The Farmer and his Daughter...

Once there was a farmer with a beautiful daughter. Men came from miles around to ask her father for her hand in marriage, but he was the old-fashioned type, and wanted to make sure his daughter would have a husband who provided for her – strong, sensible and industrious.

So finally he settled on three likely young men, and told them he would ask them a question to decide which one could woo his daughter. The three young men nervously waited while he prepared his pipe. Finally, he asked all three of them a single question: “If you are working in the fields and find there’s a stone in your shoe, how long can you work?”

The first young man sprung to his feet. “I can work all day long! I can ignore the stone in my shoe until the sun sets! I am tough and I will endure the pain.”

The farmer nodded and turned to the second young man. “I can do the same, but I’ll even whistle to show I’m not bothered one bit by the stone! I can completely ignore the pain.”

The farmer settled his corn cob pipe and turned to the third young man, who declared, “I can’t work one minute with a stone in my shoe.” The other two young men laughed and congratulated themselves, declaring loudly that one of them would surely be chosen. The third man finished as they laughed, saying “I’ll stop and take the stone out of my shoe and keep on working like I always would. And at the end of the day, my wife won’t have to wash a bloody sock.”

The third young man and the farmer’s daughter were married the next spring.

———-

The moral of the story is that it’s not always about being the toughest or the most driven – sometimes it’s about being smart. This applies almost every day in your work life and in your personal life. Don’t just keep hammering away at a problem to prove you can stick to a task. Know when to quit, reevaluate and begin fresh. And if you don’t know, stop, take a break and start again. The answer will come to you.

In every day a little rain must fall -

As I have grown older, I am coming to realize that I have lost my "support chain". Sure I have my family to talk to, but I tend to temper what I say to them. I have coworkers and many acquaintances, but I tend to share information, but remain quite guarded about it. It's been years since I have had someone I could confide in to talk openly about my irritations, concerns, and such ~ and more importantly, care about what it is I am sharing.

I don't really have any close friends. It sucks, and i don't know how to right the ship. My life has been full of frustrations lately. I used to feel that I was pretty optimistic about life. I don't remember when I lost it, but I now feel like I am a real pessimist. I know that I am my own worst critic - but it makes life tough not having that friend to confide in.

10 Updated Colloquialisms for the Modern Age

(Great Posting I found on Geek Dad)

While pop culture itself is full of colloquialisms, catch phrases, social niceties and even a fair share of vulgarities, it seems that many of us repeat, verbatim, the things that we heard our parents say. Many of these are still relevant today, but a good lot of the clichés we use today have no meaning to our children.

Take for example: “Don’t count your chicks before they hatch.” How many people do you know today who actually raise chickens from eggs? I wonder if people actually know what a doornail is, let alone how dead it is. Do you know what it means to wear your heart on your sleeve? How about its origin?

So my question to you is, can you think of any idioms that needs to be updated for the digital age? I’ll start of with one that I coined last week, add in some new ones a few other GeekDads thought up and let you take it from there.

• Hindsight is always 1080p.
• One #hashtag does not a trending topic make.
• Too many hosts spoil the podcast.
• That’s a hard act to unfollow.
• 140 characters to the wise is sufficient.
• The bandwidth is always greener on the other side of the firewall.
• E-mail, Twitter, and Facebook are three best friends and three worst enemies.
• People who live in glass houses shouldn’t check their address on Google Street View.
• A fool and his passwords are soon parted.
• He’s 10 bits short of a byte.

That's My Boy!

So Logan fell asleep early this morning while Michelle was getting things together. She came into the family room and found him sound asleep with remote in hand - heh - definitely daddy's boy...

How to Solve the Rubiks Cube!

It's not what you earned it's what you spend...

I believed that in order to be successful you had to make a lot of money, at any price, even if it meant that you hated what you did for a living. After all, what was more important than making a lot of money?

However, that all changed a few years back when I all of a sudden realized that money wasn’t the most important thing to me. All I really needed, I decided, was enough to enjoy life – no more, no less. It was then that I decided to work for me and what I need rather than A. what others thought I needed or B. what my younger self had been telling me that I needed.

It wasn’t how much I was making, but rather how I was spending it that was dictating how much money I had to bring home on a monthly basis. I understand the concept, but I still have not figured out how to get rid of that mindset.

I guess this too will be something that I'll still have to work on for 2010.

Have been through this more than once...

Some interesting quotes for the day...

Well I haven't had anything constructive to say for a while. As I was doing some research on some work relate stuff today, I ran across some quotes that stuck with me...

"I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better." --W. Edwards Deming

"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing." -- Georg Lichtenberg

Why IRS Agents aren't allowed to bet (anymore)...

The IRS decides to audit Grandpa, and summons him to the IRS office.

The IRS auditor was not surprised when Grandpa showed up with his attorney. The auditor said "Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I'm not sure the IRS finds that believable."

"I'm a great gambler, and I can prove it," says Grandpa. "How about a demonstration?"

The auditor thinks for a moment and says "Okay, go ahead."

Grandpa says "I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye." The auditor thinks a moment and says "It's a bet." Grandpa removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor's jaw drops.

Grandpa says "Now I'll bet you two thousand dollars I can bite my other eye." Now the auditor can tell Grandpa isn't blind, so he takes the bet. Grandpa pulls out his dentures and proceeds to bite his other eye.

The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Grandpa's attorney as a witness. He starts getting nervous.

"Want to go double or nothing?" Grandpa asks the auditor. "I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk and pee into that wastebasket on the otherside, and never get a drop anywhere in between." The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there's no way this old guy could possibly manage that stunt; so he agrees again.

Grandpa stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can't make the stream reach the wastebasket on the otherside; pretty much urinating all over the auditor's desk. The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he just turned a major loss into a huge win.

But, Grandpa's attorney moans and puts his head in his heads. "Are you ok?" the auditor asks the attorney. "Not really," says the attorney, "This morning when Grandpa told me he'd been summoned for an audit, he bet me $25,000 that he could come in here and piss all over your desk and that you'd be happy about it!"

I keep telling you, don't mess with old people!

It's That Time Again...

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne ?

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves." Bill Vaughan

Well I guess it's that time again. 2009 flew right by. It was an event filled year! Lots of ups and downs. I've left my job at a terrific company to start one as a government minion. The kids are all doing well and are healthy, and Michelle and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary. I have been thinking of resolutions for 2010. I haven't been in an overly optimistic state lately, so that may taint the resolutions some. My resolutions for 2010:

• Ensure that I am a strong husband to my wife and a loving and supportive father to my kids.
• I will Pay off more debt than I incur
• I will Fit in Fitness
• To learn something new - (I've always wanted to learn Italian - hmm?)
• I will reduce my Overall Stress (Personal & Work)
• I will Take a vacation - we really enjoyed our time at the beach last year

I will no longer waste my time reliving the past, instead I will spend it worrying about the future. I am looking forward to 2010 and all of the challenges and rewards that it brings.