Free at last

Free at last, free at last....  As of 1:30 pm MDT on March 17th, 2009 I am debt free!!  I just paid off the remaining balance on my car loan and can again live without debt.  That and I now have 100% ownership of my car.  

My whole life I've dreaded ever going into debt and worked hard to avoid it.  When I lost my scholarship (I blame Lauren :-P) at BYU I was afraid I'd have to take out a loan for the first time.  Luckily BYU is one of the cheapest Universities around and I got a great job in the Physics Department.  Somehow I always managed to break even with a little left over to feed my video game habits.  It didn't hurt that I rarely ate anything beyond dinner if I even ate dinner.  Oh, and it wouldn't have been possible without $1 Totino's pizzas, tuna, ramen noodles, and Marshmallow Maties, though not mixed together.

Then I graduated and was jobless.  Being jobless is usually not a good idea if you want to avoid debt.  My ex-wife draining a big chunk of my bank account wasn't all that helpful either.  Luckily I had good friends who helped me find an affordable place to stay during my "transition" period.  After a while I noticed what little money I had left was quickly running out.  I decided to seek employment and by "seek employment" I mean applying for the "sales" job some door to door recruiter offerred me.  I put "sales" in quotes because it was nothing more than cold calling people and lying to them about a product I was being lied to about.  After a month or so at that place I got fired; mostly because I refused to lie as much as the other sales people.  This marked the first time I've ever been fired or worked somewhere doing illegal business.

Now I had no idea what to do.  At least I was going to last a little longer or so I thought.  Turns out the company I worked for lied about their earnings, product, and ability to actually pay their employees.  So after they declared bankruptcy and no longer had to pay anyone I was back where I started except now I needed to get off the road to hell I was on because I was, in essence, stealing from people for a living.  Don't get me started on those door to door pest control, security systems, satelite TV, Melaluca, or other similar jobs students like to do.  Make tons of money at the price of your soul.  Sounds awesome, GO TEAM!!!

Bumming around the apartment one day I got a random phone call from someone who had my resume from a random application I sent in when I graduated.  Here was my big break.  Finally a real job after college.   Suprise!  It was phone support!  I won't go into detail about the horrors of that job.  Anyone who knows me probably has heard the story and I don't want to bite the hand that feeds as it were.  I am still with the company but in a much more relaxed and enjoyable position.  It all worked out in the end.  

So there you go.  A post that was just a "Hooray for me!" post has now turned into a life story post.  Now to move on to bigger and better things... like a house perhaps.

Mana from the heavens

Thank goodness they start selling easter candy months in advance. 

Oh and in case anyone isn't keeping track (you all should be), there are only 178 days 23 hours and 19 minutes until the movie 9 releases.  Trailer

Big deal over Big Love?

Recently we have been getting a lot of drama over an HBO show notorious for its controversial portrayals of people commonly misconstrued as members of my church.  Big Love is the name of the show and it discusses the lives of polygamist practitioners.  While this show has claimed it isn't about church members they purposefully use common misconceptions about the church to fuel the publicity behind the show.  Their latest stunt is to show sacred ordinances and ceremonies relating to the temple work members of my church perform.  Here is where the drama begins...

Lots of people are up in arms about the whole situation and the requisite email chains, facebook groups, and blogs have been popping up all over the place; most of them referencing a picture in a recent TV guide depicting a scene from the show regarding our temple practices.  If you read the caption of said picture it states, "Barb's walk of shame is sure to stir the pot..." (emphasis added).  Right there it is obvious that HBO wants this to be controversial.  They want to stir up discussion, create hype for the show and in the end make more money off the show due to increased viewership.  All of this publicity now being generated by those offended (including myself since I wrote this post about it) is only helping HBO get more people interested in the show again.  I have seen multiple comments by people who gave up on the show after its then controversial premiere saying they now have a renewed interest in the show and will start watching again.  These are people who may not have cared otherwise.

It's not like similar events haven't happened before.  With the advent of the Internet nothing is really secret nor sacred anymore.  Like it or not temple ordinances are already on the web and available for anyone who cares to look.  Often this sort of thing is also filled with partial truths, errors, and much of it is taken out of context.  Those who don't understand the religion will obviously get confused, weirded out or angry.  That is the whole purpose of those who provide this sort of thing to the public.  So why then should we give it more publicity?  Why should we make a huge deal out of it?  Is it offensive?  Yes.  Do I feel they belittle and make a spectacle of sacred and important parts of my religion?  Yes.  But in the end if they want to do it the First Amendment allows that right.  There is a lot of stuff published I am offended by or disagree with, but no need to bring it undue attention.

Don't watch it.  Don't support it.  And Don't make such a big deal about it.  Let the church leaders handle it.  If it becomes a defamation of the church then the church will deal with it.  Don't let our faith be shaken.  Be ready and willing to help others better understand the church and clear up the misconceptions.  Despite what the show's producers want people to think it is a fictional TV show and the people are not members of the church.  What they practice is not what our church teaches and regardless of watever "research" the producers have done the only true way to understand the church and its practices is to speak with the missionaries, speak with our members or visit our website.

Right on cue the church has released a statement that best summarizes this entire situation:

The Publicity Dilemma

Captain Obvious says

So in thinking about the types of things I wanted to write about in my blog I kind of want to do a periodic post for fun.  I was tired of reading "news" articles on completely obvious subjects.   Did you know that black people voted for Obama and A-Rod took steroids?  I figured that even though I didn't enjoy the articles I would enjoy posting about them in a humorous light.  So without further ado I present Captain Obvious' first useless news story.

Peanut butter sales are down!  Wow, it's a good thing the fine folks at the New York Times are hard at work bring us such suprising news.  I guess the public isn't too keen on consuming a product potentially filled with deadly bacteria.  Shocker number two is the fact that people don't visit the FDA website to check the list of recalled products.  How many of you even knew they had such a list?  Or a nice search engine to find which products are recalled?  My point exactly.  My equation is so much easier; peanut butter = bird poop in it = killing 9 people = something about Georgia and Texas = don't eat it.  Now to finish off those Austin snack crackers I've been munching on....