*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

For those that were following this blog you may have noticed something as of recent.  Primarily, where did all of the blog entries for this site go?  Well, let’s just say the web hosting company I am using is a complete IDIOT!  If you’ve been paying attention to this blog you would have noticed the last entry on this blog was in the middle of March.  In March, I had to swap database servers.  Not that I got an email or anything from these assholes telling me I needed to do so, my web site just stopped working one day.  It seems I am suppose to have the intuition to log into my control panel once a day to read what is going on.  Anyway, after making the necassary changes, I was back up and running.  I was running flawlessly for about 2 months.  Then one day, my web site went down again.  I contacted support and when it returned (not in timely fashion I might add), my data was gone!  I had lost months of entries, good ones too. 

After fighting with WebHost4Life for about a week, they finally admitted they screwed up and lost my data.  As a grand prize I get 3 years of free hosting with a company who lost months of my data.  Yeah…….

Why didn’t I blog earlier about this tragedy?  I couldn’t, I was too pissed and would have filled this entry with random bits of rage, four letter verbiage and comments about how the little guy gets screwed by the big guy.  I would have also commented on how companies don’t really care about their customers once they have your money. 

Over the next several weeks I’ll work on getting the older articles back onto the site.  The hard part isn’t re-writing them, but remembering what the hell I posted.

After spending about 8 years in Michigan we finally moved back home to Mississippi. Hattiesburg, MS to be exact. Why did we move back you ask? Ellen got a job at William Carey in Hattiesburg. Which works out pretty well considering her mother still lives there. I will still be working at Quicken Loans but doing so remotely. About every 6-8 weeks I’ll fly back to Michigan for a week and work onsite, then head back to MS. The past several months have been crazy. Ellen moved down to MS around August 10th, several weeks before I did, so I stayed with AtomicInternet and finished working on a major project we were launching at work. The day I left for Mississippi, Katrina hit Hattiesburg dead on. It turns out the eye of the storm went right over the top of the city.

Imagine you are sitting in your money making cube at work one day and an email comes into your inbox that reads: “Do you want to go to Vegas for 4 days and stay at the Paris Hotel? If so, reply and let us know.” Crazy I know but we aren’t the 12th best company to work for in the nation for nothing you know! So on May 19th at about 7:00 in the morning, 175 team members and myself from Quicken Loans jumped on the Fun Jet and headed to Vegas. When the plane landed charter buses were waiting to take us to the hotel. As soon as we got off the charter bus, DWal(pronounced D-Wall, in the orange shirt in the pic, also my roommate for the trip) and myself were looking for some food so we hit “Le Cafe” in the Paris with about eight other team members for some breakfast. After eating, about 4 of us wanted to go hit the tables. Let the games begin!

As always, I post my Christmas wish list to my web site so those that want to get the ZorKa something (and you know who you are) will not have any trouble with their purchases during the Holiday Season. Topping the list this season is the brand new device from XM called the XM2Go MiFi (pictured to the right). I’ve been an XM subscriber for about a year now (actually since last Christmas, thanks Mom!). I love my XM. Especially on long road trips back and forth to the South. We listen to a little news, then a little comedy, catch the weather, hit the ever so popular 80’s channel, a little classical, well, you get the idea. It’s great! But, XM is only in the Jeep, and nowhere else. This is why the XM2Go is awesome since you can take it with you, AND even record 5 hours of audio from your favorite stations. It is like Tivo for the radio. While this is not a comprehensive list at the moment (it is still early) it will be updated as I continue my quest to balance want versus need this Holiday Season. You can find my wish list at Amazon.Com.

“Tonight is the last episode of Frasier. This is a really depressing end to a TV season since Friends and Frasier are both signing off for the last time. For the past 11 years, Frasier has been in our living rooms at least once a week. The show has won numerous awards as best comedy and there never seems to be a dull moment. Unless you grew up in the 80’s you probably do not remember Cheers, although, you may have seen the re-runs. The character Frasier got his start on Cheers sitting at the bar with Norm. After Cheers ended, Frasier was spun off.