I made it. I'm 40 years old. Writing that here caused me to pause and stare at it. I don't feel 40, but I really am glad for it. I've known a lot of successful people (spiritually and/or financially) that seemed to hit their stride in the their 40's. From this vantage point 50 isn't looking too bad either. Maybe I have my college Shorin Ru instructor to thank for that.

The guy was 55 years old and could whip out 100 push-ups and 500 crunches in no time. It was and is inspiring. Especially since he had a bum right shoulder that caused him to alter his stance in the push-up, but that was about it. I could swim 3,000 yards a day, run 3 miles that night, but that guy could take me down on the mat faster than the bad back which by now has really started to take its toll.

I finished 8 months of physical therapy at Visalia Sport and Spine. Brilliant guy that owns that place. I probably wouldn't be able to continue playing disc golf had it not been for Quintin. He gave me knowledge on how to manage what will continue to worsen in my spine and not let it get the best of me. I'm 40. That idiot doctor in San Luis Obispo told me I would be in a wheelchair by the time I was 30. Bet he won't forget me. He'd be about 60 by now. Ticked me off when he told me that. I told him  he could kiss my you know what for telling me such an awful thing as casually as ordering lunch. No consideration at all in his tone, and certainly no concern for me in his demeanor. I told him if I wasn't in a wheelchair at 31 (and I assured him I was not going to be) I was going to come back, take his foot out of his mouth, and shove it up his *** and no, I wasn't going to pay for the office consult.

I don't think at 40 I would react any different. I had moved away from there by the time I was 31, but I actually remember thinking about him and laughing to myself on my 31st birthday as I went on small "victory jog" around the park. It occurred to me though that the hospitals I'd worked in had some pretty cute candy stripers. I'd probably have found something good to focus on there.

My wife and I are still together. Man, that almost didn't happen. Lots of things almost didn't happen, some good, some bad. I'm more in love with her now than ever. She's an amazing woman, and in my eyes extremely beautiful. We've been together 17 years, and she's taught me a lot about love, patience, and never to mistake kindness for weakness.

We probably never will have kids. Just too much to write about here in that regard, but it makes me sad....so far. Tony Randall sure set a good precedent. Perhaps I will do the same!

I'm truly blessed with good friends, though I don't come around enough. Some of my best friends live in other States and I get so wrapped up in my business that I sometimes let that get in the way of what's important and it bothers me.  It's always been hard for me to stay socially connected for extended periods of time. But since it bothers me I will continue to search for what's going on there and change it. Not "try" to change it. Change it. Fortunately, they seem to understand me in that regard and it just comes with the package...so far.

I'm a bit nervous about some health issues, but then I watch my 72 year old mother in law drop 40lbs, get her chronic (and severe) anxiety under control after 40 years of struggling with it, and bring her cholesterol down from a mind blowing 1500 (yes, fifteen hundred) to 290.

I'm 40. I can do 40. I like it.

See minute details from a distance, such as reading street signs, recognizing people, or spotting police cars in my rear view mirror as far back as 1/2 mile as I'm flying down the freeway. After peering through a telescope most of my life, my brain seems to have acquired the ability to accurately recognize patterns and form them into possible solutions.

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

My wife works at a school, where the Vice Principal consistently
displays a shocking lack of knowledge on some of the most obvious
things. I just cannot explain it any better, except to keep a log of
the things she tells me he says to her in passing conversation. Thus I
will weekly post "The VP Report", or "Vice Principal" report. It's not
that I'm trying to be arrogant, it's just that part of me is, and I
can't help but take aim at this poor soul who makes himself such a
target of opportunity. It wouldn't be an issue with me, except that he
is the Vice Principal of a school and he makes almost a six figure
income.

The name has been changed to protect the guilty. We will just call the VP "Jan".

Every morning, Jan gives a daily address over the school's speaker system. And every morning he lectures the students on keeping the campus clean and behaving with proper etiquette. He does not, however, prohibit spitting. This wouldn't a big deal, except that this is precisely the behavior Jan engages in constantly as he walks around the campus. I would imagine that it is a bit confusing for those 6th grade and younger to reconcile these daily announcements with the behavior of the person who is doing the lecturing.

It's a new low for Jan, advancing as it does into low social intelligence and setting a very bad example for impressionable youth. Perhaps seeing that hypocrisy is OK is what emboldens a few of these brave young souls to become politicians...and even a few of them might be running for President one day. I hope they just don't expect Jan to get their name or political affiliation right (see past VP reports).

I have no religion when it comes to an operating system or its related hardware. I've been using windows since they ripped off the Mac interface back in the 1980's and won that critical lawsuit defeating the copyright infringement claims of Apple Computers. Frankly, I never thought Windows would catch on because it was, at the time, a code bloated shell that simply made it more intuitive to execute DOS commands. Remember DOS? Well I do, I implemented hundreds of DOS based systems on Netware back in the early 1990's, and had to keep up as project manager with the rapidly evolving, and cheap, Windows OS. Once O/S 2 bombed, and the Mac made a run for the home instead of the business office, I was forced to focus on Windows PCs for our executives and staff around the world. It was awful. The more I learned about Windows the less I liked it. Then WindowsNT was introduced and Mac had an opportunity that hasn't been repeated until the recent launch of Vista. WindowsNT was a disaster, and taught me to wait 1.5 years after the initial launch of a new Windows OS before converting over.

I have five Windows PCs in my house and one Mac G4 Dual Processor. I inherited one of the PC's from a former company where we used it to perform desktop static source code analysis (not an easy thing to do on a PC instead of on a server class machine). So, this PC is decent...and it is only JUST as fast as my old MAC G4 even though it was produced in 2004 and my Mac was from 2001. My Mac never crashed, never froze, never slowed down, even when I run multiple Virtual PC machines on it. It's only drawback now is that it's old. Nonetheless, I was able to upgrade it to the latest OS, Leopard, by simply installing 2 Gigs of RAM. That's it. Nothing  else was needed.  I inserted the installation CD, when to dinner with my wife, came back 2 hours later and the install was done. It hums along with the new OS and is actually FASTER than it was before.

Having upgraded hundreds of PC operating systems using Windows I can tell you such a smooth upgrade is rare, but it can happen with proper planning. But I didn't do any planning with my MAC, I just ran the install and Bobs your uncle, it was done. There are some things, like iMOVIE, that my old machine can't run. But the nicest thing is that when I tried to run it I immediately got a message that explained to me why it wouldn't work, then the software gently shut down.

My PC's are excellent work horses that will not experience any more Windows upgrades. For my business I'll have no choice but to upgrade one of my systems to Vista. But my financial resources will begin flowing toward my Mac fund, and eventually Mac will be the rule in both my business and my house. The cost of ownership is so much lower, and the frustrations so fewer, that for me it's time. Especially now since Macs can run Windows. Once I experiment with that a bit, I might just get the latest Mac, run Windows on it, and be done with Windows PC's altogether...except for Gaming and home security workhorse boxes.

It's the cost of ownership factor that people should focus on, not the cost of membership (initial purchase price). Just as the speed rating on a processor is irrelevant by itself as a measure of performance, the up front costs of a PC vs. a Mac is a misleading figure if considered alone. Macs are more expensive, and there is a reason. Quality, in the long run, is always the better choice. For now (and it might be for long, who knows) Macintosh appears to have it right.

I like the Xanga Mini...sometimes. I'm sure there are probably quite a few artists on Xanga that could provide us with a wider variety than the current selection. Maybe Xanga could hold a contest or something.

My wife works at a school, where the Vice Principal consistently
displays a shocking lack of knowledge on some of the most obvious
things. I just cannot explain it any better, except to keep a log of
the things she tells me he says to her in passing conversation. Thus I
will weekly post "The VP Report", or "Vice Principal" report. It's not
that I'm trying to be arrogant, it's just that part of me is, and I
can't help but take aim at this poor soul who makes himself such a
target of opportunity. It wouldn't be an issue with me, except that he
is the Vice Principal of a school and he makes almost a six figure
income.

The name has been changed to protect the guilty. We will just call the VP "Jan".

This week my wife received an actual compliment from Jan. Usually this individual is one of those who doesn't actually appreciate it when people go the extra distance in their job. He's not rude about it, just oblivious...which seems to be a recurring theme in Jan's life.

The stage is set, and we enter the scene with my wife having a conversation with a group of other teachers about science while Jan is sitting in his chair listening intently. My wife is explaining what a CME is, a Coronal Mass Ejection which occurs when magnetic field lines on the sun twist to the point of "snapping", flinging billions of tons of supercharged plasma into space.

My wife: "When the CME is earth directed, a portion of it can impact the earth's geomagnetic field and ultimately lead to the spectacular northern lights that we can sometimes see all the way down here in California."

Jan: "You're extremely smart. You're as smart as Robert Einstein."

My wife: "Thank you Jan. I like science a lot."

Now my wife is an extraordinarily kind and playful soul. The compliment was sincere, if not way off target, so she took the compliment at face value and did not correct him or make fun of him for it. Which is odd because the last time she gave him heck. OK, well I guess this time its my job, of course.

Now lets take a look at Robert Einstein and see who this man really is that has so impressed Jan. The closest match I could find, that is an individual who has something to do with space, is here http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/view_profile.php?userid=8490596

In his own defense (or maybe not) it could be that Jan got confused and was thinking of Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein combined. If my wife is indeed as bright as either of those two, or those two combined, it would explain why she is usually way ahead of me on most everything. Regardless, I just hope Jan doesn't try to teach science or history anytime soon.

My wife works at a school, where the Vice Principal consistently displays a shocking lack of knowledge on some of the most obvious things. I just cannot explain it any better, except to keep a log of the things she tells me he says to her in passing conversation. Thus I will weekly post "The VP Report", or "Vice Principal" report. It's not that I'm trying to be arrogant, it's just that part of me is, and I can't help but take aim at this poor soul who makes himself such a target of opportunity. It wouldn't be an issue with me, except that he is the Vice Principal of a school and he makes almost a six figure income.

The name has been changed to protect the guilty. We will just call the VP "Jan".

This week's astonishing episode:
Jan is applying to become a U.S. Citizen. This has not, however, in any way interfered with his ability to be a VP in a California school. Now, get back on your chair and continue to read. To pass his citizenship test he needs to study, and my wife encounters him in his office and strikes up a conversation asking him how its going. He's studying current events, he tells her.

My Wife: "What kind of things are they going to ask you on the test?"
Jan: "They are probably going to ask me about who the candidates are that are running for president."
My Wife: "OK, and who is running?"
Jan: "There's Hillary, and uh....that..uh...Osama guy."
My Wife: "Osama?"
Jan: "Yes, you know, Osama Bin Laden."

This is not a test, we are not in control of your television, this is not the Twilight Zone, but this guy might be from it. You would think that if someone laughs uproariously at your answer that perhaps you got it wrong. But in fact this gentleman was not raised in such a way that social queues the rest of us would be keen to notice get his attention at all.

Wife: Laughing till it hurts.
Jan: "What?"
Wife: "You know that Osama Bin Laden is a terrorist from Afghanistan that we have been trying to kill for years? You may not want to..." still. laughing..."you may not want to answer a citizenship question with a terrorist answer."

Tune in next week, when Jan will continue to stun, amaze, and perplex me and my wife with his misunderstandings and stupidity, but still manage to make more money that both of us while teaching our children.

Uplifting title eh? Well, Lovegrove got me to thinking. He recently put up an amazing post about Martin Luther which really deserves some eye time. But I look at it as a lesson in oppression. And if one looks at how religion has blunted our scientific growth until the time of the Renaissance (OK, so it could be argued that the blunting continues) it is not difficult to imagine that some race of aliens from the stars, not having subjected themselves to ridiculously dangerous beliefs, would easily be 500 years farther along in their scientific progress than we are.

It seems to me that societies do not target a specific aspect of their development for destruction or construction. Social progress, however you measure it, occurs simultaneously across many dimensions at once. Music, art, and literature were censored with equal severity by those claiming to have God's approving nod even as they slit someone's throat. Now that we are returning the dark ages of religious wars (dressed up in the tech of the day)  and I am wondering if Christian Extremists will begin to exert influence? It would be the ideal time, as they now have an enemy against which to resolve themselves and contrast themselves to in the eyes of the American Christian public.

Didn't like what my tax return showed for 2007, but it confirmed what my books have already been showing. Time to switch tactics, and it's working. A bit too well. No time to breath, then my mother-in-law has a minor stroke while a very good friend of mine, who is only 74 and believe me you would say "only" if you met him, is dying. Not sure he'll make it to the end of the month.

Working on the 210 website (www.enter210.org) for my church for the next release of the site (a dramatic improvement) as our building nears completion. This I do in my "spare" time, but it is my service to God, my sacrifice, what I can offer for Him. And 210 matters. It's become a huge part of our little town and it's not even open yet. I'm on the PR committee and we are taking the fund raising dinner in the direction of helping to curb the Gang influence in Visalia. So far we are making progress there too. Of course, it's nothing like the Fresno police department's annihilation of the Bulldog Gang, but ours is a gentler, more preventative mission.

Spent zero hours at the gym since mid January since business spiked up sharply. Obviously I'm in dire need of getting some balance back in my life. Watching my wife drop 10 pounds in four weeks (as usual without trying) while I struggle to figure out how lose 5 in three months. Then the Empire switched the time on me again. We "spring forward" our clocks to Daylight Savings Time and it's an adjustment that hits me like a college hangover at swim practice.

Spending tonight catching up with my Xanga friends, and the blood pressure is going down. Some take Xanax. I take Xanga.

I just discovered I could torture my fellow Xangans with my own music, and so I've uploaded an ambient electronic song I wrote in my studio some years ago called "Rays of Light". I wrote it after finding my biological family and discovering I had a sister who was 10 years old. I was 28 at the time, so there's somewhat of an age difference. I guess it just hit me that I was suddenly a big brother to a very little sister and this song began playing in my head. It really crystallized when I was walking down the hall and saw her across the room sleeping on the sofa with the afternoon rays of sunshine beaming down on her. To me it was God catching my attention and saying, "This is why life is precious, and why I love you."