E is for Engine

…and W is for Without. Bad news on my car people. It is missing a critical component.


A little belt snapped, and everything went downhill. The value of my car… my savings. YIKES. After much debate over scrapping the car or fixing it and arguing with the dealership I got it from, I have decided to keep it alive and fix it. So I had to purchase a new engine and the garage is putting it back in as I type.

It is quite a shame, but I guess that is life.

That is all.

Danger

Have you ever daydreamed about living life a completely different way than you are right now? That question is ridiculously rhetorical as I suspect everyone does from time to time. The sad sinful wordly part of me occasionally wishes I could just be bad. I don’t want to always be bad, just spend a night or a weekend throwing caution to the wind and acting on every impulse.

There is one characteristic that a portion of me wishes I could possess. It isn’t always a bad thing, but can be, that characteristic is of course: dangerous. If I could live life over again, I think I would be a little more dangerous. I know I could probably change now, but most likely will not. In fact, I am tremendously far from dangerous. I am G rated, I am cautious, I am responsible… I am the battle equivalent of a Nerf gun.

Think about most of the famous men through history or even in movies. They are passionate, charismatic, confident, but I also think they are dangerous. Sure dangerous could be a bad thing when you consider someone to be reckless or unstable, but most often, having an appropriate amount of danger in a man’s personality is desirable. It is the danger that makes them exciting, that shows their strength, that makes them protective. It is the danger that makes a guy a man.

Part of me thinks a man that is dangerous is a man I wouldn’t want to mess with because he is willing take whatever action necessary to protect himself and those around him, but that isn’t always the case. I man can be passive and dangerous. I would say Gandhi was dangerous. He was strong willed and a threat to those in power. Civil disobedience certainly requires a significant amount of risk. I also think a man of integrity is a dangerous man. He is willing to stand for what he knows to be right and honorable regardless of consequence.

I think my life is a little too fluffy. The risks are managed too much. That is why I like to do some crazy things from time to time such as building a cannon. Danger is certainly something I hope to instill in Wes as he grows up. If he is the right amount of dangerous when he grows up, then I would have done my job as a father. In fact, adventure is by far the most exciting thing I look forward to in having a son. I can’t wait to take him out into the woods, down a river, or up a mountain. I want him to step into the batter’s box and not be afraid of getting hit by the ball. I want him to skate as hard as he can into the corner for a puck without worrying about the size of his opponent skating against him. I want his team mates to think he is crazy and put him out there for that very reason. I want the other team to be afraid when he is out there, to move back toward the fence, or have to double cover him. I want poker players to be afraid to sit to his right. Ok, so these are things I want for myself, but don’t know if I will achieve them. I do want to be dangerous. Now I just need to figure out how to implement that plan.

Thank you for reading.

Covering the C’s

I’ve been thinking all week about what to post for C post. A number of things have popped in my head, but nothing specifically worth a full post. This will therefore be a Combination of Cuneiform Collectively Covering C’s.

C is for Challenge

Work around our office can at times be hard and stressful, but many other times are just exciting and fun. It is fun in examples such as yesterday when my boss made a minor joke about an Excel model being a little weird because the newly hired employee who sent it out was Canadian. My immediate response was “wait… he’s Canadian!? And we hired him!?” She just about fell out of her chair laughing, and then called him to make fun of his Canadian descent. It gets exciting when the CFO is around asking for odd analyses out of the blue with very quick deadlines. 2 days ago, I went into my boss’s office for a video conference with the CFO to discuss a topic. I brought my computer as a resource, and before we got into that topic, the CFO asked if I knew the other reason I was on the conference. He wanted an analysis done comparing the results of 2 different Excel models and my boss had previously assured him that I could rattle that out in under 10 mins. He looked at me and said “it is 9:21, you have until 9:30. Go.” I looked at my boss and asked if I should go back to my office or stick around. She thought I should just stay there and rattle through it and be there for the beginning of the discussion of the primary topic. I started working like a mad man, and though the task was not overly challenging, it is tough to do it in that time frame and check for accuracy before sending it off. At 9:30, the CFO stopped the conversation and said “time’s up.” I replied “it is in your inbox.” Good challenge, good fun.

C is for Chicken

Have you ever purchased food from the hot meal counter near the deli at a Wal-Mart? If you haven’t, you should make a special trip, right now. They have some roasted chicken, miscellaneous potato choices, popcorn chicken, and wings. All of these items are pretty good, but fail miserably in comparison to the boneless BBQ chicken kickers. These little guys are an absolute delight. I discovered them in college with my roommates when they could be purchased for 4.50 a pound, though the price is now up to 7.00 per pound, it is still completely worth it. You only need just over a half pound and they are complimented well by a quarter pound of potato wedges. You seriously must give these a try, and more than once because they taste better each time you get them as long as they haven’t been sitting out for too long. Despite the fact that it is a 20 min drive to the closest Wal-Mart, I still blow a full lunch break almost once a week to drive out there and get these delectable treats. I even pass a chick-fil-a on the way. Yes they are that good, and are a pretty quality piece of chicken I might add. The potato wedges aren’t nearly as good as chick-fil-a waffle fries, but are none the less very decent. Go get some right now.

C is for Cannibalism is the Cure

I’ve had this song stuck in my head all day by Get Set Go. If you have never heard of Get Set Go, I don’t necessarily recommend them. At times they can be rather vulgar and even blasphemous, but their music is very catchy and fun. They have some wonderful melodies and song arrangements, almost all of which are very bouncy and fun, but set to dismal lyrics. That is basically their trademark. One of their more popular songs you may have heard of is I Hate Everyone which of course fun and catchy, but singing about bad or annoying situations leading the singer to the conclusion that he hates every person in the world. Cannibalism is the Cure of course suggests that the way to cure the problems in our society would be to “eat them all.” If you are bold enough to go out and listen to some of their songs, I also recommend Gotta Getta Job.

Thank you for reading.

B is for Brown

I have decided after my last post to make my way through the alphabet with titles. I know I am stealing that idea from Sue Grafton books (no I do not read Sue Grafton books), but I think that may inspire me to write about some odd topics.

I went with B is for Brown because that is the only color surface my ball hit when playing golf this past week. The fairways were narrow, and woods were mighty; at least they were mighty before I nearly cracked them in half with my crazed shots. I have also been paying some more Tiger Woods golf which just gets to be more and more awesome. Here is the gist of it: I am almost ready to take on Tiger Woods, but don’t stand a chance against Liz’s family. I played 18 holes on the Wii 8 under par, but Liz’s Uncle Gary and I shot a sad 24 over. The family tournament at Running Deer Lodge went well. I played a decent game, but never really found my swing. We finished 2 over par in the wet conditions which landed us 5th out of 17 teams. I thought my game might come back together, so I went out with Liz’s family. I thought for a moment that they would never invite me back to play, but I was later assured they would gladly have me out again to play for money. It was ugly, but the weather was absolutely beautiful and the fun was outstanding. I will save you details since well over 50% of my readership is Liz’s family, but I will say I nearly fell out of the cart on many occasions from laughter, crazy driving, and pranking the other team.

I am sadly back to work now after 5 days off. I only had to work a half day yesterday, but it went by so slowly. I was only in for like 40 minutes and started checking the clock to see how close I was to going home. Today has been a bit better, but it is tough to sit in an office on such a beautiful day knowing most of Liz’s family is still enjoying their vacation. I am actually starting to think about going back to Beaverdale for the weekend, but I’m going to hold out and hope to be enticed to come back by promises of tennis and sausage and peppers.

I suppose I should get back to work.

Thanks for reading.

The A is for Abysmal

Well, today is the first day in a very long time that I have run out of things to do at work. I’m not really sure what to do with myself. I have no doubt that something will pop up at 4:00 and suddenly I’ll be working like a mad man and trying not to stay too late. But in case that doesn’t happen, perhaps I should go looking for some work. I’ll give it a little longer and see what else pops up. I do have a giant stack of papers on my desk of things that I didn’t know if I should throw away or not. I could make my way through and throw away or file. Cleaning up around the office is always a great way to seem busy and waste a lot of time.

This weekend is my family’s big golf tournament, followed by Liz’s family’s large get together. Anyone that knows me probably knows about the golf tournament. 80-85 people getting together at my family camp, and 72ish of us going out for a great round of golf at a surprisingly nice course. I have played very little golf in the last couple years. I love golf and wish I could get out more, but it just costs way too much money and takes up a little too much time. I did get to go out 2 weeks ago for the first time in 10 months to get a little practice. I was going to hit some balls before that round, but instead decided just to go for it. I think that worked out pretty well. It wasn’t the best, but I started to find my swing again about 2/3 of the way through. Unfortunately, despite the very little golf I have played, I will probably be an A player again this year. Everyone is ranked as an A, B, C, or D so the teams are close to even. The golfers are for the most part, not nearly as good as they used to be, so we are struggling for A players. Because of this struggle, the general mentality is “once an A, always an A.” I used to be a good A when I played on the school golf team, but that was along time and many terrible shots ago. About 3 years ago, I did win the tournament as an A that set my status in stone for a long time. Though the very next year, I got last place as an A with one of the worst scores in our tournament’s history.

Due to all of this pressure of being an A, it is clear that I need to prepare more for the event. So I did what any player would do, went out and bought Wii Tiger Woods Golf 2010. I have no doubt that I will be striking the ball like Tiger inside a couple days. Even if it doesn’t improve my game, and clearly it won’t, I think it was a good investment. I have been playing a little bit of Tiger Woods 2007 lately and actually really liked the game. The swing is no where near a real golf swing, but the game is a lot of fun. At the same time, Nintendo has released the Wii Motion Plus which is supposed to give you character a much more 1:1 movement ratio. I just bought the game on my lunch break and can’t wait to get home to play. They say it is much more like swinging a real club. I know that is not going to be true, but I think it will be a big step in the right direction. I’m pretty certain you can’t miss hit the ball. If you swing too slowly, you can hit really short, and you can miss hit puts, but I know you can’t miss swing and top the ball, or miss altogether. That would be cool. I do know you can fade or slice easily, and control much more short shots. Apparently there are a lot of added features to the game over the older versions that I am looking forward to. More modes and realistic tournament settings. There is online play to take on other people 1 on 1 or enter tournaments, and you best score is compared against others. I look forward to that. You can also play with real time weather. The wii looks up the weather conditions for the course you are playing, and if it is rainy or windy in real life, it is rainy or windy in the game. That is awesome. Now I really can’t wait to get home and play. I’m bound to be one of the best players at the Running Deer Lodge Open this weekend.

Thanks for reading.

Just Numbers

Working in treasury and finance for a mid size company has put me in some interesting situations. One thing I think of from time to time is the amount to money I deal with or see on spreadsheets on a daily basis. At times I deal with very large numbers. For starters, every spreadsheet I work with is at least shown in thousands. No one cares about seeing the full detail of numbers. If a lot of calculations are being run, people become very comfortable with variances of 5 – 10 thousand dollars. If someone is attempting the very challenging task of reconciling our database with some other list of numbers, and that person can come within 10k, they did a great job. There are times I do high level calculations that are only shown in millions, and if I’m off 1 or 2, it is simply chalked up to rounding errors. It is odd how comfortable I can get with working with such large numbers, and at the same time not be ok with my personal checkbook not tying out to the exact penny.

I oversee the insurance for our company, and consequently oversee the spending of approximately 7 million dollars a year. That is real money that I receive invoices for, review, and submit to my boss for payment approval. These numbers are often regular payments, but occasionally not. Last week I had to walk into my boss’s office with the bad news that some large claims came in and we had to write a check that day for 160k. These thinks happen, and I’m use to it, but from time to time I realize the craziness of the words I am speaking.

The big project I have been working on for that past few months is an insurance claim for a machinery failure at one of our plants. This has been a challenging, partially exciting, partially sad project that I have dedicated a silly amount of time to. All of the manufacturing of this plant relies on this piece of equipment that took 5 months to fix. This essentially shut down the whole plant and just ruined their business for that time and will most likely never recover from all of the customers they lost. For some help, we have an insurance policy that covers such an event. I have done all of the work on this claim and have had all of the contact with the insurance carrier. I have assembled mass amounts of data and presented it to all of our executives for their review before submitting it. After submitting this data, I have had some meetings with the insurance carrier to discuss the details of the claim. The basis of these meetings is another one of those odd moments to wrap my mind around the reality. I am person representing a company asking other people for a few million dollars. Weird right? “Hi I’m Zack, nice to meet you in person. How can I answer any questions, and when can you write me a multi-million dollar check?”

The peculiar part of working with such large sums of money is how comfortable I can be with it. This brings me to the challenging part, how does it relate to my relationship with Christ when I spend over 40 hours a week focused on money. It is my job and we are certainly called to do our jobs well, but when you think about not focusing on worldly things, money is one of the big ones. I’m not saying that I’m living in sin by having the job that I have; these are really just thoughts that happen to be flowing through my head. I could most likely chalk it up to trying to live a balanced life in a fallen world, but maybe I shouldn’t.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day. Thanks for reading.

Big… Bodda Boom

Greetings to you good and faithful reader of my blog. I have not posted in over a month. I am ashamed and undoubtedly certain that the World Wide Web may have shed a tear in my absence. Where have I been? What have I been doing? Both good questions with somewhat non-profound answers. For the most part, I have been right here, doing much of the same thing I have been doing. The only different things I have done are, being sick for nearly 2 weeks and MAN WEEKEND. Being sick has kept me far from focusing on my computer aside from the work I had to do, and Man weekend kept all of my spare computer use time looking up ideas for explosives, and then making videos. I apologize for my lack of posts, but I dare say the wait was worth it. This post on the weekend manhood definition will most likely spit in the face of my past few posts and be awarded a medal for doing so.

The idea and planning for a man weekend began as a small glimmer of imagination, from the feeble minds of a few good friends. We thought perhaps we could pick a time in late spring for a large group of our friends to get together to celebrate that which every man longs to do… really stupid things. All we had to do was gather the people, pick a setting, and decide what we wanted to do. Gathering the people is surprisingly not an easy task. Picking a weekend that more than 10 people have free is nearly impossible at this stage in our lives, but we pulled off a solid 13 showing. The setting was easy, and deciding what to do what half the fun. We had some amazing food, solid poker (which I add I won both tournaments), good debates, sweet campfires, shooting, cannons, and explosives. Here is a video summing up a good portion of Man Weekend 09.




Upon my return from Man Weekend, I was alas able to tell some more people of the details, since we survived with no serious injuries. Though I questioned my judgment for a moment, I told my boss that I built a cannon from one of our products. Her immediate reaction: “tell me you have pictures.” I of course told her I had videos and she immediately stepped into my office to see the video of us firing the cannon. I also showed her the explosion from some propane tanks and another one of our products. She of course thought the videos were fantastic and exclaimed that I had to show our CFO. I showed the CFO who was thrilled and had me put it on a jump drive to mail out to some of our other offices. RIDICULOUS! I just sent around the video of the cannon, but have since made a video just for our company to enjoy with 2 cannon shots, and 2 explosions. I identified what product it was for everyone. I think they are all proud.

Man Weekend is officially here to stay. Everyone that was there wants to make it an annual event, and I suspect it will be easier to get an even larger group together next year. I’ve already got some calls about what we can do to improve the cannon for next year. The nice thing is, with all the enthusiasm at work, we might just get corporate sponsors for our next event.

Thanks for reading.