Good news…Bad news.

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

Interesting dealings are afoot…muhahahahaha! Yeah, that’s the good news. I’ll tell you about it later.

The bad news…I’ve got friends from the coast with homes that are damaged or destroyed. Some are minor…trees down and some lost shingles, some are more serious…missing roof and destroyed interior…some…well, some are just plain missing. One text message from the island simply said, “There’s no reason for us to be here. We can’t even find our street.”

I feel for them all…I’ve had damaged and destroyed homes of my own. And I feel helpless…and for some wierd reason, guilty.

Helpless because the distance and infrastructure problems there make it impractical for me to help in any meaninful way…and guilty because I am so used to simply jumping in the fray and doing what I can.

Y’all take care…and for my friends and others in the southeast Texas area, I’m thinking of you and yours.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

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Posted in Friends, Home/Office, Projects | Leave a comment

Bite. Crunch. Snap….Ow.

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

Drat…now it’s time for me to go find a dentist.

For munching on a friggen Rice Krispies Treat no less!

Sigh.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

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And now a word from our sponsor…

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

If you’re on the fence about buying some books, now would be a good time.

Postage rates went up sharply late last year, as well as credit card surcharges. I’ve been eating the cost, particularly in sets of books (which also have a price break built in).

I will be raising the shipping/handling prices shortly on books ordered directly from me to offset the increased costs. Get your orders in now! I have plenty of everything in stock. Plus, you get a nifty autograph!

If you’ve already gotten your set, don’t forget friends, birthdays, and Christmas (gad, yes, I know it’s too early to think about that).

And please loyal readers and fans, pass this information on to your friends. The more exposure the better.

Plus, I need a new house! How can I be an eccentric artist/writer type if I fail to get the house with the tower?

Hmmm…with the profit margin on books…(clicky click)…the tax rate…(clicky clicky)…carry the two…Cool! I’ve only got to sell 1563 sets of books!

You can order them here.

Thanks!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

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Posted in Writing | 3 Comments

I’m still here…

Posted on September 6, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

The buyout stuff is done. Offers made, many accepted, some reneged by the company after employees accepted…lots of good people going. Talent. Dedication. Paid to go somewhere else.

And I’m still here.

Layoffs are scheduled for next month. I’d guess around 100 or so.

I'm still here...

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

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Posted in Corporate Incompetence, Lunacy | 1 Comment

Going back…

Posted on September 5, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

About Saturday’s post…Yep, we’re going back to take another look.

Another view of the house

Lots of porch.

Not sure why we torture ourselves so…

After all, if we weren’t looking, and didn’t find anything we liked in an (barely) achievable price range…then we wouldn’t be agonizing over decisions.

Hopefully, looking at it again will clinch things…one way or another.

I shouldn’t sweat the risk…after all, life is risk. Everything of value comes of it.

Banzai

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

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Posted in Home/Office, Projects | Leave a comment

Reach. Grasp. Fall?

Posted on August 30, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

Must my reach always exceed my grasp? Must my dreams always push me beyond my current capabilities? Finiancial, equipment, time, market, employment…always, something is just not quite there.

Yeah, a dream is available. Yep, I could probably swing it for the purchase. It’s a small, friendlier town…off the mains…the perfect place to carry out my writing and artistic career.

But I can’t retire from work yet…even though I can’t depend on the income anymore…I really should not make decisions based on the income/stability of that job, even though I am good at what I do and have been there…gad…23 years now. See, they are trying to lay off about 500 of us.

My writing career is not yet paying the bills, the soft real-estate market means the home we are in now wouldn’t sell at a premium. The commute would be prohibitive.

But how often does a dream come up for sale?

Pretty much my dream house.
(110+ year old, 2 story Victorian, 5 bedrooms, formal dining, library, rich wood, glass, pocket doors etc)

I can reach it. I may even grasp it. But I’ve been at the bottom…I know how far it is to fall. I don’t want to be there. But am I overcautious? Is my comfort or safety consuming a dream?

Don’t suppose I can get y’all to buy a few thousand books or so? Perhaps a couple hundred art prints?

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

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Posted in Family, Home/Office, Mood, Projects, Work, Writing | Leave a comment

You might be a biker if…

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

I had to run an errand yesterday that required Big Iron…the 7000 pound 400hp beastie…I simply did not have enough bungee cords to carry what I needed to pick up on The Dragon you see…

Besides, you’re supposed to start those cage thingies every once and a while.

After some searching to actually find the keys to the thing I took off on my errand. I’m always relieved when she starts…sitting for months at a time is bound to piss off any machine with soul.

Big Iron...the 7000 pound 400hp V10 4x4 toy...

Anyway, I laughed out loud on the outbound trip. The odometer rolled over 99,000 miles. At that rate it’ll probably be another year before it hits 100,000. See, I bought that big beastie in January of 03…when some evil little chevy thingy took me out at a stoplight and wiped out my old truck..

She had 77,000 miles on her at the time. Coming up on 6 years now and I’ve only run that truck 22,000 miles…and over 5000 of those were in 2 road trips!

So sad. I gotta get Big Iron out more. Machines want to run!

By contrast, my motorcycle has over 130,000 miles on her…and she only had .1 miles (that’s a tenth of a mile) on her when I bought her (about a year before the truck).

A bed-load of parts…I also swung by the Homeowner Hell store to pick up some bulky items I’ve needed for a bit now…all the while wishing I was on the bike.

You might be a biker if…

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

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Posted in Humor, Riding | Leave a comment

Educate or incarcerate…

Posted on August 24, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

First it was access to an education.
Then it was a right to an education.
Next it was required education.
Now it’s educate or incarcerate…with gps tracking to aid enforcement.

What’s the next step?

A Story

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Posted in Lunacy | Leave a comment

The difference at our core…

Posted on August 23, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

Gavin de Becker, best selling author of the critically acclaimed The Gift of Fear pulls on a lifetime of experience, expertise, and study of violence to teach a message I actually very strongly believe…trust your intuition…listen to your instincts…believe that little voice when it tells you something. It will save your life.

Anyway, he said something on national tv that really resonated with his audience…and had never occurred to me. I’m not sure of the implications of it in personal men/women relationships simply because, if true the playing field can never be level…there truly is no common ground or shared basis for relating. Basically the core is so far different that even when we agree, we really are not viewing things even close to the same way.

What he said, and his audience agreed, was about our core fear…the one that oversees everything, even if we aren’t aware of it…the one that often drives us:

Men, at our very core, fear that women will laugh, scorn, or reject us.
Women, at their very core, fear that men will kill them.

I know beyond question that men and women are fundementally different creatures…but are we that different?

Food for thought.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

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Posted in Media, Mood, Recommended | 1 Comment

Bought out, layed off, or left behind…

Posted on August 21, 2008 by Daniel Meyer

That’s what me and all my coworkers are wondering at the moment.

Will we still be here? Should we care? Who will still remain with us if we do?

It’s a complicated job…requiring talented and dedicated people to pull off with even a small margin of quality and efficiency.

Secret meetings, secret numbers, questions about who will be doing what.

The drama is not productive.

And here we all sit…

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

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Posted in Corporate Incompetence | 1 Comment