Time Waster

If you are a fan of point and click puzzle games, this is a great site. Beware - only click if you have an hour or two to kill, these are addicting.

Ten Rules to Live By to Achieve ENTJ Success

1. Feed Your Strengths! Give yourself every opportunity to show others your appreciation of a situation and how you could see it through to a good outcome. Take charge where you can make it count.

2. Face Your Weaknesses! Understand you have limits too. Your careful world view is not the whole deal. How things look and feel may not concern you, but they concern many others. Try and allow such things to be and learn from them.

3. Talk Time to Find Out How Others Really Think. You need to drive past your thoughts with others and let their appreciations of a situation reach you at a deeper level. It will then be possible for you to take account of their needs as real world objectives which if included in your ideas will bring greater harmony and quality to life and relationships.

4. Take Time Out To Let The Whole Situation Speak To You. Don't dismiss those abstract and seemingly hard to understand or bothersome aesthetic and feeling judgments coming from others or from inside yourself. Drop everything for a while, stop thinking and worrying and just relax into those ideas and let them speak to you. Perhaps they can be accommodated, perhaps something is hiding in there which offers a new way

5. When You Get Upset, You Lose. Your energy and rational understandings are strong assets, but can be very harmful if they turn against you and leave you with nothing but emotions you cannot deal with. Remember that others cannot always be expected to fall into your ways of seeing, and when your drive to make them do so fails you will suffer feelings of resentment and even abandonment. You cannot deal with the world like this. Moderate your ideas, allow others their spaces, and you will grow.

6. Respect your Need for Intellectual Compatibility Don't expect yourself to be a "touchy-feely" or "warm-fuzzy" person. Realize that your most ardent bonds with others will start with the head, rather than the heart. Be aware of other's emotional needs, and express your genuine love and respect for them in terms that are real to YOU. Be yourself.

7. Be Accountable for Yourself. Don't blame the problems in your life on other people. Look inwardly for solutions. No one has more control over your life than you have.

8. Be Humble. Judge yourself at least as harshly as you judge others.

9. Take a Positive Approach to Differences in People. Don't distress yourself and others by dwelling on what seem to be their limitations. They need you to guide them and you need them to see things through. Try and recognize who can perform the most ably within certain fields outside your own competence. Let the feelings of others become a strength rather than a hindrance to you.

10. Don't Get Obsessed! Recognize the value that personal world has to you, your friends, your family, your own inner sense of self worth and life. Take pride in just being a good person and don’t allow external situations to control you. Try to relax and let the moment belong to the best things you can find in others and yourself. Nothing out there is more important than your own happiness.

Un-Meet Arleigh

Fortunately, with dogs (unlike children), you can always give them back if it doesn't work out the way you expected. John and I spoke about it for about 2 hours tonight and came to the realization that two dogs just wasn't in the cards for us right now in our lives. Arleigh is a handful and is not nearly as intelligent as Bailey. It's very hard to train a dog that has no concept of listening skills or consequences. In fact, every time we'd tell him "no", Bailey would run over and bark to enforce what we were telling him... it was almost as if Bailey knew we weren't getting through to him!

At any rate, the shelter has been very supportive and we'll be bringing him back tomorrow.

It just wasn't meant to be, I guess.

Meet Arleigh

Well, as all of our friends are now entering the phase in their lives where they are having 2 children, John and I decided to get on the bandwagon and adopt our second "child" as well. Meet Arleigh. He arrived home today, 8 months, 39 pounds, 0 ounces.

3rd Grade Racism

I'm sure a lot of you have heard of this widely known 3rd grade experiment conducted by a teacher in the 1970s to help her class learn what it feels like to be discriminated against. I was very pleased to recently find out that Frontline is posting more and more of its episodes online, to include this famous airing.

If you have an extra 45 minutes, I highly recommend watching it.

The Dog and The Bounty Hunter

So I was walking Bailey this morning when a guy in a GTO drove up to me and asked me for directions. (Poor guy -- he had no clue that I am direction challenged). He was trying to get to one of the millions of South Riding streets and I had no idea how to help him. I finally asked him if he had a cell phone so he could call the person he was trying to meet. He then explained that he was a bounty hunter and was looking for a fugitive and giving the guy advanced warning wasn't the best of ideas.

I'm not sure why, but that made my day (although it should have skeeved me out that there was a fugitive in my neighborhood).

First Veggie of the Summer

I planted yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers and pumpkins this year in my backyard. This was the first zucchini I picked the other day -- not a bad size!

Congrats Em and Jim!

Cogitate

While getting ready for work this morning, I was watching Fox News and they were showing the unveiling of the new White House Press Room. President Bush was there for the ribbon cutting and was joking around with the press about various things. During the briefing, he used the word, "cogitate". I had never heard this word before so I decided to look it up on dictionary.com to see if it was a real word or a "Bushism". Lo and behold, it's a real word! I didn't realize Bush used those!

I wonder if the press will say anything about it...

From the Mouths of Babes...

My Mom just sent me this email regarding my 8 year old nephew:

Riding to Mass yesterday Jacob wanted to know if when we go back home if he could invite Aunt Michelle over to the house. I told him you are a working woman and have only two days off and it was so generous of you to take them to her house for games, McDonalds and a visit with friends. I told him you have chores to do, clean your house, weed, take care of Bailey, and help Uncle John.

He said NO, he had spent the night at your house and you don't have a lot to do . "After you eat breakfast you load the dish washer then you play video games!"

He said he saw you with his own eyes!

Love mom

The July 4th Cheese Fry Challenge -- Documented

John and I spent our July 4th at Outback watching our friends single handedly* eat a plate of layered cheese fries. Then we went to the parking lot and watched the Vienna fireworks.

Here are timelines of the two finishers:

MIKEY

JOE

*With the exception that Joe did share one or two fries with Laura and Maggie

Back From Reno

I just got in from Reno last night and am pretty darn tired. I will post more later, but in the meantime, here are a few shots I grabbed visiting Lake Tahoe with Jen.

I thought this little boy was too cute trying to drag this heavy cooler (probably full of his Dad's beer).

This is Jen doing her best to not kill me for making her pose on a really large tree stump.

Jen snapped this of me at the state park where we were taking in the scenery.


This is the view going down the 10,000 foot mountain on our way back from Tahoe to Reno.



This Virginian couldn't resist taking this picture of the Virginian in downtown Reno. Reno itself was not that exciting -- it resembled the old parts of Vegas... full of check cashing places, wedding chapels, XXX movie houses and pawn shops. Jennifer and I felt a little unsafe as everywhere we went the store clerks told us to watch our purses and to be careful. Needless to say, we mainly stayed inside the Nugget surrounded by several security friends from the conference.

This sign is unfortunately the best part of Reno.

Oscar would be VERY grouchy

Take a gander at this computer map of all of the space trash around our earth. Apparently, NASA tracks all space trash greater than 10 centimeters so they know when and where to launch satellites, space shuttles, rockets, and more importantly, people.

Now you can die how you lived...

With Costco!

Slum Crew 20th

Had another great Slum Crew this year -- I think this picture of Joe from Saturday morning sums up how tired I am right now, though...

I also managed to grab a shot of the Slum Crew Museum...

Hot dogs, Soprano Style

YUM!

50 States

How well do you know your state geography?

I got a 92.5 score, with an average error of 12 miles in 179 seconds.

Bodies is Here!

Who wants to go?!

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Some people knew that I was running for the National Board of Directors spot with my non-profit security organization that I belong to. 6 people were running for 5 spots, so my odds were pretty good. Unfortunately, I lost the election. Bummer. Although I am fairly well recognized in my field in the DC area where I am the chapter Secretary, I am not so much recognized on a National level. Apparently, this is what hurt me in the election. It took me a few days to recover from the loss, as I am now not sure what I am going to do with my professional life for the next 2 years (it would have been a two year term). Some have suggested that I run for the Chapter Chair position of my chapter this year, others have suggested that I run for BOD next year. Whatever it is, I need to do some thinking. Staying active in the organization is a great way to network and give back to the security community. We are a very small group (probably less than 10,000 of us nationwide), so positive networking is a really good way to move up in the profession.

On the other hand, this may be an opportunity for me to focus more on the rest of my life -- perhaps do some charity work or get back into my hobbies. All I know is whatever I am meant to do these next two years, does not include being on the Board.

Back From Seattle

We had a blast! Here's a few interesting photos from the trip.