Tender Mercies

This past Tuesday at my church religion class (institute for those of you who are LDS, which is pretty much everyone at this point), the instructor gave a great lesson on the "Tender Mercies" God has blessed us with. Towards the end of class, he gave us time to write down the "Tender Mercies" we've felt in our lives. I'm really grateful for that time in class to reflect on this past year of my life, which was a great transition from one of the biggest trials I've ever faced.

Earlier that day, we celebrated my brother's birthday at my parent's house. As I was reflecting during the celebration, I thought about all of the events that I was able to participate with my family this past year:

• First time in 10 years that I was home for Christmas AND Thanksgiving.
• First time my family came to my church service, which happened to be on Easter, to watch me sing a solo.
• First time in over a decade that my family watched me perform in a music group (First Coast Wind Ensemble)
• Countless times I've been able to visit with my Mom and keep her company while my Dad was away going about his daily business.
• I've been blessed to finally babysit my niece and be a part of her life.
• I've started a side business in photography with my brother.
• I feel like I'm a part of "family issues" again...
  

Besides my family, I've had numerous reunions of sorts, of both friends and extended family.

I didn't need Tuesday night to know of the love and mercy God has for me. It's always been line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little.

About a year ago, I abruptly moved "home"...broken, both spiritually and emotionally. I was questioning God on why the path I had set forth had been so vehemently diverted. It's been a slow and steady recovery. For all intentionally purposes, I have pretty much recovered, although I am still struggling in temporal things, like finding my new "career". For some reason, though, this has been a welcoming struggle.

But one of the great blessings, the "Tender Mercies", from God is that I am once again a part of my family's life. Each day, each event, just adds to the "happiness" in my life that I haven't had in a long time. My life now, at this point, revolves around them, in that I'm not looking for experiences or careers that will move me from Jacksonville. In a lot of way that has made my life easier. Besides, there have been numerous times I've been able to share my religious beliefs with my family (through words and deeds).

I'm so grateful for a thoughtful and loving God, that knows me personally, who has brought to me (again) this "Tender Mercy".

One Degree (of separation) of Napoleon Dynamite

I'll get straight to the point. I was roommates with Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) from 1999-2000 when we attended BYU in Provo, UT. We were assigned to the same unit at Cinnamon Tree Apartments. And if anyone wants to check out the 2nd floor corner unit, the address is:

1285 N Freedom Blvd (200 W) Apt 30
Provo, UT 84604

BYU housing is unlike other college housing...off-campus housing is assigned like dorms (that's another topic). I had just returned from a two-year Mormon mission to Los Angeles California and made arrangements in the Fall of 1999 to room with another friend of mine that also went to Los Angeles. For the two-bedroom apartment that was assigned to us, they paired us up with Jon and Dan Heder, who both just got back from their church missions to Japan. They took one room, we took the other.

For two semesters, I witnessed Jon, uncut, speaking Japanese with his brother, making short films in the apartment, and I even heard those catch phrases like "Gosh!!!", "Luckeeeee!!!", and "You idiot!!!" whenever he decided to go in character of the future Napoleon Dynamite. Who would've thought I was that close to fame?

Dell Pride?

WARNING -- Controversial Material!!!

I've worked for several major companies (Northrop Grumman, Harris Corporation, Monsanto) and they each have their way of celebrating diversity in the workforce, mainly by adhering to and informing employees of anti-discrimination laws regarding race, religion, sexual orientation, etc, of an employee.

At Dell, my current employer, I received a corporate email with the following logo a few weeks back, celebrating Gay Pride Month. They had invited a famous and openly gay guest speaker to speak at the Austin, TX campus and was emailing everyone the days and times for the event.




Did Dell go too far to celebrate gay pride or do you think Dell had every right to promote this kind of diversity at the workplace? Because this is a controversial subject, feel free to leave anonymous comments.

She Said, He Said

I've been working at the mall for almost a year now, and "people watching" has been one of the things to do to pass time. On very very few occasions, my co-workers and I have difficulty identifying the gender of our patrons from behind, since some girls have masculine features and like to wear their hair short, and some guys like to wear their hair long. A couple of days ago, there was a person who had long curly dark hair, I believe of a islander decent, somewhat shorter than me (I am 5' 8"). Isaiah, my co-worker, challenged me to identify their gender. Unbeknownst to him, I had already identified this person before as a male, but from behind...it was really difficult NOT to say that he was a woman.

This brought back to my remembrance one incident a few years back in Sacramento California, playing volleyball with other young adults from my church, which happened every Thursday evening. There was a Polynesian girl that I had never met before, somewhat heavyset and had long hair, playing on the opposing team. After one of the plays, there was a discrepancy as to which team was awarded the point. As I voiced my opinion, I kept saying "She touched it last. She touched it last", pointing to this Polynesian girl. That was when everyone corrected me and said "You mean, HE touched it last."

In disbelief, I looked at one of my friends on my team, somewhat at a loss of words, somewhat puzzled, somewhat embarrassed. She looked back at me with the "Oh gosh, you just messed up bad!" look. That lasted a few more seconds, but we went just went back to playing the game like nothing happened.

You know it would have been MUCH worse if the genders were swapped...

SELL ON EBAY!!!!

I never thought I'd actually venture into Ebay. Countless times I've listened to that Ebay song by Weird "Al" sung to the tune of Backstreet Boy's "I Want It That Way". It's quite amusing. Little did I know that EVERYTHING he says on it is soooooooo TRUE.

Since I've been back in Jacksonville (wow over a year now), I kinda started out trying to buy and sell stuff. My first purchase was an all-in-one media card reader/floppy drive for a computer that I put together. The first item I ever sold was a wireless gaming router for a console game system. Since then, I've become somewhat of an expert at it now. I've sold a few cameras, a laptop with a broken LCD screen, a couple of cellphones, computer parts (computer case, CD read/writer, bluetooth keyboard and mouse, RAM sticks), my old Playstation 2, a used Xbox 360, and even a brand new Playstation 3 when it first came out last November.



I'm into photography and one of the hard to get lens (Nikon 18-200mm VR lens) have been selling for a premium since the beginning of 2006. Well, last August, I decided to see if I could could make a profit selling these lenses. Actually I just wanted to make enough profit to help pay for one of those lenses to keep for myself. I'd order a few of these lenses at $750 each, wait about two months or so for them to arrive, and then sell them for much higher price on Ebay....I was hooked. I pretty much made it a side business, so long as there's demand. I've sold roughly 130 of these babies. My "Buy-It-Now" price was as high as $949 around Christmas time, but the demand is dropping and they are currently listed at $849.



Feel free to check out my profile vladtech on Ebay.

Now I'm on the lookout for the next hot item to sell...

Working Out Is Sorta Working Out

Isaiah, one of my co-workers, and I have a friendly wager to see who can lose the most weight by the end of June. Since we made this bet (during the last week of May) I've joined a local gym and been doing some kind of exercise almost everyday. I would show you a before picture, but please, everyone already knows how awesome my physique is, so no need to make the girls drool and the guys jealous....OK, so I'm stretching it just a wee bit...but when I'm done, then I guess I can allow a modest peak.

I'm glad we made this wager. I think I've gone through my fifth (and counting) metabolic slowdown and my weight keeps going up...and up...and up. I weigh about 207 lbs. and I hope to be about 10+ pounds lighter by June 30th. I'm not sure if I gonna make it, but we'll see.

I've been doing pretty good so far...I'll keep you posted on this.