hope to dear god she gets inspired, this is the age that she needs to understand that she can start to make a difference in her own life. She needs to grab on to something and run with it. I want her to understand that her dreams can be reached with some work. I want her to understand that nothing is standing in her way of accomplishing anything, other than herself.

By understanding how our government works, understanding the amount of time that this country has been around and what this country was built on, maybe that will foster a sense of pride in her that I feel about being an American. Granted, i look at two flags with equal value, the South Korean flag and the United States flag, they are equal in my eyes. My mother is Korean and my father born int he United States. That is my legacy. Molly is from two parents that come from different ethnicities, but she is American through and through. She is what this country is about, if you want to talk about a melting pot, she is the perfect example. She is part Korean, she is part Filipino, she is part Caucasian, she is part Native American, she is part Chinese, there is probably more so in her background that we do not even know. She is the perfect example of multiculturalism today. I hope she takes this mantle and runs with it.

The United States is the mutt of the world. This is the most perfect line from Stripes. Nobody wanted us, hell, they kicked us out in some regards and we found a home. Molly is a mutt and she has to understand what this country is about, what she is about and I hope that this trip instills in her the belief that she can do anything.

I am a proud American, i love the red white and blue, I love the stars and stripes, I love this country and all that it has to offer. Hopefully my daughter will grow to appreciate it as much as I do.

I have had a love affair with Mint Skoal for probably 15 years. It started casually in 1996 at work, just using on my drive home from Cloud 9 Interactive. The 2 hour drive in traffic was horrendous and it gave me something to do while I literally went 10 mph on the freeway. It really kicked into high gear when I was in Jacksonville, I found that I could do it at my desk while working without anyone knowing. Then of course with my troll like status at my current office, nobody interacts with me, so hiding my addiction was very easy to do and also since others in the office were dipping as well, I was not a social pariah.

But I cannot continue this. I think the worst thing is that I don’t dislike it. I am addicted to it, but I am not sure if I am addicted to the act, or if I am addicted to the use of it. It confuses me. This really sucks since I know what it has done to my body, I know that it has ravaged my lungs. My voice has changed, my breath stinks, my body is not what it was and is not in the shape that it could be in.

I need to stop, for myself, for my family, for my life. I want to grow up and see my daughter get married, I want to sit there and bounce a little McGuffin on my knee and tell them stories of their grandfather as a child. I want to grow old and see the future. It is about living clean.

Maybe I will just start drinking.

Got online catted around a bit, then got a call from Marie to come by her room and hang out. Met Marie finally, Jenny and Sheila, drank rum straight and then after 20 years, there was a knock on the door. The minute it opened up, I saw someone that I honestly recognized right off. Megan Fletcher walked in. Last time I saw Megan was outside of the bookstore in Baumholder, December 29, 1993. She looked almost the same, it was really nice to see her again. After talking with her for about an hour or so I headed back downstairs to meet up with another old friend.

Went downstairs and got together with Ivan Maxfield and his wife Kim. From there it was pretty much a blur. I remember seeing people Like Amy Mason, Ken Shields and a slew of others at Kahunaville, but names and faces were lost. Apparently, I am a hugger, I hugged everyone from what people have told me. I do recall leaving Kahunaville after the bartender told me that I had been cut off. I wandered around looking for the elevator that would take me to my floor. Somehow I ended up on I want to say the 32nd floor (My room was on 14), four guys in suits stopped me and asked me I was a guest on that floor. Since all of the rooms and hallways look alike I said yes and pointed down the hall to where I thought my room was.

They quickly pushed me back into the elevator and told me to go downstairs. Which I did.

Got into the right elevator this time and hit what I thought was floor 14 and got out, staggered down the hall to what I thought was room 14089 and started inserting my keycard and the door would not open. So I kept doing it, getting frustrated until I heard an ominous voice behind the door say, “Dude, you got the wrong room drunkass.” I looked up and the room number read 12089. I staggered down the hallway till I got to the elevator again and got to my floor and into my room and proceeded to crash out.

Apparently I called Jocelyn and told her what was going on and how pissed off I was at security. I do not recall that phone call.

Once on the floor we searched out the TokiDoki booth and bought some stuff for Molly and also for Jocelyn. I headed over to the COH booth and got my Ghoul card and then wandered around the rest of the convention floor as time was passing by too quickly. Molly and I left shortly after that.

There are two kinds of people at the Con, people that are there to get stuff, and people like myself who are there for the experience and enjoy the people. I could spend all day long just sitting there taking pictures of people dressed up, or sitting and watching panel after panel. Not spending a single dime on buying anything. I enjoy the convention floor, but could spend all day on the second level with the panels and where the people dressed up hang out. Thursday will be a fun filled day and I will enjoy myself to no end.

Saw Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis at the star trek booth where they were signing autographs, saw a place card for Brent Spiner, but he was not there. I am sure that I will run across him eventually. Got some solid video that I will eventually post, but right now just tired and the informaiton overload is just way too high.

Granted, I can still hear, but it is probably at about 75% of what I normally could hear at. It is annoying listening to people on the phone and it is like they are talking through a wet towel. It became highly apparent today during my one on one with my team lead and I honestly had issues. I could hear what she was saying, but it was very muffled to say the least.

Over the last two weeks I have had to listen very closely to what people have said, when they talk really low it is a crap shoot as to what they have said. I smile and giggle a little bit, or I move closer towards them to listen. It has been interesting to say the least. Jocelyn is annoyed beyond belief.

The doctor said that it has to do with some tubes behind my nostrils that are not working properly, they are letting things in, but they are not letting them out, basically clogging my ear canals. The suggestion is to get permanent ear tubes placed into my ears. This would eliminate me from being able to swim pretty much unless I used those heavy duty ear plugs which would in affect render me almost completely deaf while in the water.

Though on the positive side of things I would in fact not have any issues with flying, which could open up the path to doing more air based activities. I have an appointment set for Jun 16 to get more information on what I can and cannot do once this procedure is done.

This is finals week at Mesa. So basically two more classes and I am off for the remainder of the summer, then back again next fall for the second installment of ASL. Rather enjoying the class, I love the movements, I love the ability to communicate without speaking. As I have said time and time again, I could go through out an entire day without saying a single word and not complain in the least. Technology has allowed me to do that. I can chat with people online and email to communicate. It is the perfect medium to live without speaking. A day without spoken word is attainable.

Now, if I can communicate via sign, then i do not even need to talk to people if I can find others to sign with. It would in fact be epic. I would not want to lose my hearing, but it would be good to just not say anything.

PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL PQ ,RB, Poway, Sabre Springs, MM and Carmel Valley Residents:

Stater Bothers shopping center patrons:

Please be aware that an attempted murderer is on the loose after a very violent incident in PQ on Tuesday night (see below). The police are looking for a migrant who hangs out and most likely lives in the bushes down near the bike path/skatepark area near RP Blvd and I-56. He tends to stand out as he is much larger than most of them and I believe the group he hangs with are the ones that generally collect right behind the Stater Brothers’ parking lot near the frame shop.

Since the incident on Tuesday night, I have not seen this group of about 6 men. They generally appear to be drunk by mid day, either drinking in front of the Stater Brothers or in one of the two freeway rounds to I 56 at RP Blvd. Unfortunately this is not the first attack in the area as the poor older security guard was threatened with his life and attacked some time back when he asked some drunk Hispanic male adults to exit the same area in the shopping center. The police have video surveillance pictures of the suspect and are working diligently to apprehend him.

Please be cautious and if you have questions call SDPD NE at 538-8000. Also sign up for the instant email and text messaging alerts from https://local.nixle.com/accounts/login/ as it provides very good timely information on crimes.

I personally like the “He tends to stand out as he is much larger than most of them” line. I was telling Jocelyn the other day, that the migrants near under the bridge are all painfully short, I mean they are lucky if they break 5′ tall. I think this guy must be at least 5’5″.

This is the synopsis from SDPD:

Synopsis:

The victim, HMA, 30s, is an employee of the Bettys Car Wash. As he was getting ready to leave the car wash he saw the suspect near the side of the closed business. He asked the suspect to leave, but the suspect became hostile. A fight ensued, where the suspect stabbed the victim in the lower abdomen. The victim tried to get away from the suspect, but the suspect followed him. The suspect again stabbed the victim, this time multiple times in the upper torso. The suspect was last seen running from the scene, east bound on Carmel Mountain Road. The victims wounds are not considered life threatening. The suspect is described as, HMA, 40s, 5 10, heavy build, blue shirt, blue jeans, brown work boots, and a white baseball cap. The suspect appeared to be intoxicated on alcohol. Northeastern Division is investigating.

Hmmmm… blue shirt, blue jeans, brown work boots with a baseball cap… okay, that describes almost every migrant that is around the bridge area.

I have been using Turbo Tax online now for probably the last three years and will do so again this year. So I was a little confused. I wandered up tot he library and logged in on my laptop to see the email message in full view and noticed that someone had used my email address for notifications. His name was similar to mine, first initial the same and last name being the same. I was one of the first folks on gmail and had set it up in that manner for myself, so I kind of lucked out. Well this guy in Kentucky may have fat fingered his notification email and it ended up on mine instead. So I was in fact getting his notifications. There was NO PERSONAL INFORMATION being emailed to me, just status updates.

This is where it got a little interesting. I decided, hey, if I was this guy and he was getting my emails about tax stuff, I would want him to reach out to me and tell me that it was messed up. I had his address, knew where he lived, knew his name, but had no phone number and had no clue what his email address actually was. So I did a search online and found nothing, facebook, myspace, and other locations with no luck.

I decided that I should contact TurboTax and see what can be done. Did the online chat with somebody that took almost twenty minutes to respond back to me, by then I had had enough and closed out of chat and decided to call up TurboTax directly. I believe that I ended up somewhere in India with the wonderful Indian guy named Peter. He was of absolutely no help, so I hung up on him after 5 minutes and made a post on twitter about how annoyed I was.

Lo and behold, I got a response from someone at @TeamTurboTax, a young lady by the name of Chelsea. She asked me to driect message her and I did, she followed up by sending me her email address and I forwarded on the correspondence to her. By morning I had gotten an email from her and Bob telling me that they have let the person know and that it has been taken care of. I have heard stories of how people have been helped on twitter and in general, I tend to use twitter to just rant and rave about stupid things and stupid people, but after 4600+ tweets, I finally found a good use for the service.

I did not need to talk to anyone, I did not need to do much, and all in all was very pleased with the quick response that i got. I felt comfortable that it was being dealt with by people that understood that I was not doing anything wrong, if anything I was just trying to help out someone that made a mistake. I also felt very good that the emails that i did get in regards to status notifications did not really allow me to log in as this person to get to any real pertinent data.

I will continue to use TurboTax in the future. The funny thing is, working with One Reverse Mortgage, a Quicken Loans Company, we are always associated with the good folks over at Intuit and much like how the folks over at Quicken Loans use twitter to help their customers, I felt very happy that our friends at Intuit were doing the same.

After reading the article I was #1 shocked that the museum was in my home town even before I moved their in 1990 and never knew it, and #2 was shocked at the amount of stuff it had. Granted, it was not a huge place, but it was really pretty cool seeing the stuff. The Korean room was fairly small, but it was nice to see the statues that I remembered seeing as a child.

Molly and Jocelyn enjoyed the ceramics and a number of other things that showed up in the other rooms. It was nice to get out of the house on a bright wonderful Southern California day.

Then it was drive to the Rose Bowl. It was 11 years since Jocelyn had been there, 11 years since I sat her down and proposed to her. This time, 11 years later, Molly was there and had a chance to run around. It was really nice.

Drove to my grandparents house in Alhambra, especially after I had heard that the new owners have put a second story on the place. It took a little bit to locate the house, but it brought back many memories. The chain link gate to the garage was swapped out with this gaudy wooden fence. But I knew what was behind there. I knew what the yard looked like. I could walk through there with a blindfold and know what it was like.

If I won the lottery, I would definitely go and try and buy that house. It seems wrong that a McGuffin does not live there anymore. I would get rid of the fence and put up another type of gate, like the way it should be. I would make sure the work room in the garage was converted into a small bedroom, like it was when I was a kid.

I miss Los Angeles. I miss the people, I miss the heat, I miss the traffic. I miss being close to my family.

I think I have the alphabet sort of down, I am still having problems with the letter “P” and “R” and sometimes I get stuck on “E” but all in all the alphabet is easy. Fingerspelling from me to someone else is slow, but I can do it. The other way around though I have problems, especially someone doing it to me, that will take some getting use to. If it is a long word.. no dice right now.

It will be a little interesting to see how the class is set up today, especially with no translator. The teacher has been doing it now for 11 years, so I am sure she understands how to do it. It will just be a little awkward the first night. I guess I should go and buy the books tomorrow or Friday. One has a DVD in it, Molly and I will enjoy watching that.

Jocelyn has been a trooper this week, put up with Molly Monday when I started class, then took her to taekwondoe as I was dealing with a computer issue, and now tonight it is just her and Molly again. Tomorrow hopefully I can have the computer issue resolved so that I can go watch Molly get her taekwondoe on.

Ok, class is over. Role took 45 minutes, but I can see what she is doing, a lot of fingerspelling and also basic introductions, today was who’s name is? and Are you ____? Learned yes, no, understand, and nice to meet you. I am sure that things will pick up more as time goes, but it was a nice way to start the class off. We did some mirroring which is important when speaking with others in the deaf community. I also learned that facial expressions determine the “phrase” of the sentence. If you look at someone with eyebrows raised and head slightly pushed forward, it is a question, furled eyebrows is anger. Much more involved, but if you get right down to it, it makes sense that facial expressions play a big role, kind of like tensing.

There is also no complete sentence structure. Instead of Are you Danny? It is more like You Danny? But I am sure that as time goes on, the structure of how things are situated will come up.

2004 was the start of Discount National Mortgage. I drove down to San Diego early Monday morning and parked in front of the new office building.I stopped off at a VONS and had a small breakfast. Sean showed up and introduced me to the crew. David Lippe, Helena Steffen, and Gregg Smith were the most notable. Shaida Anzari, Scott Gorrie, Jason Struthers, and a few more that I cannot remember off of the top of my head. Most of 2004 was learning what I was capable of. I learned a lot about networking, setting up technology, graphics arts, I learned many many things. Our company name changed from Discount National Mortgage to One Mortgage Network, Inc.

Jocelyn and Molly moved to San Diego April 24th of that year. My mother had a stroke in early November and I was back in Jacksonville for a week, then back in San Diego. The year ended with Jocelyn and Molly and I enjoying our time watching the fireworks from the hill in La Jolla.

2005 was the year that I really blossomed, I learned how to do pay per click marketing and I also learned a software called salesforce.com, it was also the first year that we decided to put our toe into the reverse mortgage world, which was a great idea as it would work out really well for us. I finally found something that I was good at. The company was starting to take off. My folks moved to Los Angeles this year.

2006 was a year that we started to ramp up the reverse mortgage company, people were hired left and right, the two that stand out are Kristen Sieffert and Kimberly Kerrigan. The goal was to go wholesale and the following year we did. Molly started kindergarten at Los Penasquitos. Jocelyn was getting her footing in the technology world, even though she hated it.