Geek Like Me

Walking Dead

2009-08-12T12:13:57Z

I just heard that "The Walking Dead", was going to be made into a movie. TWD is my favorite comic and I'm geeking out right now.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118007161.html?categoryid=10&cs=1&nid=2248

New House, Old House

2009-08-10T01:51:58Z

Mandi and I decided to sell our house this weekend. We were garage selling this weekend and ended up in a development in Wylie. We were really impressed with the development decided to look at the model homes available. We were really -blown away by the quality and the cost of these homes. The houses are all built green with the highest energy rating available. Now, Mandi and I live in a home built in 1953 (which means our electric is really high). we really do love the home but it needs a lot of updating. We've done a lot to the house already and it's one of the nicer homes in our area. The sad part is that our neighborhood is starting to decline. We had new neighbors move in and they've been a nightmare. We only have a single garage and I've always had to park on the street. This parking on the street has caused damage to my car. When we added the cost of all the things we wanted to do to the home to make it more comfortable, we realized we were never going to get that money back when we sold the home. We've been living with that realization for a while now. The Dave Ramsey program gave us control of our finances, and we realized we could afford a better house that would have all the things we were wanting. We just didn't think new homes were worth the trouble. We found out we were wrong. We looked at 3 different builders and picked out an awesome plan. We are going to sell the house and then build, so well be in an apartment for a while but it's all worth it.b Dave says to never buy a house while your in debt(check), make sure to have a decent down payment(check), and the note should be no more than 25% of your take home pay (check). I think this is going to work out for us. I'll keep you updated.

New Comic!

2009-08-02T19:54:21Z

Finally, after almost a year (11 months to be exact), a brand new Geek Like Me Comic!

http://www.ageeklikeme.com/

This comic was sketched in photoshop and then finished in illustrator. It took me a long time but I think it's funny. Zombie Joe and I have at least 4 or 5 more strips that go with this story, hopefully they will all get made, lol!

Health Care System

2009-07-29T16:31:53Z

The U.S. is divided on the issue of government heath care, or Obamacare. I was reading a friends facebook page and the topic was brought up and I wanted to see the perspective of my LJ friends. Now, I don't consider myself a liberal, even though I'm an atheist. I do believe that the health care system is broken and is in need of repair. I do not however believe that a government run health care system is the answer. I believe that educating yourself on the actual cost on a doctors visit and cutting out the middleman, aka 80-20 health insurance.

Here are some facts.

1.) 15.9% of Americans are not insured
2.) 13% of Americans are on Medicaid
3.) 59.5% of Americans have employer sponsored heath care
4.) 9.1% of Americans buy their own heath insurance
5.) 13.7% of Americans are on Medicare
6.) 3.8 of Americans use Military health care

The percentages don't add up correctly due to the fact some people have more than one type of coverage.

Now, those numbers only count for American citizens. This does not count the problem with illegal immigrants. Living in Texas, this a a bigger problem then some people might realize. The public hospital, Parkland Memorial (Where JFK was pronounced dead) put out figures that 70% of the newborn births were from illegal immigrants. I love how people are talking about how our government can't afford to pay for our health care, yet we paid $96,864,943 in 2005 for undocumented immigrants in Texas, alone. Do you see now why government is inept. I love how people think the government is able to shield vast conspiracies, yet they can't keep our boarders secure or come up with a better plan that enable immigrants to work legally .

Now, I was raised an army brat. I had military health care for most of my childhood. I remember doctors and pharmacist telling me how lucky I was to have it because in the private sector all these procedures were very costly. I totally believed this until I caught mono in junior high. It took weekly doctor visits for 6 weeks, this included massive amounts of blood being drawn. The end result was they thought I might have mono but they weren't sure. Meanwhile I was going to school everyday infecting all the other students. Seems that there was a large outbreak of mono at my school that year and even though I told my doctor this, he still wasn't sure what this mystery illness was. In the end they said I guess it's mono because I got better after 6 weeks. Once again, the government is inept.

I know most people actually think that private companies are actually better, they may be but they don't care about the consumer. They care about making a profit. I wonder what would happen if we made it so these companies had to become non profit. I'd rather a company be regulated than completely owned by the government. I wonder if we might get better rates.In addition, why are we a country of sue happy buggers? Doctors malpractice insurance is crazy expensive! This is caused by frivolous claims and sue happy lawyers. If the government would take some of the risk away from the doctors, I'm sure we would see a drop in cost to see the doctor. Yet, I haven't heard anything about this in any of the government health care proposals.

In conclusion, you may wonder what do I do for health insurance? Well, for years I just paid to see the doctor. I found out if you pay cash, it's usually half of what they charge the insurance company. What if something horrible happened? I worried about that for a long time and then I realized that if I took some of the risk off of the insurance company, I got an affordable form of health insurance. I have a high detectable heath insurance policy with a Heath Savings Account (or HSA) attached. I have a $5000 deductible and then I'm covered 100%. I take the money I save from paying less for the high deductible insurance and put it into my HSA. A HSA, is an account I can use only for medical expenses (kinda like a flex account but better). I can put in $5900 a year (the amount usually goes up every year) and deduct this amount from my income at the end of the year for tax purposes. I still pay cash for doctor visits and save money, yet if something horrible comes along I'm prepared. The best part is I will only have to pay $5000 for a major emergency if it does happen. I've learned to shop around and be aware of what stuff cost and I get to decide if I really need a test of a certain type of prescription. I am free to make my own choice! What is more American then that?

GEEK OUT!

Smells Like A Roll

2009-07-20T00:20:30Z

GLM Contest!

2009-07-15T02:45:30Z

Interview and Contest on Geek Like Me
http://www.ageeklikeme.com/
Head on over to Geek Like Me and you will find the first interview in the Picking Your Brain series where I interview local author Alex Bledsoe. You will also find the information on our first contest in that interview where we will be giving away two signed copies of Alex's first book. Contest ends July 19th, so pop over soon.

What is a geek?

2009-06-28T13:49:34Z

I found this article http://geekgirldiva.entertainmentearth.com/2009/06/5-tips-on-proper-geek-male-maintenance.html on Digg and I thought it was interesting. The main thing that stuck out for me was the definition of what a geek is...

"For reference, let's define what "geek" means, and for that we call upon the words of a college professor: Being a geek means possessing and being passionate about knowledge that no one cares about or considers.

No one.

So, you can see that the geek male is largely ignored throughout his natural life, even amongst his own people. There is hope because being male, geek males understand the logic of an argument even if the rest of the natural world believes the argument to be nonsense."

I found this definition to be the most accurate description of myself, as well as many of my friends, LOL!

Happy Anniversary!

2009-06-23T03:50:35Z

It's me and Mandi's 13th wedding anniversary,YAY! We went out and ate sushi, now I'm a fat and happy husband.

Firefly Illustrator

2009-06-22T23:28:39Z

Here is a picture of Capt. Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly. I been trying to figure out how illustrator works and decided Mal would be a fun thin to try out.

I Got the Job!

2009-06-16T21:57:32Z

I got the awesome job!

Job Prospects

2009-06-16T14:02:12Z

It looks like I have 2 job prospects right now. Tom Thumb has pretty much said I can have a job working in the deli. I'll be taking a large pay cut but work is work right now and in order to reach my dreams, I need to be working. The second is a job working in manufacturing, paying what I used to make. It's a small company repackaging protective film. I actually applied for this job and didn't get it the first time. I think I didn't get it because I was currently working and the company thought they should give it to someone who unemployed. Anyway, the company called me this morning and asked if I was still available. Now all I have to do is get my car out of the shop (I got the a/c replaced, $1800 *ouch*), so I can go to my interview. Wish me luck!

Plans For the Future

2009-06-05T14:53:45Z

Ok, as of today I'm still unemployed. I all of this week filling out applications and trying to talk to managers about getting an interview. As of this moment I've not been to successful.I'm as of right now, sitting in my bathrobe drinking coffee, thinking a lot about my future plans. I know that I will need to get a new job of some sort to advance my financial plans, as well as to cost flow my new business. I will write more later but for now I've gotta go to work (aka looking for a job).

Check Out My Big Fish!

2009-05-27T20:54:26Z

I caught this bad boy on Saturday, at my mother in law's new house. It's the largest fish I've ever caught. Even though I love to eat fish I don't eat catfish, so I threw it back to catch another day. I know that there are at least 3 or 4 of these big boys in the pond, so hopefully next time I'll catch bigger one.

Holy Crap, I knew it!

2009-05-12T23:08:25Z

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090512/sc_mcclatchy/3231765

Geek Out!

2009-05-06T16:42:12Z

Hello, LJ friends, I know I don’t write nearly enough nowadays. Really, what do I have to write about? I’m still working in industrial sales, I’ve sold a little bit but I’m still learning (which means lots of stupid mistakes).
Family is doing great and we’ve been able to finally save some money into our emergency fund. The trade off to all this scrimping and saving is that we really haven’t done much. I missed all the comic book goodness of “Free Comic Book Day”. This is sad because Mark, my best friend, owns a comic shop. I did get with Mark later in the day with our families in tow to see “Wolverine” and eat dinner together. This is the first time we’ve gone out with friends in a few months. In hindsight I realized this is partly where all our money went before we got smart. The dinner and movie cost us around $100 by the time it was all done. I hope Mark can wait another 4 months to do something with us because that blew our budget big time, lol.
My little puppy Chewie is doing awesome! He still thinks I’m the coolest guy in the world. I wish he’d go outside to do his business more, but with all the rain we’ve been getting, I guess Chewie has decided the living room is the most comfortable place to go. Thank goodness for hardwood floors and easy clean up. Little dogs are awesome for the fact they only make a little mess. I can’t imagine having a Labrador to clean up after.
Mark gave me a disk of episodes of the Big Bang Theory TV show. Watching these shows make me realize where I went wrong with GLM. It’s made me think about a total revamp and re launch of the comic. I’d need to get a new scanner if I wanted to do this as I’d want to draw all the comics out this time. New characters would be introduced and current characters would be re imagined. It’d be like Ultimate GLM, LOL! What do y’all think about something like that?

Too Funny!!!

2009-04-15T12:39:49Z

Chewie!!!

2009-04-08T15:41:27Z

Here are some pictures of our new Yorkie, Chewie.

80's Style Watchmen Cartoon

2009-03-06T05:28:52Z

Crazy Dog Person

2009-03-06T00:57:31Z

Yep, I'm a crazy dog person. Mandi and I got another Yorkie puppy, his name is Chewbacca and he can't stand to be without me.

Also Beatles Rockband is causing me to geek out!

What's Happening?

2009-02-07T23:19:59Z

Hey everyone, I'm finally getting over this crummy cold. I have a horrible week just dealing with work and being sick. The only blower that I've repaired at the shop has failed twice. We had to buy a new blower to send to the customer, so they could get their production back up. This means we lost a lot of money on this particular job and my boss wasn't happy. Later that week my boss told me he talked to his old mentor that day. My boss's mentor told him that the amount of repairable blowers are quite low and not to let our hunger of getting work make us make bad decisions. In retrospect I shouldn't of even tried to repair this blower. The blower was walking the fine line of not being cost effective to rebuild. I let my hunger to finally rebuild a blower in the shop cloud my judgment. Next time I get a blower to inspect I won't make the same mistake.

On Friday I had to go to a company to do a service call on a vacuum pump. The first time I did this a few months ago, the maintenance man practically yelled at me and called me incompetent. So, I wasn't in very good spirits driving down. Since that time I've done some more training and did a ton of research that morning before heading out. I went in to the shop and fixed the problem easily. I was surprised it worked to tell you the truth but there really isn't a lot to vacuum pumps. Needless to say the maintenance guy was happy I was able to solve his problem and this made my boss really happy. So the week started out rough but it ended on a high note.

In other news I had an old girlfriend from high school contact me on Facebook, it was really cool. I love to see how my old friends have grown up,married, and had kids. I've had quite a lot of old friends contact me this way and I really enjoy it. The old GF told me that in retrospect I was her rock at a tough point in her life. She had recently moved to the small town that I lived in and had broken up with her long time boyfriend. I remember that I always felt like the rebound guy and was always compared with her ex. In the end I broke up with her because I just wanted to date other people (I was only 17 after all). I heard later on from another guys she dated that she really hated me. This made me sad because I felt we ended on good term. So, to find out years later that she doesn't hate me and instead thinks fondly of the time we shared makes me feel good. She is now married to a great guy with 2 children and 1 on th way. I had the pleasure of telling her I married Mandi, the girl I was dating 6 months after we broke up and we have a beautiful daughter. It's good to see people happy with life and I hope more people come out of the wood work.

Geek Out!

Strange email

2009-01-24T13:55:47Z

So I've been chatting with a guy on craigslist trying to buy a bamboo tablet for Mandi's birthday. Here are the actual emails...

Me: Do you still have this tablet and if so, how much?

Him: I am specifically looking for trades for phones... you have any?

Me: I've got $60 to trade.

Him: 60 and a bj from your wife/girlfriend and youve got a deal.

Me: Hmmm...Well, I'm not married and I don't have a GF but I do have a dog and she loves peanut butter. So what about 15 minutes with my dog and $60?

Is it wrong to prostitute my dog to save $10?

My wife the blogger...

2009-01-17T14:10:54Z

Mandi has always given me a hard time about how much time I spend with my virtual friends. I used to love visiting forums and writing in my LJ back in the day. Mandi would never give the poor interweb the time of day, even though I told her it was a lot of fun. Now, I haven't been the best virtual friend recently. I miss the comic but I don't think I'll be doing it anymore and that was the main catalyst for my internet usage. I no longer visit forums and I rarely blog. Strangely, Mandi can't say the same thing. Mandi has started a family blog

http://www.wedrankthekoolaid.blogspot.com/

and she's a regular contributor to the Dave Ramsey forum, WTF? How did my wife surpass me in the realm of the world wide web? Oh,It's also my birthday today... I'm 33.

Somebody

2009-01-14T23:52:22Z

Somebody

This is my friend Sarah doing my favorite Depeche Mode song.

Too Funny!!!

2009-01-09T01:34:53Z

This is the actual first customer review for "The Secret" By Rhonda Byrne found on Amazon

Please allow me to share with you how "The Secret" changed my life and in a very real and substantive way allowed me to overcome a severe crisis in my personal life. It is well known that the premise of "The Secret" is the science of attracting the things in life that you desire and need and in removing from your life those things that you don't want. Before finding this book, I knew nothing of these principles, the process of positive visualization, and had actually engaged in reckless behaviors to the point of endangering my own life and wellbeing.
At age 36, I found myself in a medium security prison serving 3-5 years for destruction of government property and public intoxication. This was stiff punishment for drunkenly defecating in a mailbox but as the judge pointed out, this was my third conviction for the exact same crime. I obviously had an alcohol problem and a deep and intense disrespect for the postal system, but even more importantly I was ignoring the very fabric of our metaphysical reality and inviting destructive influences into my life.
My fourth day in prison was the first day that I was allowed in general population and while in the recreation yard I was approached by a prisoner named Marcus who calmly informed me that as a new prisoner I had been purchased by him for three packs of Winston cigarettes and 8 ounces of Pruno (prison wine). Marcus elaborated further that I could expect to be [...] raped by him on a daily basis and that I had pretty eyes.
Needless to say, I was deeply shocked that my life had sunk to this level. Although I've never been homophobic I was discovering that I was very rape phobic and dismayed by my overall personal street value of roughly $15. I returned to my cell and sat very quietly, searching myself for answers on how I could improve my life and distance myself from harmful outside influences. At that point, in what I consider to be a miraculous moment, my cell mate Jim Norton informed me that he knew about the Marcus situation and that he had something that could solve my problems. He handed me a copy of "The Secret". Normally I wouldn't have turned to a self help book to resolve such a severe and immediate threat but I literally didn't have any other available alternatives. I immediately opened the book and began to read.
The first few chapters deal with the essence of something called the "Law of Attraction" in which a primal universal force is available to us and can be harnessed for the betterment of our lives. The theoretical nature of the first few chapters wasn't exactly putting me at peace. In fact, I had never meditated and had great difficulty with closing out the chaotic noises of the prison and visualizing the positive changes that I so dearly needed. It was when I reached Chapter 6 "The Secret to Relationships" that I realized how this book could help me distance myself from Marcus and his negative intentions. Starting with chapter six there was a cavity carved into the book and in that cavity was a prison shiv. This particular shiv was a toothbrush with a handle that had been repeatedly melted and ground into a razor sharp point.
The next day in the exercise yard I carried "The Secret" with me and when Marcus approached me I opened the book and stabbed him in the neck. The next eight weeks in solitary confinement provided ample time to practice positive visualization and the 16 hours per day of absolute darkness actually made visualization about the only thing that I actually could do. I'm not sure that everybody's life will be changed in such a dramatic way by this book but I'm very thankful to have found it and will continue to recommend it heartily.

End of the Year Fun!

2009-01-07T00:10:36Z

The Good:
My friends from way out in Albuquerque called on New years day and asked if they could stay with us for a few days. This was great because we haven't seen them in 2 years.

The Bad:
My desktop's mother board went out.

The Ugly:
I had to spend money on a new computer, so I blew the budget.

It's not all bad. I got a really good deal on a new computer. It was just built and had XP pro, 3 gigs of memory, and a decent video card. Then just to be a nice guy the seller loaded the Adobe CS3 Master Suite. I was able to save enough money that I didn't have to go off the budget too much. We've paid off our $4500 Visa bill as a Christmas present, and should be able to pay $3500 on our car come January 15th. After that we owe about $3000 on the car. We plan to be debt free except the house by March. Woot!

I hope everyone is having a great year!