Friends
Well, its been an intersting weekend. Saw the movie The Brothers Grimm, which I thought was good. It was funny but had some dark parts. Then Saturday I got together with friends from Grad School at Athena's Greek Restaurant down in Greektown. It was a beautiful night and 12 of us sat out on the patio. Greekfest was going on and added to the fun. Unfortuately one of my friends got sick and had to leave early but I heard from her this morning and she is feeling better. After dinner we walked around Greekfest and Rob won his girlfriend a stuffed animal at one of the games. After that we walked over to Union Park Lounge and had some drinks and Brian bought the group some cold stone cake, yum. It was a good time. I just finally got home today and I am getting settled back in and watching the news reports on how they are evacuating the city of New Orleans. Yikes! Oh and now Bush is telling how the Iraqi constitution is now done. I just told Luke over IM and I think its the first has heard of it. Well I am going to watch more of this. Have a good day everyone!
The Rubber Industry
I just got done watching a facinating segment on the invention of rubber and it evolution on the history channel and eating a piece of cake. Now I can go to bed and have weird dreams about tires and such. Night all....
Moving On
Well, its official. I have been offered and have accepted a position as a Project Leader for Health Care Service Corporation. The position will land me with the IT Strategy team at HCSC with a leadership position and about a 35% increase in salary. For those of you not familiar with HCSC they are the parent company to BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois, BlueCross BlueShield of Texas, BlueCross BlueShield of New Mexico, and soon to be acquired BlueCross BlueShield of Oklahoma.
I was approached about this openning about 3 weeks ago from someone in my network. I hadn't actually be looking for a new job because I was happy here at Allstate but after hearing that it would be a leadership position I decided to go ahead and interview. After hearing the details of the role I decided I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I am excited to get started there. It will be only the second company I have worked for since I got my MBA in 2003. It accepted the position with somewhat mixed feelings because I have made a lot of friends and have built up a solid reputation at Allstate but sometimes you have to go where the opportunity is.
I broke the news to my manager at Allstate last week and he was very supportive of the move. In fact everyone has been very supportive which will make the transition easier. My last day with Allstate is September 9th and then I will start at HCSC on September 12th. Another nice benefit is that I won't have to move out of my apartment in Evanston because I live so close to the Purple Line (Elevated Train) which runs down to the city and drops off 2 blocks from work. So no more running up the miles on my poor Jeep and I will be able to avoid the ever rising gas prices. Though in the next year I will probably start thinking about finding a place to buy as long as it makes sense, but now I will at least have the extra income to put something back for a down payment.
It will definitely be weird not driving the reverse commute out to Allstate everyday after doing it for 2.5 years, but I think I can get used to it. My team is planning a going away shindig for the 7th of September and I will be spending the next couple of weeks going out to lunchs with co-workers to say goodbye, but at least I will still be around Chicago if I ever want to meet up with any of them.
Well just wanted to give the update on the job!
Lost and "I Never"
Well, I have been recently watching the re-runs of the show "Lost." It seems like a good show but I have started watching in the middle and only caught a few episodes here and there. I really need to start watching it from the beginning. I am hoping season one comes out on DVD so I can rent it some rainy weekend and catch up on what is going on before season 2. Well, tonight I have been watching and two of the characters started playing "I Never." I didn't realize that this game was played outside of the midwest. It sure brought back some college memories. Basically the game is used for drinking and learning about othe people. The way it works is that someone makes a statement like, "I never cheated in school" and if you have cheated then you take a drink and if you didn't you don't drink. It was just funny to watch actors playing this game. Oh and when did Snoop Dog and Lee Iacoka(SP?) start making Chrysler commercials? How weird!
Watchin the Idiot Box
Well, here I sit watching the Cubs, which I vowed never to do again after how terribly they have played this year, and switching back to "Remember the Titans." Its nice to have the wireless up and running again now I can sit on the couch will surfing the web. Tonight is the first night in a while where I can just sit and relax without a bunch of other stuff hanging over my head. Oh, I will probably get up and clean the bathroom a little later but it will still be there when I am ready. While surfing the web I stopped by the Illini football website. I have found myself getting more and more excited for college football season. I just love that time of year. The crispness of the air, the warm indian summer sun, the roar of he crowd, its awesome. Granted the Illini have stunk the last few years but its Coach Zook's first season at the helm and I am interested to see what he can do with this team. I am hoping for a .500 season this year and anything better will be sweet. First game is September 3rd against Rutgers and I will be there! Then I will head back down on the 24th for the open of the Big Ten games agains Michigan State. hopefully we will be 3 and 0 at that point. So here is to tailgates, touchdowns, cheerleaders, the wave, the chief and to the Orange and Blue!!!!
As many of you know my brother is a SGT in the Illinois National Guard and is on active duty in Iraq. In November of 2004 he started his blog www.sgtport.blogspot.com to help keep his family and loved ones informed of his status and to let us know that he is safe. Well if you have been reading you now know that it has evolved into hotspot for thousands of people to stop in and catch one sgt's view of what's going on on the front. Many people post and all seem to be appreciative. Well tonight I saw an interesting interview with John Hockenberry, a writer for NBC and Wired magazine, on The Daily Show with John Stewart. He discussed the new impact that these military blogs are having in the media and how never before has there been such a "real-time" look at the war from the front. Let's face it, even the reporters embedded with units on the front cannot get their stories out as fast as these guys and gals can. Nope, the milbloggers (military bloggers) don't have to wait for editors to approve their stories they can get it out there as fast as they can type it and express the true freedom of speech. Hockenberry makes a good point in this excerpt from his article in a recent issue of Wired magazine:
- "It includes a core group of about 100 regulars and hundreds more loosely organized activists, angry contrarians, jolly testosterone fuckups, self-appointed pundits, and would-be poets who call themselves milbloggers, as in military bloggers. Whether posting from inside Iraq on active duty, from noncombat bases around the world, or even from their neighborhoods back home after being discharged - where they can still follow events closely and deliver their often blunt opinions - milbloggers offer an unprecedented real-time real-life window on war and the people who wage it. Their collective voice competes with and occasionally undermines the DOD's elaborate message machine and the much-loathed mainstream media, usually dismissed as MSM."
If you are interested in reading the whole article go
here. It is a great look at how these guys and gals are changing the face of the disimination of information on the war front. It goes on to discuss how the Pentagon is just now starting to realize the impact that blogging is having and could be preparing to take steps to monitor it more closely. It will be interseting to see how this unfolds in the future but one thing is for sure there will be a sh*t-storm from enlisted soldiers and especially from families back home who have grown accostomed to having these regular updates from their loved ones on the front if these blogs are stopped. If the military shuts them down now there will be a media frenzy. At this rate its a movement that will be extremely difficult to deter and has already created a movement that is sure to move forward. Its a movement that has given people who have grown weary of the sensationalized media a fresh look through the eyes of the actual soldier, the guy who is there and not the some desk jockey in some cozy air conditioned news studio. The views of these soldiers range from left to right and many of them are damn good writers. So regardless of your political affiliation you soon find yourself sucked in and sometimes checking your favorite blogger sites several times a day for more updates. This is bigger than people realize and will definitely begin to bleed into other avenues of society. I myself have just begun to understand the full implications of this movement and its exciting to know someone who is part of it. Well I could go on for hours on this but please read the article by John Hockenberry to learn more about this. I hope you all find it as eye opening as I have.
Salmon Recipes
So I have a freezer full of fish and only one recipe for cooking them. Mostly they are walleye fillets from my trip to Canada but I also have a couple of good sized salmon fillets too. If anyone has any good recipes for cooking either I am game just post with this blog post. Ok, now I am heading off to the loop for this evening!
Fixing Computer, Round 2
Well, I will attempt to reformat my hard drive and reload my operating system today, in hopes that will clean off som nasty spyware that got on my machine. This will also allow me to get so other items set up on it and get my wireless networks set up and running again. I will probably either be purchasing an audio bridge to plug into my stereo or a TIVO that will be part of my wireless network in the next week or so. If you don't see a post on here for a while it maybe because I bungled up the computer. Anyways, here it goes!
Stuff, Stuff & More Stuff
Well, here I am again posting about a month after my last post. I guess we will see who the die-hard readers are, lol. Well over the last month there has been a lot going on. If you read my brother's post
www.sgtport.blogspot.com you know that he got to come home for 2 weeks this month. It was great to see him after 6 months but it was hard to send him off again. While he was home I ran home a lot to spend time with him and the family. We saw some movies and had a few beers and a few laughs. Last Tuesday he came to Chicago along with my other brother Clay and his girlfriend Danielle to go to Six Flags and Hurricane Harbor just north in Gurnee, IL. Well, wouldn't you know it, it was 100 degrees everday up until that day we go and then it drops to 66 degrees and rains the whole day. I felt bad because he only had a few weeks at home and then that happened. We did have fun though we made the best of it by getting on the roller coasters and swimming in the wave pool even though we were freezing. The night before he and I and Linda went out to Dave & Busters, which is a restaraunt/bar/video arcade down in Chicago. It was a good time. By the way Luke if you are reading this I still have your collectors glass from there. We wouldn't want to lose it again after Linda went to all the trouble to track it down for you at the bar ;).
So this weekend I went home to spend Friday night with him before he flew back out to Iraq. It was tough to send him off again like that but it is comforting to know that he is a sharp kid and can take care of himself. Hopefully, if all goes well he will be back by the begining of 2006!
Well that's all I have for now. Sorry to be so sporadic with the posting but it is summer after all!
