It's 4:57 and I am ready to go home

So I still have a stupid half cast on my right hand. It is pretty annoying. But I get it off on Monday so that should make for some good times. I have found that I can type pretty well but my handwriting is absolutely horrible. I had to look at the incision; it is a lot longer than I thought would have been necessary. I guess that plate is like a salad plate or something. It is going to be a pretty cool scar though.

I have finished my summer classes for my first semester of my MBA program at Westminster. I really liked my classes; I feel like I learned a lot.

We decided to get our front yard redone by some trained professionals, so now Tom is working feverishly to make something beautiful out of our disastrous front yard. I am looking forward to him getting started on it, since I have been meaning to for months now. I guess it just speaks of my serial entrepreneurship nature. I love starting new projects, but then if it doesn’t come together rather quickly I get bored and lose interest. I think it is my patience that I really need to work on. Speaking of patience, I was promised another position with my current employer like 2 months ago and now it is going to be another month and a half, so I can train the new guy. I think I am going to ask for a raise in the interim, I think I have been performing well and I would like a little more money. I was supposed to be getting an increase with the new position, but that seems to be taking forever to actually happen.

Anyway it’s go time so peace out.

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

So I am going in for surgery on Tuesday. That should be a grand ole' occasion. I am trying to get my reading for my classes done before that so I don't have to worry about it while I am heavily medicated. They wouldn't let me schedule a time for the surgery, they will call me on Monday to tell me what time I can come in. Seems pretty pathetic to me that they can't schedule a surgery more than 24 hours in advance. It isn't even at the hospital so it isn't like it would be affected by emergency situations. I get to have a metal plate put into my hand with some screws, I will forever be searched at the airport.
Work is going well, they finally hired a replacement for me, so now sometime in the next two months I can move over to my new office. They are in the process of rebuilding a house that is next door to our current office for the purpose of expansion. I think it will work out pretty nicely once all is said and done.
School is nearly over for the summer, only two more of each of my classes. Seems like they just barely started too. They are going pretty well, I should get a pretty good grades this semester.
I got a new grill for father's day, it is pretty nice. We grilled up some burgers last night and I just wasn't used to how fast the new grill cooked, they came out a little dry, I even had it on low the whole time. I think I am going to get some of those ceramic heat dissipaters for the bottom to help spread out the flame a bit more.
Well that's all I have to say for now, maybe I will try to put up a post after my surgery, I try to do it before I get too far out of the "drunken state"

Busted Stuff

So here is my hand, and that little spur coming off the back of it is... not "normal"
While I was making preparations for our Moab trip I wanted to check the brakes on the durango to make sure they would be okay for towing. Somehow during that process my brain forgot (twice) how close my jack handle was to our concrete steps, the first time I smashed my thumb so I decided to get a different grip, at which point my vigorous nature took over and my overzealous arm attempted to push my hand (with the jack handle in it) through the concrete steps, they won. So here is the proof of either my stupidity or severe short term memory loss.
I thought maybe some of the medically aware people that read my blog may fully appreciate the pics
So now on Monday I have to go see a specialist (hand doctor, not sure what they are called). It may require surgery because of how it is spiraled.
And to answer the potential question, yes I have just been dealing with it for the last 13 days, thinking that somehow it would fix itself. It didn't hurt excessively bad until last night, the doc did prescribe some heavy pain killers, we'll probably get those tomorrow.

What do you say when it snows in June?

So I don’t know what the heck is going on here in Utah but today is June, and on my way to class, in the Salt Lake Valley, I came across this little pile of what appears to be… that’s right snow. Are we ever going to be done with this crap? I like the desert because it is supposed to be nice and dry but not this year it has turned into a regular tropical climate around here.

In other news, Obama is now the “presumptive” democratic nominee, whatever that is supposed to mean. Why can’t the news just tell it like it is? Here is my version of this story… “For today’s top headline we have determined that this coming November voters will be able to head to the ballot boxes and place their vote for the person whom they feel would best be able to lead our nation for the next four years, or if they don’t feel like throwing their vote away or they just can’t figure out how to write in on an electronic ballot, they can vote for either Obama or McCain. Either way it doesn’t really matter though because the colligate system has taken the voice away from individuals and given it to states.”

Just exhibiting a bit of wishful thinking here: what if a “write-in” name won the general election, how does the vice president get chosen? Could the winner just pick whoever they want? Weird.

I am sure some are getting tired of my complaints about national and local politics, but really if I didn’t complain about it what else could I do? It isn’t like I can actually change the two party system, or sew Rocky Anderson’s mouth shut. So my only resolve is to vent through the World Wide Web.

So my classes at Westminster are now more than half over, and we just barely got back our first sets of grades. Must say I am pretty happy with myself so far. I have not really ever considered myself an over-achiever, I don’t really try to get A’s, most of the time I just like putting forth a concerted effort. In my Strategy class our group presentation was the first item graded, I pretty much wrote the whole paper that accompanied the presentation, since I was in Moab when the presentations were scheduled. It came out very nice thanks to some solid editing from my lovely bride. We got the highest score in the class on that project with a 9.5/10. Then tonight I got back my first assignment for my Ethics class. It was a journal assignment, which I always thought were very easy since they are very informal and handwritten. The teacher gave mine back and made some comment like, “you did very well” and another student asked “Didn’t everyone just get a check or a check minus?” the teacher proceeded to say, “Well mostly but there was one check plus.” Now that was awesome when I looked down and realized that I had got the check plus. There is something really gratifying about being the best in my classes. I think it is because I consider my fellow students now to be much more competitive and overall more intelligent than my undergraduate classes. I will try to not let it all go to my head but it sure is nice to gloat for a bit.

So I have another ethical perspective for those that are interested it is Cognitive Rational. Basically makes an association between intelligence and morality, not that all who are intelligent are moral (we can simply look at Hitler for a stark contrast to that statement) but those that are most moral are inherently intelligent. I believe this works with Egoism to establish what my basis for thinking is. I think that people will serve the interests of others by serving their own best interest if they have a complete understanding of all consequences. In other words if people are more intelligent they are more apt (at least capable) of making a morally correct decision. Another view we looked at but one that I certainly don’t agree with was Peter Singer, check out YouTube for the crazy talk. It was interesting because he professes to be the ultimate Utilitarian. He is certainly the ultimate vegetarian; he says we should treat animals just like we treat humans. I wonder if he believes animals should treat each other the same way. Does this make the lion unethical because it eats other animals? Personally I love my meat group, so I won’t be prescribing to this doctrine at any point.