Pugs Rule!

 

Pasco County Trick or Treating Hours

I called the Pasco County Sheriff's Office today to find out what the hours are for trick-or-treating this year. After getting laughed at by the operator, I talked to someone else that informed me there are no set hours for trick-or-treating here in Pasco County, Florida.

I'm just writing this post to help anyone else out that may be looking for the same information, as it's not really readily available anywhere else. So if you're waiting for a certain time to take your kids out...just go! :)

Happy Halloween!

Better Bet?

What's the better bet this weekend?

 

1)    Bears at Falcons over/under is 45.5 and I'm thinking of the over - I think it will be a shootout and Matt Ryan is the second coming of Peyton Manning.  I've watched him every game this year and he seems just like Peyton in the way he commands the field and almost always finds someone open down field.  Not to mention his new toy Tony Gonzalez.  The Bears offense is getting better every week, and they have Desmond Clark coming back this week, who seems to always find a seam 15-20 yds down field, not to mention the emergence of Johnny Knox, and the sure handedness of Earl Bennett...and there's always Devin Hester speeding down the field.  This team will have no problem stretching the field on a questionable Atlanta secondary -- as long as Cutler gets his protection.  Did I mention Matt Forte is finally starting to break out? 

 

2)    This was a better bet yesterday so I'm off of it, but Packers are -13.5 (yesterday they were -14) at home vs. the Lions.  The Lions have showed their offense isn't exactly horrible and the Packers are coming off a very emotional loss against the Vikings.  The downside is the Packers have had 2 weeks to prepare for the Lions and they absolutely must win this game to stay part of the NFC North race.  Ok I just talked myself out of it...

 

2b)    Cardinals at Seahawks -3 -- Matt Hasselbeck is back and ready to take some names in Seattle.  They're getting healthier every week with a good defense and arguably the best home field advantage in the NFL.  The Cardinals are so up and down that you can never count on them, and I think they'll have a horribly tough time once they get down early in Seattle.

 

I haven't placed a bet on a sporting event in a couple years, but I think about it every weekend during the NFL season.  We'll see if I pull the trigger this weekend, TGIF!

 

 

Easiest Way To Make a Free Org Chart

I searched around the Internet for a few minutes trying to find the cheapest/easiest way to make an organizational chart / structure chart / hierarchy chart in order to visually show my company's hierarchy structure.  I found a lot of downloadable programs, but I'd hate to download a program from a company I don't trust, so I kept looking.

 

Turns out it's pretty easy to make an Org Chart in Microsoft Word, and I found it at this website.  Here's the gist, written by Ugur Akinci, PhD (great guy I'm sure):

 

You can create an amazing variety of fantastic-looking Organization Diagrams in Microsoft Word 2003 without using any external graphic programs.

 

1) Display your DRAW toolbar by selecting View > Toolbars > Drawing.

2) Place your cursor where you want to insert your chart or diagram.

3) Click the 3-spinning-balls icon on your DRAW toolbar. The tooltip message should read "Insert Diagram or Organization Chart."

4) From the Diagram Gallery window, select the Organization Chart button on the Upper Left. The ORGANIZATION CHART Mini-Bar display automatically.

5) Click Insert Shape drop-down menu on the Mini-Bar to insert "subordinate," "coworker" or "assistant" boxes.

6) Click the Autoformat button on the Mini-Bar to select one of the chart templates.

7) To delete a box, click the Select drop-down menu on the Mini-Bar, then press the Delete button.

8) Click on individual boxes on the chart to add text.

9) Click Layout drop-down menu on the Mini-Bar to change the layout of the whole chart and select one of the following options: Standard, Both Hanging, Right Hanging, Left Hanging.

10) Select a text wrapping option (if need be) by clicking the Text Wrapping button on the Mini-Bar and selecting one of the available options.

11) Experiment with other buttons on the DRAW toolbar for an infinite variety of different effects. For example, select an organizational box and change its color by clicking the Paint Bucket button, or add drop shadows by clicking 3D button and selecting an option.

 

There are several expensive graphic-creation software out there as well. But why spend the extra money when you have great tools at your disposal, already built into the MS Word?

 

 

Song Interpretation - Green Day "21 Guns"

My wife asked me to look over the lyrics of 21 Guns by Green Day and here's my interpretation of what they may have meant when writing the song:

Do you know what's worth fighting for,
When it's not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away
And you feel yourself suffocating?
Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart inside?
You're in ruins

This was straight-up anti-war, pretty easy to comprehend right? Like a soldier that wanted to go fight for his country because of the pride he feels, but then he gets there and realizes he's fighting for some guy sitting in his office eating ice cream. The soldier panics because he hears gunfire and whatever, and just wants to be back home, so that's the pain...does it outweigh the pride?

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky,
You and I

EDIT: My interpretation of this one was HORRIBLE, so here's a good interpretation from a commenter...

With war there is death and when you have one gun (participation in war), you get 21 guns (you die), either physically or emotionally.

My interpretation is one = one person. 21 guns MAY stand for the soldier just being young and 21 years old with his whole life ahead of him. Why 21? I don't know, maybe he has a cousin or something that he wrote this for that was 21 when he went into the service. "You and I" = "join me, I'm not fighting in this stupid war for oil, neither should you."

When you're at the end of the road
And you lost all sense of control
And your thoughts have taken their toll
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul
Your faith walks on broken glass
And the hangover doesn't pass
Nothing's ever built to last
You're in ruins

Again pretty straight-forward...back to the soldier that just keeps thinking and freaking out and finally starts to lose it "end of the road, lost all sense of control, thoughts have taken their toll" and then he talks about how this soldier is questioning his faith in God because of the things he's seeing, dead children, shooting other people in the head that he doesn't even know, etc. "The hangover doesn't pass..." like the next day he wakes up, he's still out in Iraq or whatever when normally a hangover goes away the next day, but not this one. "Nothing's ever built to last" is his faith in God and humanity.

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky,
You and I

Did you try to live on your own
When you burned down the house and home?
Did you stand too close to the fire?
Like a liar looking for forgiveness from a stone

This one's tough, but here's my first thought: Maybe the soldier FINALLY makes it back to the United States after a few years of being at war....and maybe he has nobody to come home to that cares about him, maybe his parents shipped him off because they couldn't pay for college or whatever, hence his reason for going off to fight...and he's living on his own for really the first time in his life after seeing some truly horrific things in combat. "burned down your house and home" Could be literal or figurative. Literally = he came home to live with his parents and concocted some scheme to burn the house down because he hated it. He hated that his parents for putting him in the situation to go to war and just snapped one night and burned the house that represented some of his anger. Figuratively = "house and home" could be his old ideals (faith in God, love for America and wanting to fight for his country) and childish thoughts. When soldiers come back from war they instantly mature like 20 years because of the stuff they witness every day. "Did you stand too close to the fire" Again literal or figurative 1) he stood there watching the house go down in flames because he was happy to see it go or 2) "the fire" is another meaning for "the war" and he got way too entrenched in the war, which ruined him inside for the rest of his life.

When it's time to live and let die
And you can't get another try
Something inside this heart has died
You're in ruins

Definitely a "shout-out" to the Beatles messages of peace, and this soldier wishes he could just live and let the memories of war die and that he could just get a re-do of his life and get the option of not going to war, but he can't. "something inside this heart has died", more like everything in him has died.

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky,
You and I

Same as I said earlier. Just don't go to war, kids! It screws you up!

Chicago Bears Players on Twitter

I did a Google search for Chicago Bears players on Twitter and it seemed a little hard to find a list of Bears players on Twitter, so I thought I'd start one. Here are the ones I know of, please comment if you know of any others (even ex-Bears are cool).

Jay Cutler: @jcutler6 (thanks ScottSandSkokie)

Greg Olsen: @gregolsen82

Matt Forte: @chitownforte22

Devin Hester: @d_hest23

Tommie Harris: @RealDeal91

Jason Davis: @JasonDavis43

Desmond Clark: @tightwork88

Ex-Bears:

Fontel Mines: @FMines89
Jason McKie: @Jmack37
Bernard Berrian: @B_Twice

Kyle Orton (maybe): @kyleorton08

Feel free to follow me @Perno

Black Pug Brewery Logo

My dad said not to send any gifts to him for Father's Day since he has everything he wants/needs so Allison and I are sending him a gift certificate for admission to the Black Pug Brewery in Land O Lakes, FL (my house) along with unlimited beers to be used before the end of the year.  So Allison and I took some pictures last night and came up with this logo for the brewery.

 

Obviously this won't be a final logo of any sort, but it will be the one I put on my dad's gift certificate :)  

 

Happy Father's Day!

 

 

Phish in Asheville, NC

My (future) brother in law Gregg and his (future) wife Lauren (along with Dave) went to see Phish play in Asheville, NC and Knoxville, TN. Gregg just showed me this awesome picture that Lauren took at the Asheville show with his camera, and I thought I would share it:


Click on picture to make biggy

I'm not a fan of Phish, but I don't hate them. Now I can see why the hippies like to go see them so much. Glad you guys had fun!

T-Mobile G1 Android Cupcake Battery Charging Issue

UPDATE (7/9/09): I've tried everything, a hard reset of my phone, letting the phone fully discharge then recharge, and it improved a little bit, but not much. I called T-Mobile and they admitted it's a known issue. I expect the next software update to take care of this.

I'm a T-Mobile customer and own the G1 phone. Recently, an over-the-air update was released for the Android operating system, version 1.5 or "Cupcake". Everything's been running smoothly for me thus far besides a couple complaints, but the main thing I found was my battery would only charge up to about 64% and then charge VERY slowly. I'm talking it went from a couple hours to perform a full charge to around 8-10 hours!

After a few days of this happening I thought I would just restart the phone (since that seems to be the answer to almost any techy device) and the battery said it was fully charged, 100%, which led me to believe it was a software issue. The battery was fully charged, but the software didn't know it. So I did some digging and it seems a lot of people had this same problem.

Turns out downloading the updated operating system on a less than fully charged battery led the new OS to believe the battery is fully charged at whatever percentage you had when you updated your phone. Sounds like someone at Google would have thought of this and prevented this from happening, but I guess they were eager to push this out so they missed it. Anyway, one solution someone suggested is to just let your battery fully drain to the point your phone shuts off from lack of battery, then just fully recharge it. I'm told this will solve the problem and allow the OS to re-calibrate itself, I guess it makes sense logically. So far I've drained mine and it's charging right now, I'll report back on how it goes.

Homebrew Status

Here's a look at where I'm keeping my fermenting pale ale along with the bubbling airlock.

Eating His O's

Good morning! I'm just having some O's for breakfast.

Brew Day!!!

Here's what the wort (what beer is called prior to fermentation) is looking like while it's boiling.

My First Yeast Starter

I think it's ready to make a big batch of beer but I'm not sure at all.

New Blog Post Idea

I always have blog subject ideas coming to me and I've decided to try this one out for a bit.  What I'll do is take a look at the last 5 pictures I've taken with my T-Mobile G1 (I should get paid for that mention), and pick one to write a quick post on. 

Realistically it will probably happen once a month since I only whip out my camera phone about once per week.  Let's get really crazy and include cell phone videos in this too!  I won't count any pics I take of Cameron since that kid has his own blog.

So this picture was taken at our great buddies Matt and Kelly's house this past Saturday.  Allison's 30th birthday was on Sunday and the Cakies were nice enough to surprise her with a cake.  Best part about my wife's birthday? I finally get to make out with a 30 year old! Thanks for making my dreams come true honey!

Sleeping Pug

I'm staying home from work today, taking care of our sick little boy.  As I was sitting on the couch, I looked over and saw Dempsey's sweet little sleeping face and thought I would share.  Happy Friday!

Leftovers at Work

In this day and age, it's important to find ways to stretch that dollar as far as possible. Something we all have to spend money on is food. I'd even go as far to say most of us eat food every day!

As my wife will tell you, I hate wasting food and I try to be frugal whenever I can. Sometimes I'll eat leftover Chinese food a good 10 days after it's born-on date. With fish-related leftovers I'll usually give it 5 or 6 days and then really make sure I microwave it to make sure all the "baddies" are eradicated. "Oh today is the 25th and the milk 'expired' on the 13th? Hey it still smells ok, bring on the cereal bowl!"

I follow these guidelines at work and all my coworkers know it. When I first started my current job a few years ago, I made sure to get it all out on the table. For example, I noticed a couple of my female coworkers had gone out to lunch at Chili's and came back empty-handed. I asked them how their lunch was and -- knowing out of 2 females one of them should have leftovers -- what they did with their leftovers. They told me they each left half of a chicken sandwich since they knew they would not eat them later. I looked at them in disbelief and said "PLEASE don't ever leave your leftovers from lunch at the restaurant again. I will gladly take them off your hands as long as they weren't molested too badly."

Ever since that day I get offers from all my coworkers to take their leftovers off their hands. Hey I'm not saying you should try this out or anything, I'm just saying it works for me and I've probably saved somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.3 million by just letting it be known to my coworkers that I'll eat any leftovers they don't want.

Beautiful Day at the Beach

I'm sitting up in Allison's parent's condo in Indian Rocks Beach, FL (maybe Indian Shores, I can never remember) while Cameron is napping in one of the bedrooms.  The water isn't normally this turquoise, hopefully the colors I'm seeing come through in the pic from my phone.  Reminds me a little of Cancun.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there!

Love Bug Infestation

We're not big fans of this whole love bug thing.

EDIT: Lovebugs are these flying insects that grace us with their presence in two "flights" per year, usually late spring and then again in late summer. They're referred to as "lovebugs" because there's almost always two of them attached to each other, in the process of mating.

You seriously can't walk around our house without having some land on you. Luckily they don't but or anything, they're just really annoying. Ahhh, just one of the joys of Florida I guess.

Guess What's Coming in 4 Months?!?!

Here we are the the Dog Days of Summer (yes, it's already considered the Dog Days here in Florida, we're hitting 90 almost every day already), and a great thought entered my mind yesterday while at home with my wife. In just a hair over 4 months we'll have the regular season of NFL upon us!!!

The Chicago Bears signed a great talent in Jay Cutler (another frequent reader of this blog), and made a few other moves that have us Bears fans very excited. I was reading one of the Bears Blogs I frequent and stumbled upon a link to some pictures of Jay Cutler in a Bears uniform!!! It's really real!!!

Looking forward to getting past this NFL Offseason (baseball) and getting into more Chicago Bears talk.

Homebrewing Kit Arrived

I'm very excited since my beer homebrewing kit has arrived from Midwest Supplies in MN.  I'm hoping to have everything necessary to brew this weekend. 

The only thing holding me back is I need to figure out how to keep the fermenting beer cool (between 60 and 70 degrees F) here in Florida.  Most homes don't have basements and there's nowhere in the house that comes close to remaining at that temperature.  I'll be looking for suggestions on the Internet today, wish me luck!

Welcome Back Tropicana

I think Tropicana made the right move switching back to the old packaging. The new packaging seemed too generic.

NFL Draft 2009

I just finished reading a great article at Pro Football Talk by Mike Florio that Brad Biggs at the Chicago Sun-Times mentioned in his coverage of the Chicago Bears 2009 Draft Pick possibilities.

Florio talked about players testing positive for marijuana prior to the draft, and how the main concern of NFL teams was not that the player smoked weed - rather that the player is either 1) too stupid to stay clean for a certain period of time before the biggest test of their lives, or 2) addicted to the drug in question.

Obviously, all things being equal, if an NFL team has a choice of choosing someone that smokes or drinks vs. someone that never touches the stuff, they'll go with the "clean" person...but it's just mind boggling how someone like Percy Harvin from the University of Florida could test positive for marijuana right before he has the opportunity to sign for millions of dollars. Hopefully he's not addicted, because his possible stupidity just cost him a few million in the bank.

6 Month Stats

Cameron went in for his 6 month well visit at the doctor's office this morning, here are his stats:

 

Length = 28"  --  91st percentile

Weight = 20 lbs  --  86th percentile

Head Circumference = 18.3"  --  98th percentile!

 

That's our large-headed, growing boy!

GAVT = Generally Accepted Vampire Traits

I'm sitting here in Land O Lakes, FL with some friends discussing whatever people discuss while sitting at a kitchen table with friends. My friend's wife is a HUGE fan of the Twilight series of books featuring vampires, and my friend has coined a new acronym. The acronym is GAVT and it stands for Generally Accepted Vampire Traits, and my friend is M. Will Tammaro.

Unfortunately Twilight doesn't seem to adhere to GAVT. These vampires have to be torn into pieces and burned in order to die. A wooden stake through the heart just doesn't work on these poor saps. They can eat tons of garlic in their pasta and gravy and not blink an eye...the only thing is they don't eat (weird!) Crucifix? No dice! They can even go into the sunlight without worrying about that pesky burning of the flesh. It's just not right, and anyone who thinks otherwise is mistaken.

Thank you for stopping by, and thank you to my friend, M. Will Tammaro.

Pray for Josh and Lauren's Quads

Our friends Lauren and Josh are going through some tough times right now while Lauren is pregnant with quadruplets here in the Tampa, FL area. Check out their updates at http://joshsblog.greenfamily.net and let them know you're thinking about them. We're all hoping for the best, stay healthy Green Beans!