Well it has been a while but I felt like writing today, mostly because I have not been writing now that I have the time once again.  In part also because I have not updated or even kept up my links.  Wireless card guy if you are reading this, I finally got around to updating your site and sorry it took me a while to get to it.

It pained me to move one of my links out of my blog roll.  I guess it means I have accepted the loss of a friend and that there was little if anything I could have done other than be her friend.  R.I.P. Rain.  Rest in peace all that have passed on and for those of us that have lost a friend or a loved one, may you find your serenity to let them go.  It is what we do.

Whew.  Heavy stuff out of the way.  That should clear things up for today’s blog about Stumbled Upon.  It was my friend from Chicago who showed me this cool web browsing tool that lets you search the internet using their toolbar or their service.  I will just say click on my Link Of The Moment and you will find yourself at the homepage of Stumbled Upon.

It is aprettycool site that youcan search the internet with and find things you never knew you were looking for.  If you have a few hours that is. =)  There is a lot out there.  I personally enjoyed the Humor sites and the technology ones.  I also like that you can sign up with them and find pages that Stumbled Upon hasn’t been to yet and you get to add it to their database with a review that you write.

Now that might sound like work to some of you but it isn’t.  Once you start sending email links to your friends, you will appreciate Stumbled Upon.  Hmm.  I seem to have arrived at the end of my blog already.  Here I was hoping that the act of writing would have triggered some creative juices but perhaps not.  Now that I have challenged the idea I will just keep writing and see where this goes.

Actually that did remind me that I haven’t written about George in a while huh?  =)  Oh man.  This guy has grown so much lately that it is astounding.  Of course he is my baby so yes I will beam with pride when talking about him or any of my three sons.  So where do I begin?  Today he went for a walk with his Mom and they did not use the stroller. He is far too independent for that now.  =)

In fact, his Mom was surprised one day when she turned around and found him a couple of feet away from the ceiling!  We have had to put the dining rooms chairs up on the table because he will climb them and that has been going on for a couple of months now.  This of course did not stop him from climbing onto and standing proudly on the dining room table which he has done several times.  His smile disarms you immediately too.  =)

So we had all the chairs up on the table but that only proved to challenge or inspire him.  He went and found another chair and pushed it to the table, climbed that and then climbed the chair that was on the table!  =D  My boy.  =)  His Mom got scared with him being up there and it looked like she wanted to get mad at him but his smile just disarmed us both and I took him off of the chair on the table.

His words are so clear now and we already have words that we don’t want to say around him.  Walk and juice are two examples.  =)  I treasure each day with him and my boys.  parenthood is such a worthwhile journey.

So much so that I wanted my sons to witness a bit of history for our Nation. On Sunday the Olympic Flame/Torch was in the Nass Valley and it was pretty cool to see members of our Nation all garbed up in their Torch Bearer outfits.  That leads me to another journey that I’m on, one that I wish I wasn’t.

It isn’t much in terms of consequence but it is still enough to be somewhat of a nuisance for me.  This computer just sucks but I can’t afford a new one so I am making do.  it is a network computer that has a deep freeze program and next to nothing when it comes to up-to-date drivers.  I couldn’t even read my flash drive nor could I transfer pictures via USB to this computer.  I guess that will have to wait for another time.

I am done work for the time being.  The program I was on is over for me. I have the EI hours I needed and my EI Application has already been filed.  I should hear from them next week and may start getting benefits by March which works out great for me.  God of War III baby!  So looking forward to that.  In fact, I have vowed not to get anymore new games until GOWIII.  That is until I saw a commercial for “Bioshock 2″ that will be out on the 9th of the month and now I have to wonder.

Do I go after Bioshock 2 or stick with my no new games until GOWIII?  I am about halfway through Dragon Age Origins (51% of world explored).  Either way, I am loving the gaming goodness of late and look forward to GOWIII and quite possibly, Bioshock 2 not to mention enjoying the progress I’m making in DAO.

Now there is a journey for you, albeit a fictional one that you interact with but it’s a journey nonetheless.  =)

Well I guess I have the time to write once again so I am going to start and see where it goes.  The time comes from the fact that I am done the job I have had since the end of the summer.  I now qualify for employment insurance which I will start the process for probably tomorrow.  Groceries for sure tomorrow and I might (just talked it over with my wife and I can) change that to will buy myself something nice.  =)  I am seriously considering a new PS3.  =)  Practical schmactical.  =P

I just realized I have two days of meetings starting tomorrow so I will wait until Thursday to go to town.  I would write more but the spacebar on this PC is gone so my typing is seriously hampered and that is throwing my train of thought off its rails.

I hope this blogs finds you in good spirits.  If not, the bar is that way.  LOL

May the New year bring us all that we game for – Happiness and Progress.

Happy New Year!

Yup it is that close to Christmas for us and we are at my In-Laws enjoying a great evening.  Cookies have been made, the scent is in the house.  Gingerbread cookies and gingerbread houses that broke and have since become cookies are nearly decorated.  Icing and other sugary stuff and yeah right we are supposed to put them to bed pretty soon.  *eyeroll*

The trip up this way wasn’t all that bad.  My sons had a great conversation with my wife and I.  We talked about alcohol, girls and the importance of Family over the years.  Wow that is one heavy discussion now that I think about it but in the car on the way up here, it wasn’t anything at all.  Perhaps once the conversation is started, it gets easier.

My sons are Boys.  Boys are interested in Girls.  We will be talking about this for a while it seems and really, it has just started for my wife and I so yeah, loved the drive this evening.  The road itself wasn’t ideal for travel but it was good enough that I could see the road and the lines which is important as we all know.  There were a few blasts of win that swept across the road but not so big that we felt it in the car.  Overall it was a great car trip.

Of course any trip that sees you arrive safely and spend time with family not to mention write a blog with a warm bowl of corned beef soup distracting me from this blog, well it was a great tyrip and we just got here.  Well we got here several hours ago and forgot to call my Mom who worried when we didn’t call but she did call so I got to talk to her and I think she feels much better now.

I just wanted to officially say Merry Christmas.  If I don’t get a chance to go online tomorrow or if we must miss each other all around, please have a great Christmas and know that you have been thought of.  Merry Christmas.

Yup.  2 days.  The weather outside is indeed frightful and this evening we have a Christmas dinner to look forward to at my grandmother’s.  I am looking forward to it one because it is a dinner at my Grandmothers and two, it is also my uncle’s belated birthday dinner and three, it is my first Christmas Dinner of the season.

Other than the snow, the wind, electrical blackouts and fundraising, Christmas in Kincolith is all about the family dinners.  There is nothing like a Christmas Dinner at one house followed the next day by dinner at another house and yeah I once had turkey for pretty much every night for a few days ahead of and after christmas.

Mmm, turkey dinner.  =)

So regular readers may be wondering where the heck I have been so I will simply state that with the Christmas week here, things don’t get done as far a business goes, so if your internet is not working, well you are screwed until regular business days return.  That right now is next week for me.  I am on my Christmas Break right now and I plabn on sleeping in tomorrow.  =)

At work, the Welcome Sign I am working on is coming together nicely.  I have the smell of yellow cedar still on my hands after sanding all day.  Hopefully this connection is back up to snuff again as I had little patience for being online yesterday where connections to servers weren’t even happening.

So I just wanted to pop in, say HI to all my friends and wish you all a very Merry Christmas.  I missed you guys this week and I hope you are all doing well.

Frightful. Inside it is yes, delightful.  Not only has it been cold and I mean cold.  It is minus 4 degrees celcius but with the arctic outflow the wind makes it much much colder than that.  There was one gust that lasted for nearly five seconds.

Count that out.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five.  In that amount of time a gust that sounded like it was going to take out a window or two blasted through.  Yeah it is cold.
Perfect Christmas weather.  =)

They Yuletide Season is a busy one here with all the fund-raising that foes on.  There is an activity planned for each night up until New Year’s Eve.  It is a nice time of the year.  Despite the weather outside being frightful, inside it is warm.

So now that you have that song in your head, I can get it out of mine.  Thanks.  (just to rub it in and makes sure it sticks)  “…the weather out side is frightful…”

See you tomorrow.  11 days until Christmas.

=)

I guess the 12 Days of Christmas are upon us as we cross yet another week off of the calendar.  Man it has been cold here but thankfully it hasn’t been snowing that much (still a lot on the ground) nor has it been fluctuating (thawing and freezing).  That is the worst actually.

Having it melt under the sun or a warm day and then as soon as the sun is gone, it freezes up and the roads get dangerous with black ice and stupid people behind cars with no studded tires or the worst possible shoes imaginable for walking around on icy roads.  =)  Okay that is all the negativity you will get from me in this blog.  I have gone over the last few ones and it seems I have an abundance of bad vibes but you will be happy to know that it hasn’t been like that since or for that long.

I just haven’t felt like writing every day.  If I want to consider being anywhere near or under that umbrella of “Writer”, I should write more often.  I think a lot of the frustrations that I write about do stem from the ugly little computer that I am using.  I am not saying anymore on the matter.  I must appreciate what we do have and not bitch about the things we don’t have.  Life is easier that way and you tend to see more of it rather than going though life with blinders on.

There I made it my blog again.  I guess a Holiday Parade will do that for you.  This evening The Yuletide Committee put on a Parade and they raised several hundred dollars too but it was the honking, the waving, the multitude of smiles that made this might such an enjoyable one for me.

My wife is at this moment preparing to bake some bread, my sons are visiting their grandmother and yeah, I am in a nice quiet environment to get in some writing.  Which brings us to this moment.  Take a look around and just appreciate what you have, the internet, the computer to read this and the people that you have in your life.  Regardless of where you are and who you are, I am thankful for your reading my blog.  I do hope as I put in my Facebook Status, that you can find the resources, the time and the energy to get through this last shopping week before the Christmas Week starts.

Oh and because I know he is reading, I hope Mike reconsiders FB seeing as they have just incorporated new privacy settings that really do give you a nice level of control of who sees your page.  I also hope that the Christmas Season won’t be so hard on you this year.

I guess that is the point of this blog, it is nearing Christmas and I am in a pretty decent mood this evening.  I think I will play some of the GOW Collection while the house is quiet but more importantly, I want to just share some good energies with you and maybe just maybe if you needed it, it is there for you.

Hang in there.  =)

Now I am one who does not let hate be a part of my life.  I have chosen not to let hate color my view of the world.  Of course I can’t say that for others who have reminded me time and time again that intolerance and ignorance still exist in this day and age.  Of course I wish that would change and hopefully it will.  Soon.

There is too much hate toward people and some of that I imagine comes from being lazy and not wanting to put any effort toward getting to know someone.  I have in my past shared a story of having to work with someone who chose to be intolerant and ignorant toward myself and two others who were of Native descent.  I think I will share it here and hopefully it will show that things can change for the better, that it is possible.

Now this person that I want to talk about brought to the table so to speak his experiences, his knowledge of what he knows Natives to be.  I will just get to the comment that I am sure was meant to antagonize.  We were in a classroom and the instructors were about to start in a few minutes so the normal chit chat ensued.

This guy made it a point to loudly state that in his business he will not hire Natives simply because they expect so much time off work when one of their family passes on.  Now here is where I know his ignorance or his lack of understanding was showing.  I imagine that most policies will have allowances for employees that have lost a loved on and for the most part this is for the immediate family.  Natives have responsibilities that are beyond the nuclear family and in my own culture, it is Family of the Father that looks after us in our time of need.

To be clear, my late Father was laid to rest by the family of his Father.  Hmm, I can see how this might be difficult to explain.  I guess I can see where the easy path of Ignorance can come into play here.  When someone dies in a city (the easiest way to show a non-native society) it is the immediate family who make arrangements and deal with everything that is involved with the burial and the funeral.

We don’t do that.  We mourn and it is our extended family that do most of the work on our behalf.  It is a basic tenet of our culture.  We look after our extended family and in turn our extended family looks after us.  I guess herein lies another point of contention between Natives and Non-Natives alike; it is difficult to explain the collective to someone who is individualistic in nature.

So there we were, in the classroom waiting for things to get started when he makes his comment about not hiring Natives followed by several more comments on why Natives were not good to hire.  Of course this was his way of antagonizing and seeing how much he can get away with.  That is something else that I see in the intolerant, the need to push the envelope and see how much they can get away with.  Needless to say, he raised the hackles of myself and the other two native guys in the class by saying that we were not good employees and by showing his lack of respect for our deceased family members.

He was trying to push buttons, that was obvious.  You can recognize that sort of behaviour in the school yard bully, the challenge the bouncer bar patron and worst of all, the online voice chat sniper who stabs you with hate trying to get you off of your game.  I feel bad for them and their lack of interconnectivity but I digress.

It was obvious from the beginning that this guy was going to push buttons as much as he can.  He was short and stocky like a pit bull and it was easily noticeable that he had been in a fight for the better part of his life.  This continued throughout our course and for a couple of weeks, he tried to push my buttons having succeeded with one of the other native guys already.  You eventually do get tired of it and it finally boiled over when I found myself in his group for the day.  He was the sub foreman and reveled in the fact that he was the boss, my boss for that day.

He would not bend on my assertion that we were going to have to cut new wires for the transformer that we were hanging.  Perhaps it was his business sense to conserve and recycle but he would relent on using the old wire.  I am sure that he wanted to be the first group to finish, that he wanted to show how great he is as a sub foreman but all it really did was emphasize his lack of tolerance for others and their ideas.

So I am up on the pole and the transformer is already hanging, the wires connecting it to the electricity grid were all that were left to finish our task.  Now these connection wires have to be done a certain way if you wanted to pass (there had to be slack).  His reluctance to my assertion that the wires were too short and that there would not be any slack didn’t matter.  He was the sub foreman and it was going to be done his way.  I had no choice but to do as the sub foreman wanted and proceeded to use the shorter pieces of wire.

Of course this all stopped suddenly as our Instructor started yelling at me and asking me what the hell I was doing.  =)  I “explained” to our Instructor that I had mentioned the short wires to our sub foreman but he wanted them put up so there I was, putting up those short pieces.  I wanted him to see that they were shorter and that he was going to have to cut and prepare new pieces that had to be brought up to me.  I didn’t get that far before our Instructor came over and started giving us shit.

Of course I was pissed off for having to take the brunt of our Instructors wrath but that changed once I explained that it was the subby who wanted them put in and would not relent.  This of course pointed to how much of a piss poor sub foreman he was and he was given the business by our Instructor.  I am smiling at this point by the way.  Prick deserved that.

He of course didn’t deserve any of that near the end of our program though.  Up until now, I have been describing him at the early part of our program.  After several weeks of working together and a couple of BBQ’s where we drank together, I could see that throughout all his intolerance, he was a Father.  It was where we had common ground, it was were the mutual respect began.

He may have had hate in life life for me and for all Native People at the beginning of our program but by the end of it, he was a good guy.  I got a long with him and that is remarkable given his intolerance and given the fact that he was the other driver in an accident that took the life of a guy that I knew and to this day still miss.  It was remarkable because I had found out about the accident in the first week, couple that with his intolerance to Natives and yeah, his reassertions that he was culpable, that he was not at fault, that he beared no responsibility whatsoever for that tragic accident really bothered me.  It was like he saying that it was okay for him be an asshole and that he did not have to bear any responsibility for being an asshole.

If I allowed hate to govern my life, this guy would certainly be the guy for me to hate but it is not me to do so.  It is not who I was raised to be.  He is a good guy just trying to make the life of his daughter a good one.  I hope he and his daughter are doing well.

Hate is something I want to do away with.  It should not be used on and toward people, ever.  That may be an ideal but after this, can you still say that it is unattainable (like an ideal)?

If hate is to be a part of my life, I choose to direct it toward something inanimate.  Like my fucking car.  Fucking thing.  The passenger window dropped down again and I can’t raise it.  The motor is not working and it seems to be off its track again.  Fucking thing sucks mostly because it has been raining and yeah, I hate my car.  Damn thing is costing me more money than it is worth.  The thing is, I need the car and the timing just sucks.

Fucking car.  =)

I want to thank you first and foremost for being who you are. It is funny to consider how there are so many people from so many walks of life and in each and every one of us, is ‘you’. I wanted to bring that individual tree in a forest of trees aspect forward first because I will write this to no one in particular. This blog is not intended for any single person specifically and is not being written with anyone in mind.

It is for all, intended for the masses, it is a message for the tree and written in such a manner that we can all use it. It is written so that it sounds like it is written with you in mind even though it is not you specifically. As you read it and if it sounds like it is for you, it probably it is. So here goes.

Dear You,

GET OVER IT ALREADY!! For too many years you have been asked to take others into consideration when you fly off of the handle but you don’t. You continue to put yourself and your needs before others. Get over it already. Anger has only isolated you.

Do you remember all those people that I spoke of at the beginning of this blog? Every person on the planet living today, every person that has lived on this planet before you, we all make up the forest and we have all grown and stood up like you have, like you are doing. Now here is the part that you might ignore when those around you are trying to help you but your problems that you might think are your problems alone? We have all gone through it at some point or we will all go through it at some point as well. You are not alone no matter how much you want to be, no matter how much you don’t like who you are or what part of society you belong to, you are not alone.

The fucking world and Universe do not revolve around you. Get over yourself already.  You have qualities worthy of being recognizable but you disregard those qualities and dishonor yourself as soon as you let your anger get the better of you. It does not do a body good at all to let anger and stress be the governing forces in your life. You are hurting yourself whether you believe it or not.

Now I am sure that your loved ones, those around you and in most cases, that one person who will never give up on you has been trying to tell you this but you are set in your ways and you won’t listen. You need to hear this. You need to give up on your anger. You need to get over yourself, get over what ever the hell it is that causing you to be so fucking miserable. You need to get out more. You need exercise. You need a lot of stuff and honestly, what you really need is to just accept that shit happens, that it will happen and regardless of shit happening, you need to recognize that you have people in your life that want nothing but the best for you.

So You, I hope you have taken my words to heart. If you were sent to this blog via a hyperlink, do not be upset with the person that sent it to you. That person is probably one of those that will not give up on you. You are blessed to have someone in your life that will not give up on you.

Now of course that brings me to someone else who I feel I need to say something to before I get back to you, someone who might use that guise of being the person that doesn’t want to give up on you but is actually just looking for another way to boss you around…

Hey bossy person,

GET OVER YOURSELF! [now start over at the top and every time I speak of anger, change the wording to reflect being bossy and controlling. There are other people in the world and your controlling nature is not doing anyone any favors, least of all is you]

Okay back you You again. As I said, if you are here because someone wanted you to read this, you are blessed and lucky to have someone like that in your life. There are people who are truly alone and have no one in their lives at all. Well guess what, they are most likely people who have never given up on their conviction to make everyone around them miserable. If you want to be left alone, if you want nothing to do with people that want to help you then you are truly missing the point. You need to talk to a professional perhaps and try to regain that part of your life that was happy. For some and I am guessing most, that is supposed to be your childhood and I know that there are parts of your childhood that are truly memorable and happy just as there are unhappy parts.

This is true for each and every person that you know or are aware of. Our childhoods do shape who we can become as adults. “…who we CAN become…” I wanted to emphasize that CAN part because while it seems like your issue is so large that you can never get over it, you are not alone and I don’t know why you resist that knowledge. What is it that makes your problems more important that those who love you? Sorry, I got a bit carried away there for a second. I was talking about our childhoods and how they shape our lives as adults. How they have the potential to shape our lives.

No matter what happened in our childhoods we have the choice as adults to let that govern our lives and hold us down or we can choose to get over it and be free in the knowledge that no matter what, you have the choice to be happy and that it is possible.

So You. I want to thank you for being you. I want to thank you for reading this and if you feel I wrote this for you in particular? I didn’t. It was written for each and every person that has had a bad day or a bad decade. Okay, more so for the people who have had a bad decade because truly you need get over it.

It has been a while hasn’t it?  First of all, I am sorry if you have been coming back to the same page and not seeing anything new.  Hopefully this will suffice after some time.  I have been busy.  Work has me pretty busy during the days and with not as much time as I used to have.  M’eh.  Such is life.

That did get me thinking though…about my time on the internet and the last 15 years or so.  A lot has happened in the last 15 years.  I went from being a single guy with the world in front of me to being a father of three and several worlds open to explore.

I guess that is where I am right now.  Looking at where I am.  I haven’t been posting and reading as much as I used to on WordPress.  I loved having this outlet to write and build a world of my own but lately I just haven’t been in a mood to write.

I am not sure what it was about this evening but here I am in front of a computer that brings me more headaches than anything else and I am writing.  I will continue even though the words are not flowing like they used to.  Perhaps it is the season of change that is so obvious like the first snowfall.  I do not like the winter at this moment and it is just beginning.  Blah.  That pretty much sums up where I am right now.  The winter blahs have me.  I guess it is the work that is rather slow at the moment.

The job is going good mind you, the work, rather the lack of work and being stuck between two programs.  I am a part of the summer program and I started over a month after they did so all but one of my crew is done and Tuesday will see the last day for the last person from my crew.  I work until mid January.

Today saw the selection of the winter crew that will be moving in to the shop that we pretty much built.  Not physically of course as the building was already there.  We just took it and made it ours.  My supervisor was done last week and two new supervisors have been brought in and they were with us all of last week.  Transitions can be difficult but luckily this one isn’t bad at all.

I am happy for those ten new workers that have an opportunity to get in some work.  Happily I can say that my Mom got in for work and that is absolutely great for her.  It will be good for her and how cool is it that we are both working at the same time.  For a small community you might think that it was to be expected and I guess that is where some of the blahs come from.  Politics both cultural and political are inescapable in a small town and we are no exception.  I won’t further in to that realm as it just brings me down.

I don’t need that.  Honestly.  I also don’t need to be backspacing and banging on the spacebar either but what are you going to do with a computer that is getting too old to be of any use anymore.  Shut up Jenna.  =P  You too Mike.  =)

I didn’t know what I was going to title this and at this point in the writing of it, still don’t.  What I do know is that Monday is behind us and tomorrow is a new day and a new crew.  I am tired and I plan on getting sleep tonight.  For a former insomniac, that is big.  I know that I will get some sleep and I hope I didn’t just jinx myself into a sleepless night.

I am considering this as my son who at 14 months is in the kitchen getting into the cupboards again.  His energy seems to be boundless, until he is resting on my shoulder and his head is cradled in my neck.  I wish that is pretty soon.  He is full of energy though, cheeky, sweet and is now emptying the contents of a drawer on the kitchen floor.

I can’t help but smile.  For every nuisance, for every bad day, for every instance of bullshit politics in a small town, I can’t ignore the fact that this little guy is just like his older brothers and I am proud of that.  I have been told that I have great kids, that my boys have good heads on their shoulders.  I take solace in the fact that they along with my wife have made me not only complete but completely content.

I think I just found my title.  =)  I hope you are all doing well and yes I direct that to my friends in my blogroll firstly and then to the internet as a whole secondly.  I wrote something and I am happy for that.