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tomdo98@aol.com |
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Archives
Picture Portfolios Wendy's Going Away Party and Hung's Christmas Party Wardro p90X watch
Random Pictures
Longhorns are National Champs!! Longhorns are National Champs! (1/4/2006)
Go Horns! The start of the Horn's disappointing season (10/31/2006)
Watch your back BJ Penn, I got my blue belt in Brazilian Jujitsu!
Everyone should try to quit smoking. Smoke free 2.5 years. (pictured in 2002)
Really gay over the shoulder pose. (pictured in 2003)
Jujitsu/MMA commentary updated 12/04/07
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May 2008 Archives |
movie reviews updated 04/16/2008
Painting and Drawing updated 2/21
new drawings (click to enlarge)
Click on head for pics
Repeat Topics
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05/30/2008 My Old Boss and Breast Cancer
I know people who read my blog aren't reading it for very serious topics but I thought I'd write one this morning just because it's a story with a feel good ending and chock full of hope.
As many of you know, I was a consultant for CSC for about 7 years. In those 7 years, this was my boss:
Mona Daggett Bauldry and Francesca
I left that job about 4 years ago. I don't keep up with many people from CSC but I often wonder what became of all the great people I met in that time. Most of us live in different states so it's pretty much impossible to maintain much more than a pen pal or IM relationship with these people. Darin, the car jacking buster, for instance, lives in Florida. Glenda, the one had that has the kid that wished you the boogary Christmas, lives in North Carolina. Or is it South Carolina? Is there actually a difference?
booger boy in his Christmas sweater
My old weight lifting buddy Rob, lives in Chicago. I do have one CSC buddy that actually lives in Austin and works at the same company that I'm at right now. Mona, lives in Oakland.
Just recently, I heard that Mona had breast cancer.
Here are some of the early details: “Today's call from
Mona was sorrowful. She has completed a battery of tests and her
cancer has progressed to stage 4 and has spread to her bones. The
doctors have told her that the success of the treatments at this
stage in not good. This is about as tough as it gets. Mona and Lane
are now revisiting their strategy to look at other options such as
Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, MD Anderson etc. She request that you please
continue to pray for her. Please include her in any prayer circles
that you may have access”. “I've got the fight of my life right now, but I do not feel alone. All of you are in it with me. As Cheryl Edwards told me yesterday, I'm not a 'fighter (it's too nice a word)', I'm a 'scrapper'. I'll fight like hell for me and my family. Success rate for my situation for 5 years is 27%. I WILL BE ONE OF THAT 27 out of 100. I will BE the exception to the rule. I admit that I didn't much faith upon hearing this news. You always hear about those steps people go through when they're sick. The denial, the anger, the depression, the acceptance. Since it had progressed to such a late stage, as Mona indicated above, the percentage of survival goes all the way down to 27%.
Most stories don't end up like Lance Armstrong. Just a few days ago, I got an "important update" from the web site that was tracking Mona's progress. The email didn't give any details as to what the update was. I was kind of scared to read it but to my delight, this was the update: Mona was scheduled for her 5th chemo treatment today, where they changed her medicine for the next four rounds, and she received the most incredible results from her recent body scan: The cancer cells that had spread to her bones are dead, and the tumors in her breast have literally disappeared. Read that again! Mona will continue her treatments as the doctors stay on top of this to monitor her health. Once the chemo is complete, surgery is still a choice, and there will be hormones and drugs to treat it as a manageable, chronic disease. She will need to strengthen her bones and continue being proactive to stay in remission. It may not be the end of her battle but that, to me, sounds like awesome news. Until this and until someone I met recently, I didn't realize how common breast cancer is and how aggressive it can be. I think I just assumed that it was as easily treatable as a cancerous mole (although I'm sure skin cancer can be aggressive and fatal as well.) I just really don't know about cancers at all. I don't think it would necessarily benefit me to study up on cancer because it just might make me really paranoid all the time. I guess I really just hope someone would come up with a dang ole cure already. |
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05/29/2008 Digital Picture Frames
I gave Mandy a digital picture frame as a gift around September or December of last year. I loaded it up and we turned it on and never turned it off. It was about $120 dollars. I was kind of curious as to how long it would last if left on 24/7. I just found out about a week ago. The thing won't even turn on now. I'm going to get another one because I take a lot of pictures and it's pretty cool to look at it every 30 seconds and not know what new picture you're going to see next.
To make it last long, can I turn it off every once in a while or when I sleep? We'll see. Maybe it's worth $100 bucks every 6 months to just leave it on and not worry about it. |
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05/27/2008 Might Be The Scariest Story Told To Me By A Person I Know
As told by this guy:
He didn't think that picture was very tough so he preferred that I use one from his youth.
He gave me permission to reprint his IM story to me.
Darin : so I nearly got carjacked last
night [end]
That story would give me nightmares because of the possible things that could have gone wrong. What if he got gas instead of just getting a drink? Definitely would have gotten jacked. What if he didn't lock the doors when he got in the car? Jacked for sure. What if they get him after he already tried to run? Jacked and ass kicked or killed for sure. What if he had to run someone over? What a mess that would be explaining that story. |
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05/27/2008 My First Trip To Costco
I've never shopped at Costco before. As a child, I've been in Sam's like twice but my parents never had a membership. We were always guests on someone else's card. The best thing I ever got at Sam's were boxes of Blowpops. My friend and I would sell them at .25 or .50 a piece and make a good profit for a kid.
I'm a bit addicted to Monster Low Carb Energy Drink so my friend, Thang, bought me a case at Costco containing about 30 cans. Monster is kind of expensive. It's like 7 dollars or something for 4 cans. I think the price at Costco for a case got it down to about a dollar a can. I recently finished the case Thang bought me so I needed more and of course I don't have a Costco membership. I tried getting them at HEB again but buying 4 measly cans at a time at 7 dollars a 4 pack just seems completely inadequate now.
People are always saying Costco this or Costco that so I decided that I would just give Costco a try. I knew at the very least I could use my membership to load up on Monster. I wasn't too impressed with Costco. The membership was 55 dollars a year. Mandy pictured it as being much larger. We thought perhaps we could load up on our favorite Yellowtail Shiraz but those bottles seemed to only come in the Magnum size (double the size of a regular bottle.) If I were to buy that in volume, I prefer to get it in multiple, normal sized bottles.
The meat section was really crowded but I wasn't interested in getting meat on Costco. It's not like I need to feed a family of 10. I was also not interested in great big bags of frozen food like a year's supply of tamales or burger patties.
I did buy a big pack of socks but it wasn't like 1000 socks or something. I'm wearing one right now and it's doing fine. Mandy tried to buy some printer ink but the model numbers didn't match up quite right.
I don't know how often I'll go to Costco. The next time I go I may buy like three cases of Monster. I think you have to go to Costco with a game plan like, I'm ready to buy 20 gallons of detergent now. Otherwise, it's just too crowded and I always feel like my jumbo cart sized cart is always in the way. Parking is also not that great because of how busy it is. One thing nice about the parking lot is that the spaces actually have divider lines between them so people can load up their cars easier. I think that's why they're painted like that. |
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05/23/2008 Guzzle My Gas
So I've used up a whole tank and here are the final numbers: i got 346 miles on 20 gallons of gas. I might have let the needle go a hair further then it was when I initially filled it up. This is a pretty inexact science but it should be close.
So 346 / 20 = 17.3.
He that's not half bad! It's probably closer to 16 or so but that's the mpg listed on my Grand Cherokee so I'm not doing to bad.
I tried my best not to rev up at all but sometimes there's just some really slow cars on the road that need to be smoked every once in a while.
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05/23/2008 I Guess I Don't Hate My Occupation
I used to sit around and think: Why did I choose the career path that I chose and if I could turn back the hands of time, what would I do different?
If I close my eyes and concentrate really hard like Forrest Gump, I can remember all the events that led up to my career in the current state that it's in.
When I was a kid and right up to my high school years, I always wanted to be an artist. I can remember doodling as far back as kindergarten. When it was time to start thinking about college and an actual career, I told my parents I wanted to do something in art. They always encouraged my art in general and even paid for art lessons but they didn't want me to go to college for it. My parents were into academics and it just made more sense to be a doctor or a lawyer or something.
I don't know if I would have chosen an art career with our without my parents support. It's not that they didn't respect artists, they just thought that it was something you did on the side and going to college was all about studying more concrete things. As an adult, this makes sense to me. It's like going to school for theater arts. There's nothing wrong with being an actor but do you really need to pay tens of thousands of dollars for acting lessons in an accredited college? If you made it as an actor you would probably make or catch your own breaks without requiring a formal college degree. I could be some struggling graphic artist right now or unemployed so there's no guarantee that that's the right path.
In high school I joined Junior Achievement. That's a nerdy, voluntary club thing where they supposedly taught you business sense by making you sell crap like wooden crafts or plastic cups that you made yourself. I remember an adult, or maybe it was just an older kid in that club, said that real money is in business. Ok, whatever, so I applied for the business school in college.
So now I'm in the business school. Now what? Which area in the business school did I enjoy? I pulled "International Business" out of my ass because in the early 90's, it was all about the Japanese buying up New York and taking over so I thought maybe that was the way to go. As I moved into the late 90s, it was all about the dot com craze and Y2K and there seemed to be an endless amount of money to be had so I made by business degree be in Management Information Systems. I flip flopped on so many things when I was in college. I took an intro to philosophy class and thought I wanted a philosophy degree. Then I thought, a philosophy degree is probably a good stepping stone for being a lawyer.
I took the LSAT in my senior year in college. I don't really know how I did because by the time I got my score back, I was ready to make some of that dot com money. I finished my degree and went into consulting. Blah Blah I already blogged about that.
My real point in all this is would I pick a different degree if I could turn back time? Would I go to art school? I don't think I would. They don't seem to make much money and most graphic art is done on computers now which allow a lot more people without artistic talent to excel. Would I be some sort of health care professional? I don't think so. I would never have wanted to study hard enough to get through med school. How about a dentist? I think it would gross me out digging in people’s mouths everyday and smelling their breath.
I have come to realize that I don't hate computer programming. I don't find it very fulfilling right now but I think that's because I work for someone. I think people achieve real happiness in their careers when they work for themselves. If I were writing computer programs for my own business I think I would be very happy. I did that for a little bit with my palm pilot business and was very satisfied before it all went kaput. It was nice to sit around and brainstorm on programs I could write and see that every innovation I did equaled bigger royalty checks.
Unfortunately, the computer software writing business is extremely saturated. I'm sure there are still untapped niche markets but I haven't figured it out yet.
I would also have love to open a restaurant or bar or something but I don't think a restaurant management degree would be very useful either unless you had a crap load of start up money. |
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05/20/2008 Hanging Out At Lisa's Birthday
I'm looking sloppy
Trina caught a frog by the pond.
Snakes and frogs look slimey but they are actually pretty rough.
Laughing baby bit
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05/16/2008 Overcrowding
It turns out none of my readers thought the Raffles Ghost looked real at all. For a little while, that was a hoax on the internet that they tried pass off as authentic. I think the problem is the ghost lady is a little too "solid." If she were almost see through or fuzzy it would have been a better video.
Anyways, maybe you will find these videos more interesting. They illustrate overcrowding and just makes me glad that I live in America. These videos were submitted by Simon.
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05/15/2008 The Raffles Place Ghost
Fast forward to 1:20 to see the ghost. Then watch the second video to understand more about the ghost.
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05/15/2008 Dallas Nightclub, Home of the 69 Cent Beer, Has Closed It's Doors
Can you believe there is an establishment in Austin that has been in business for years and years that used to have a 69 cent drink special on well drinks and domestic beers? I'm not talking about a tiny paper cup of beer, I'm talking about an entire bottle of beer. If I'm not mistaken, I think that's cheaper than buying a sixer at HEB.
That 69 cent special ran kind of long into the night, too. It wasn't like from 4-5 or something. It was from 7-10 pm. Prime time to get you fired up for the rest of your night.
Over the past few years, DNC has had its share of bad publicity and run ins with the law. Sometimes it seemed justifiable and sometimes it seemed a bit like a witch hunt.
Back on April 14, 2005, the Austin Police honored designated drivers at Dallas Night Club. Here's a piece of that story.
Austin Police honored designated drivers Thursday
at the Dallas Night Club in North Austin as part of the new Sound
Attitude program that recognizes and rewards drivers who are not
drinking. Humorously, or perhaps "ironically" (maybe even tragically?), on Jan 23, 2006, this story was printed:
It wasn't long ago the Dallas nightclub was chosen
as a backdrop to honor designated drivers. And now for the coup de grace printed May 7th, 2008.
Dallas nightclub in North
Austin temporarily closed its doors. I went to Dallas Nightclub frequently for a stint back when I had a different life. That place never really suited me. Even if I were to nail down the basic nuances of the two step (which I never did) most people out on the dance floor were whirling dervishes anyways so I wasn't going to impress anyone with my dancing prowess. That place would get crowded as hell too. I didn't mind the country music. I liked country music back then although I find it a bit tiresome now. I even got Mandy to come out there once when we first started dating. I’m sure she didn’t like it there.
After a while, it just wasn't worth going there. Cops were constantly looking for people to bust. I remember one time I was there with a guy I knew and we left at the same time. I took the direct route which was Burnet Road but he thought he'd be coy and take the back road through the neighborhoods. Since it was such a suspicious detour, he was immediately pulled over. He didn't get charged with anything but who needs close calls like that? He actually gave the cops a pretty interesting story which I'm not sure I believe he told or not to this day but he said he told the cop that he went there to go pick up his cousin. He said he was mad because she wasn't waiting for him at the door so he left. Basically he was telling the cop that he hadn't a drop to drink and wasn't hanging out there for the past couple of hours with me. I guess it worked. |
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05/14/2008 Tracking My Gas
My car is officially rated as 14 miles per gallon city and 17 highway.
I believe that you can greatly improve that number just by the way you drive. The less you rev, the more you save. According to "Myth Busters" (the television show), you can also save gas by not having your AC running but it's too hot here in Texas to try any of that nonsense.
To come up with my official Tommybear rating, I've let my gas tank run low, reset my trip odometer, and I have recorded how much gas I bought.
Strangely enough, I had to fill my car twice because the pump stopped at exactly $60.00 which is less than what I need. I found this completely bizarre. I thought perhaps my card had been rejected or something. I told Wardro and Trina and they weren't surprise. They had heard of this. It's something some stations have implemented to prevent gas theft and credit card fraud.
Anyways, I'm going to drive nice and easy and hopefully not need too many RPMs during this gas crisis.
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05/13/2008 Crushing the Competition On the Last Game of the Season
Team "Your Mom Bowls" completely whipped up on the competition last night.
In the second week in a row, I beat my previous all time high. Last week it was 258, this week it was 264. I also had a bet with Thang about who would get the highest average for the season. Coming into last night, he had a 174.7 average and I had a 176.0 average. My monster game last night left no doubt.
Some other highlights included both Ward and I getting 200 or higher in game 1 to set a dominant pace. Mandy had a nice average of 133.6 in three games. Trina was "Old Reliable" again bowling right around her average.
The game was so out of hand that the one of the opposing players, who is a straight bowler, decided to work on his spin and stop trying. We won all 7 points.
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05/12/2008 Head And Shoulders Bit
We were trying to recreate this:
And this is what we came up with:
Who says you can't recreate a magical moment? |
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05/09/2008 I Finally Hauled Something! Are You Supposed To Tip People Who Put Things In Your Car
There is a punching bag and a punching bag stand in those two boxes pictured below. It's quite a feeling to pull to the front of Academy Sporting Goods and have people just put stuff in the back of your truck so easily. When I used to have people load my Jeep Grand Cherokee, it was a bit of a production. I'd have to lower my back seats and move junk around and even then big boxes didn't always fit just right. Sometimes I'd have to jam the boxes in at some crazy angle.
Speaking of which, are you supposed to tip people who put big boxes in your car? I feel like if I tip them too low then they'd be insulted and I'm too cheap to tip them too much. The guy that loaded my car today wasn't a kid, he was a grown ass man. Would this grown ass man want a $5 tip from me?
Long story short, I didn't tip him. I feel like I'd insult him if I tipped him anything less than $20 bucks, but that's a lot of money.
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05/08/2008 Netflix's "Very Long Wait" Movie, The Orphanage, Ships Today
The movie "The Orphanage" was listed in my queue as very long wait as of yesterday. As I theorized, by having nothing else in my queue, it shipped immediately as soon as I returned Charlie Wilson's War. Netflix wants you to see that very long wait and put a bunch of less popular movies in your queue thinking that it will be a while before your long wait movie is available. |
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05/07/2008 Why Facebook Is Infinitely More Interesting Than Myspace
One word... applications... Actually maybe two words, applications and feeds. The best thing about Facebook is its bevy of games and applications and how it can be linked to all of your friends.
For example, several of my friends like to play this game "Who Has The Biggest Brain." It's just a series of graphical games that test your math, memory, and reflexes. The fun part is everyone can see everyone else's score and it's all ranked and linked in because everyone is on Facebook. Another fun application a lot of people took part in is movie ratings to see how you match up with your friends. I also enjoy Scrabulous (a scrabble game) where you just make your move whenever you have time. Taking movie quizzes is fun, playing blackjack and poker is fun, and sending people hatching eggs is fun. You can even fill out tournament brackets. I've only joined recently so who knows what else I'll find interesting.
There's also just something about the interface that is more interesting although slightly more complicated to navigate than MySpace. It's hard to explain without seeing it for yourself but there are basically links everywhere to everything. What I also find interesting is there are some people that don't have a MySpace profile but have a Facebook profile like Monique who actually used to make fun of me for being on Myspace. |
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05/06/2008 Woman Cries Rape When Husband Catches Her Cheating. Husband Shoots "Rapist"
In Fort Worth, Texas, a woman cries rape when her husband catches her with her lover of two months. The husband believing that his wife was being raped, shoots the woman's lover and kills him.
If the husband just shot the man who he found out was sleeping with his wife, he might get the death penalty or maybe just a long sentence for a crime of passion. Instead, he is not indicted because the jury believes that he really felt like his wife was in danger. The woman, on the other hand, gets 5 years for manslaughter.
Feels like irony but I'm too scared to use that word.
Here is the official news article: |
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05/06/2008 My New Drawing
This picture is kind of dark because the weather has been overcast all week. I can't really take the picture with a flash because it puts a big bright spot on the picture. I'll replace this picture when the weather gets better.
This temporarily concludes my streets of Vietnam series. I included the other picture I did a couple of months ago below this new pic.
One thing I regret about this picture is since I really liked the people I chose to draw in this piece, I neglected composing better architecture in the background. The buildings in the first picture are a little better but the ones in the more recent picture are clearly a weak after thought. Even so, sometimes a composition can get a little too detail oriented and it can be better to keep a balance between simple and complex.
I'm thinking about my new pieces...
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05/06/2008 Bowling Scores From 5-5-2008. Team goes 3-4.
258 is my all time high. Previous all time high was 257.
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05/06/2008 Happy Birthday To Long at Tokyo Steakhouse
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05/01/2008 Every Month Is Truck Month
I did it. I pulled the trigger. After 7 years, I bought a new car. The deals were just too hard to pass up. I got $2,780 off a 28K car, a $1000 rebate if I financed with Toyota, and 0% financing. I got only a measly $2,000 on my 01 Jeep Grand Cherokee and I put $1000 down so I only had to finance about $22,000 for 60 months and that's with TT&L. My payments at are about $377 a month. When I changed my Jeep lease to a purchase, my payment on that piece of shit was $300 and I was only financing about 15K.
My GF said that very people actually qualify for 0% financing. I knew my credit was pretty good when I last checked my score online. A couple of month ago, it was 750 online. At Toyota, they said my credit score was 759 and all I needed was a 720 to qualify. Please don't steal my identity, Cyberhackers. I bought several services to protect it a long time ago when I got my wallet stolen but I know that anyone can still be vulnerable.
I was hoping I would get at least $3,000 for my Jeep but I don't think I can be very picky with a car that has a 110 thousand miles, has been in a major wreck, and continually has new problems.
The truck is extremely luxurious and roomy on the inside and has rides like it's on a bed of air. The only part that I have been naive about is the parking. I thought that since I drove an SUV before that a truck wouldn't be that much different. It's pretty different and I'm slowly learning. If you notice in the picture below, I have been able to back it in a couple of times but it's not easy. I can't really see much looking at anything directly. I do most of my backing into spaces using my mirrors. I just learned how to park in an angled space straight but I'm still pretty crooked on the 90 degree parking spaces. The secret is swinging out more and turning much later. You have to turn so late and wide that it looks like you're going to smash the car in front of you. That'll take some getting used to but at least in the 2 days that I've had the car, I'm improving each time.
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