I have to start today by asking one simple question... What time is it here? It is a bit confusing at times since Alabama is Central Time, Georgia is Eastern Time, Were we were last night in Tennessee was Central, then 20 minutes down the road just before Chattanooga it is Eastern.

To add to the insanity, we are staying in Georgia and spending considerable time in Tennessee just 20 minutes down the road. Wow! How do people live in this kind of crazy area?

Our Hotel last night was nice and comfy and as usual, I woke early, sigh. So I got up and headed down to the lobby to have some tea and do a little surfing (internet) while I was waiting for the rest of the troops to stir.

I was entertained while having my tea and surfing by the fact that Emeril was co-hosting with Kelly in place of Regis who was out having laser surgery for his vision. The funny part of this was that he was actually pretty good as a host.

Once the family was up and running and quick breakfast at Waffle House it was on the road again for the last leg of our trip to Chattanooga.


OK what is with these cell phone talking drivers that are oblivious to the rest of the world? Here we are on I-24 with a speed limit of 70 MPH and we have some gal yaking on her phone doing 60 in the left lane. The right lane was full of semi's going exactly the same speed due to the hills and pulling a load.
Behind these two vehicles are a dozen cars that are wanting to push the speed limit and all getting just as frustrated. Where is my shut up and drive sign when I need it? PAAAAALLLLLEEEEESSSSSSSEEEEE!!!!


We could call the day of the missed turn or even better, U-turn Friday. While glaring at the cell phone yaking snail we missed our turn. So we pulled off and purchased a local map so we could start getting our bearings or at least know where we weren't.

While I was in the store purchasing the map Rachael comes running in to tell me Joe just tossed his cookies in the car. Oh joy! Fortunately he had most of the purging in his lap and not in the car so it was easy to clean.

I then found where we were which was not where I wanted to be so it was the first of many u-turns for the day.

In the process of looking for our cabin in the woods I had to make one additional u-turn (thats two). But when we arrived, we knew this place was going to be great for the week we are going to be here.

Our Cabin sits on the side of a mountain amongst tree with the nearest neighbors 50 yards away which is another cabin owned by the same folks that own our place. Just up the hill from our cabin is a gazebo that has a spectacular view to the east well over 40 miles.

We made a quick trip backdown the mountain to the grocery store before heading into Chattanooga to meet with some friends from church for dinner and a little get together.

And now for a few more u-turns... The trip back up to the cabin was filled with many u-turns. We are having a bit of problems reading the signs which makes it hard to see our desired route.

I guess one thing we can say about all the u-turns is that we are learning where everything is with out looking for it. For example we now know where a Wal-Mart Super Center and a number of the tourists traps are located.

I am happy to report that we did make it home and now getting to sit here and type this blog.

The cabin is pretty nice with a big kitchen and sleeps 10 with two bedrooms and 2 baths. It's name is the Cat House and has cat stuff through out. There is a cat gate on the porch, cat books through out and cat tracks on the walls in the kitchen. It is getting a lot of "oh that is so cute" from Rachael and Sherry.

Well, enough for tonight. Until tomorrow.

Current Location: Raising Fawn, GA

October 5, 2006
Day 2

After bit of dynamite and a big crowbar I finally got the wife and kids out of bed around 9:00 am. I guess they thought a vacation was for resting, ha.

So after a little food it was on the road for our destination of Chattanooga, TN. However we did find a couple of places that we wanted to check out. The first was Corinth, MS where we visited the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center. The Museum was located on the grounds of one of the big battle areas for the fighting and was the staging and training area for the southern troops.

This town was a cross roads for two railways and was vital for travel to the west and north. This was how the south was bringing supplies to the troops and how troops were transported from the other southern states. I was surprised to even see that the 2nd Texas Calvary played a vital part in the battles.

One thing that was cool to see was at the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center. They had a time line of the Civil War in a cool water feature. As the water ran down hill it passed each of the battles. I think that each battle was also represented in size and clearly the Battle of Shiloh was one of the largest battles.

We then headed 20 some odd miles north east to Shiloh where the Shiloh National Military Park was located.

During the drive I found it a little sobering to think that April 1862 that there were thousands of troops marched and had little scrimmages all along this drive. Then when we arrived at the park where it was set in that this was a big battle.

http://www.nps.gov/shil/index.htm

This battle lasted two days and covered hundreds of acres and took the lives of thousands of soldiers from both sides.

A walk through the cemetery and seeing the thousands of stone markers was one of the most sobering of the activities we did.

Shiloh was the staging area for the north. They had a port at that location right on the shore of the Tennessee River where they were able to bring in troops and supplies.

As we drove around the park we could see were each division was camping and at times the troops were just a short distance from the opponents.

As we drove through the park we could see where battles took place and the timing with in the two day battle. Then the highlight was the deer. We saw dozens of deer and for the most part they seem quite tolerant of the cars.

At one point we had three deer standing about 20 yards from us in the car and looked at us and went back to grazing. I took lots of pictures and as I get a chance I will be uploading pictures. Wow it was cool!

Another amazing thing was the number of cannons that were setup around the park. There were hundreds of them and the couple that I looked at up close were the real cannons with the date of manufacturing shown clearly.

I was also surprised to learn that some of the ammunition that was used was an explosive device that would explode on impact. Another was a giant shotgun type shell the size of a three pound coffee can that was full of musket balls and according to the sign was lethal to troops within 300 yards.

Back on the road we headed east and made it to Kimball, TN which is just 30 miles west of Chattanooga. I must also state that I saw the cheapest gas of the trip in Kimball at the low price of $1.98.

So until tomorrow...

Current Location: Kimball, Tennessee

October 4th, 2006

Well the day has finally come for our long awaited trip. Only a half day of work and we will be on the road heading toward our destination of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The day started out a little strange although it did seem normal at first. Got up with my alarm going off and proceeded with my morning routine with the last step being putting on my watch. Up to this time I had not focused on a clock but had only glanced at the minute hand to note that it was still a few minutes before the hour.

As I was putting on my watch, I noticed both hands... "Thats odd", my watch was showing ten till six. "Guess I bumped the time when I had changed the dat the other day". At this point I looked up at the wall clock to only see that it matched my watched. Puzzled I then looked at the remaining two clock in the bedroom to find that my Alarm clock had been set one hour faster than the rest of Texas.

OK, Now I was a little dazed by the whole twilight zone experience of the morning. What am I to do now? Go back to bed? Check my e-mail? I know, I will finish packing for the trip.

Three minutes later I was finished with my packing. Now what? Ok, I was quickly seeing that this was going to be an interesting day.

I finally decided that I might as well go to work. After all I might be able to leave early if I get everything done. So with it completely dark and ten minutes after six.

So after a stop by the neighborhood coffee shop for a couple of blueberry donuts it was off to work.

Work went pretty well, had all the usual last minute rush of getting jobs out the door. But happy to say that everything went smoothly and I was able to leave the office right at 12 noon. Vacation, here I come!

At 1:25 pm we pulled out of the garage for our first leg of the trip. Not sure where we were going to stop for the first night but we were on the road at last.

The drive was pretty much eventless with only the driver staying awake. Which was nice since I was listening to a number of my favorite podcast on my iPod. Maybe that was why everyone was now asleep?

We arrived in Little Rock around 6:30 and was looking for a place to stay since I was getting a little tired. Well, the next thing I knew we were on the east side of North Little Rock and we had not found a place to stay. Well actually I was to focused on checking out the sights around Little Rock and surprised how little thing had changed in the last 30 years since I had lived there as a kid.

We finally stopped in Forest City, Arkansas for the evening which puts us at about the half way point of our trip.

We shall see what tomorrow holds for us as we enter the state of Tennessee.

Current Location: Forest City, Arkansas

And the heat goes on...

Got to do a lot of studio work this week with photographing our complete line of standard stair balusters. Yeah I know, not a glamorous model or anything exciting. But hey I had fun doing it and coming up with ways to make the balusters look exciting.

One interesting thing I am strugling with with my whole photography thing is the fact that my camera seem to be a littl off on its white point. It seems to be adding a bit of red to everything. Might have that figured out when I shoot some things in RAW.

One cool thing is that even in light of all the lack of space and all I managed to get an area that I can use for a photo studio. OK, it is the storage space above my offices and the airconditioning is minimal so it is about 85° or so most of the time.

One observation that I am making about my boss is that there is a little hesitance to move forward on some items. An example of this is with the naming of some of the balasters that up to this point don't have a product code so no one knows how use them. But I have been given the go ahead to propose the product codes and naming of these mystery items.

All I know is that I am big time glad that it is the weekend.

Oh I have a mini rant. Whats up with the gang wrap music. How do people listen to that stuff? For example, as I was riding my bike home this evening I was sitting at a light and started hearing a thump thump coming up behind me. It stoped... oh darn, it was just between songs, if that is what you want to call that. The song starts and the first sentence said something and I was not quite sure what I heard. Then it was said again. then again and again. Every sentence had MF in it and that is just wrong in my book. I tried to roll up my windows but hey I did not have any windows on my bike. I also found it odd that here this guy was driving allong in his profanity filled car and he had to share it with everyone with all his windows down. PAAAAAALEEEESSSSSEEEEEEE!

Off to do the daddy thing. Later!

OK, so it was a strange title, but it is two topics that are common for me to talk or read about.

First off the heat... it is hot. It is starting to get old with day after day where the high temprature is above 100°. You walk from the cool house or office and a wall of heat hits you in the face. Ugh!

I have a greater appretiation for those that work out in this after a field trip that I took for work last friday. It was 105° outside and we went to measure and QC (quality check) a couple of houses and their stair installation. All part of the new employee trainng program at Trinity Stairs.

We found that the heat in the houses was intense since there was no air movement of any kind in the house. And to add to the mix, the sheetrock crew was there doing the tape and bed which was adding to the humidity. I won't even guess how hot it felt like but when you went back out side it felt cool. Hold it, cool and 105° that is not right.

Photography... I have had my photo taking gene re-awoken with my new job, and not to mention that I purchased a new Canon EOS 30D.

I am finding that I want to take a road trip for several days on my bike and go out and start shooting the world according to John.

One of my latest series has been taken out at Lake Lavon which is the source of our water here in the North Dallas area. I hope to start posting some of my images in the near future.

I must comment on my new job and how cool it is. I am finding that they have been starving for someone to get thing moving in the graphics department. I have been getting things organized and finding that some of the simplest things to me are like the invention of air to the management staff.

I am having fun getting to know the Adobe CS2 package. InDesign has been pretty easy to get up to speed with but still struggle with using Photoshop for all of my day-to-day activities. I still find myself using Fireworks for most of my image manipulation, however, I am wanting to find some things that I would be required to use Photoshop for to get me more use to the features.

I am thinking that that one thing is to learn to use the RAW format capabilities that Photoshop has ans see what I can do with that and see if there are some cool ways of making use of the RAW format.

Thats the latest... until next time.

Well it has been some time since my last entry, three months to be exact. And a lot has happened since then. So lets jump in where we left off last.

The first of April I joined CareerConnection a professional networking group and my work search took on a whole new excitement. Not to mention the excitement of driving in traffic of getting to Preston and Walnut Hill by 8:30 on the day of the weekly meetings.

CareerConnection was an amazing resource for getting my resume whipped into shape and learning other techniques for landing that next job. But by far the networking was the most valuable benefit and is what lead me to finding a job.

So back in the middle of May CareerConnection had a job fair. I reviewed all the employers that were going to be in attendance and was not finding a good fit for me. So I planned on volunteering for the day and help keep the job fair running smoothly.

Well I was walking the floor or the fair and one of my acquaintances grabbed me and asked if I had been by this company to talk with them because they had a job that I was a good match for. I had not because of the title of the company.

Turns out that it was an unbelievable match for my skills and I ended up talking with the HR reps for nearly an hour. A week later I was called and had an interview setup for the following week.

The interview went amazingly well an to my joy got a call the next afternoon and a job offer was given. So after the weekend, I called and accepted the position of Graphics Manager for Trinity Stairs, Inc. The leading provider of stairs in the Dallas area.

I am getting in on the ground floor of the graphics department and will be doing a wide range of task and eventually be managing a staff of graphic artist.

One exciting thing about the job is my getting to brush up on my photographic skills. I will be photographing new products and even making house calls to photograph installations in model homes.

My first house call was pretty cool since I was to photograph an installation in a 1.3 million dollar house. It was so big that I actually did get lost at one point when looking around the place.

Well, that is the latest from my life. Until next time...

John

Yeah it has been a while since I last posted.

I did manage to get a good case of the flu. I was knocked out of commission on a Thursday and was imitating the dead for the next 6 days. I must say that it was my opportunity to get caught up on the latest reruns of Happy Days.

I also have to say that there is a cool new game show on Discovery Channel called Cash Cab. It is a cab running around New York City and picking up folks. The passengers were asked trivial questions as they were traveling to their destinations. The funny part was if they got three questions wrong, they were kicked out of the cab.

Once back to the land of the living it was back to looking for work. Yeah that is right, I am still looking for work. SIGH.

This past Tuesday was the last night of class at SMU. It was a little sad but I am glad that I can stay home at night now. Who knows, I might even find a evening job. LOL.

Since I last wrote, I have been looking for a motorcycle for my son. No not a big cruiser like I ride but a small dirt bike. Been looking at a Honda XR70 and looking for a good deal on a used one. So far not much to brag about. Did find one at High 5 Cycles in Dallas but they have been jerks and not willing to call me back or negotiate on the phone. So it is back to eBay and see what we can find within a few hundred miles.

I did have a little fun today with my work search effort. I produced a flier and put them on the doors of my neighbors. It was just a way for me to get more contacts cause the rest of them have fizzled.

Well, that is all for now. Will check in again in the next few days.

Wow it is hard to believe that it has been another week already since my last post. An a lot has happened since last Friday evening when I last posted.

This week I write from Hawkins, Texas a small town of 1000 people are so in East Texas some 90 miles east of Dallas. We are spending the weekend with my father-in-law getting caught up on all the latest in this area.

Now for the details of my week...

Tuesday night as you may recall from previous post is the class that I am taking at SMU on starting a business. This was special since it was week three and it was the student trade show night.

A student trade show is where the students get to set up a booth and pitch their business to the students in class. Well, since I had nothing else going on, I got my stuff together and put together my presentation for the show.

So my presentation was pretty simple I put together a half page flyer to describe my services as a training business. I then put together another half page flyer for a survey to find out more about the audience and to get more of an idea if my ideas are valid as to who my market is. I also got a basket and filled it with "Smarties" and put a sign on it that said " These will not make you smarter, but NosalCentral can help". OK it's cheesy but is kind of cute.

I had several say that they might be interested in acquiring my services along with a couple of good inquiries into more of the details about my market and the start up cost for my business.

Earlier in the day I did a few searches and applied for a few jobs online. Which one turned out to be a good lead. I found this out shortly after class started by my cell phone ringing. At the first break I found that the voice mail was from a head hunter that had seen my application/resume that I had posted earlier in the day. OK I found this interesting, here I have been posting and resumes for the past 2.5 months and not a single call. Now I am getting a call within 8 hours of posting a resume.

Class this week was a little dull since it was dealing with using Excel to figure profit and cash flow projections for a business. OK, So I know enough about Excel to know how to do all of this. It was no big deal and the information was not that cutting edge.

Wednesday I made the return call to the head hunter and only got his v-mail. After not getting his call I e-mailed him late in the afternoon. Sure enough no sooner than we sat down to dinner, he calls. Well I took the call and got a appointment to talk with him on Thursday.

To be honest, I was not expecting to have much come out of the meeting, because my thinking was that I did not want to use a head hunter. After they are using me to make money.

OK, for those that know me I am a country boy at heart. I am not a fan of the hustle and bustle of the big city, now I find myself on the DART heading for the center of the Dallas skyline for a meeting with a head hunter. Have I lost it? It was more a strong urge to find out more about all the head hunter and to also see what the 25th floor was like for the building they were in.

OK, on the trip to the cement jungle I had the reminder that city kids dress funny. OK, why would any one want to wear a pair of pants that are 3 sizes to big then have them hang down to their knees? How did this style start? Was it some poor kid some where that the hand me downs from his older brother were three sizes to big and then hung down to his knees? Oh and then to cover it up, lets wear a big baggy shirt that is also way to big for you. Maybe I should be a style critic?

OK I made it to the building with 45 minutes to spare. OK I planned to be early since I was not quite sure where I was going. So I made use of the time by doing a little people watching. So I sat in the lobby of the building and watched people going to and fro. OK, so I like to watch people. It is funny to watch as people are going to lunch then returning a few minutes later with a Subway sandwich. Then there are those that look like they are lost and walked by a few times. Then there are the security guys for the building that wonder around just looking to see if anyone is up to no good.

Well, I had all the people watching that I wanted and headed up to my meeting. I arrived and signed in and they directed me to a computer so that I could finish filling out the online details that I had not completed earlier. Then it was time for paper work, yes it was real paper.

Then after a brief encounter with the guy that I was there to meet, it was time to take the skills test for Dreamweaver and Flash. This was fun, cause the gal that was setting me up on the testing machine was looking for Dreamweaver then Flash and was not finding it. I calmly informed her to look under the M's for Macromedia where to my surprise I found a complete list of all the Macromedia products including FreeHand which some will know is near and dear to my heart. I asked her to also allow me to take the FreeHand test just for the fun of it.

Well, I started out with the Dreamweaver test and I was not getting a warm feeling since I started right off the bat by incorrectly answering the first three questions. Come on, I have my Dreamweaver Developer Certification, I should be doing better than this. Well I did get a few more right but I was not doing good in my book.

Next I started the Flash test, hey now, I am actually remembering this stuff. I must add that it had been 2 + years since I last launched Flash. I felt that I was doing better on the Flash test than I was on the Dreamweaver test.

OK, then it was time to play with the FreeHand test. I should get 100% on this with my history with the product. Well I was doing great till about 75% of the way through the test and I got to a bad question. It was asking about editing text that had an envelope applied to it. you were then asked to click on the tool or button that would allow you to edit the text. Well, The option that I would have used was not presented to me. AAAAGHHHHH I missed one, bummer. Well I got 40 out or the 41 correct. :-)

When the gal reviewed the test results, she stated wow I did know FreeHand. Later when I was going through an interview process with the head hunter, she commented that my scores were well above the average and that she had not seen a higher score on the FreeHand test. I then used that to launch into my skills and my time with Macromedia.

I guess I should have remembered some of those clueless people that called into Tech Support that would state that I just got a $50k contract to do this web site. I just purchased Dreamweaver, now what do I do? *Sigh*

It was an interesting ride home DART with me thinking about the whole experience. I guess I am starting to question the whole starting a business thing. I will just have to see what doors open for me with the head hunter.

I guess, I am now needing to figure out what a portfolio should look like for web site development. I will start looking a little closer at this next week.

Until next time.

Well it has been another interesting week in the world of looking for work and trying to start my own business.

First off, last Sunday I had the opportunity to see "The Worlds Fastest Indian" at the Angelica Theater in West Plano. The movie was great and the theater was cool being it only runs less known films in a smaller cozy setting. I would guess that the theater did not seat more than 150. It was also nice they had a cafe and bar for refreshments. Cool experience.

Tuesday night I had my second class at SMU it was interesting to once again proof that first impressions do lie at times. First for a little back ground on the class, it is broken up into two fast paced lectures.

So I was unpacking my books and laptop and noticed an old grandfatherly character getting ready for the first of the two lectures for the evening. So here he was getting the old overhead projector setup to use during his lecture. I was thinking, oh boy, this is going to be fun to stay awake with.

You had to see him, he was all of maybe 140 lbs. Glasses which could have been used to repair the Hubbell Space Telescope, no hair on the top and just a little around the edges. You know the type, Grandpa. He then test out the wireless mic in a dreadful monotone voice.

OK, so you can see that my first impression was justified. Well, once he got warmed up his 1.5 hour lecture flew by and was actually sad that it had to end. He was providing a lot of good info and presenting in a way that kept your attention.

This week I have been busy doing some web work and have two sites that I have reworked. The first is my own business site of www.nosalcentral.com. I changed the site to now be my business site since the name is catchy and works well for a variety of businesses. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The next site I did was a site for a motorcycle shop. It was intended to be an addition for my portfolio and did not pay anything. We will have to see if the owner will like it and want to use it. Here is the old site... www.metrictech.net and the site I am proposing is, www.nosalcentral.com/metrictech. It was a lot of fun and one of my favorite designs to date.

Well that is how my week went. Until next time.

OK, I may not be a real full time student but I feel like all I am doing these days is reading and studying about starting my own business. That can't be a bad thing?

Tuesday night I started my class at SMU (Cox School of Business) and must say that it is a pretty good class. The subject is "Starting a Business" and is being taught by a number of the instructors from the school of business. Having the multiple instructors is pretty cool by allow a wider perspective on the world of business.

I was a little taken back by the whole experience of taking this class. I get to class and check in. I then get herded over to another table where I purchase the class book. Ugh! I thought for over $600 tuition the book would be included. Anyway I then head in to the class which turns out to be a lecture hall that seats 300. Find my place for the evening and make myself comfy.

We had about 70 people attending the class and the biggest surprise was the number of international attendees in the class. There were a significant number of individuals that had strong accents which I was a little uncomfortable with. After all I was taking this class to capture my American Dream of owning my own business and there were all these foreigners here trying to do the same thing. What, it was not enough that we are shipping all our jobs over to their home countries, they have to come here and chip away at our private enterprise also?

OK, I now step down from my soapbox...

The class was real good. I picked up lots of good point to ponder. One of the coolest was the fact that I should not limit my thinking on the size of my company. In other words, I have been just thinking that I want to make a living for myself. Why not think bigger and work to take over the market and be the main source? Kinda cool, no?

Let me backup a few days, I think I mentioned that my mom came to town this weekend. Had a great evening with her and Bob. She told us that she and Bob are going to finally tie the knot. Well it is about time!!! They are still trying to set a date but they are actually doing for real. I am pretty excited about this, after all Bob and I get along real well and it will be cool to say that I have a real rocket scientist for a step-dad.

Sunday we took Bob over to see Ikea and have the whole Swedish shopping experience. I was prepared for the experience this time, since the last time was a little overwhelming.

I did manage to spend a little while there. I purchased a slab of butcher block to replace the counter top on the island in my kitchen. They also had the under the counter halogen lights which we wanted to put in the kitchen. OK, there were a few other things that we grabbed also. The whole time I was grabbing stuff I keep saying, aren't I unemployed? Oh well, it was worth it now that it is all installed making the kitchen look great.

How about those Steelers? OK, I was cheering for them.

Tuesday morning I was required to attend the Texas Work Force Commission center orientation. After a 45 minute lecture by a few of the resident zombies we had to go demonstrate that we knew how to log in and do a search on the Work In Texas.com site. As I regularly did, I had no hits, but this was not acceptable according to the center zombies. So they made a few suggested additions to my search and I am now getting hits for jobs that I have no business doing. Hey if they want me to apply to be a bank teller I will be happy to comply.

I was also surprised to see that they are using a proxy server to regulate internet traffic. Their access was also very slow, must have been the 20+ brand new Dell systems that they had on a single LAN connection.

After leaving the Zombie convention I headed over to the Richardson Home School Association to talk with the board about my providing a number of training classes in the fall of 2006. We talked about my objectives for the class and my skills as an instructor which they seemed fine with.

I then stopped by the common area where a friend of the family was busy working on the yearbook for RHSA. Kind of strange to see people doing manual layout with all the computer equipment available these days. Looks like I might be adding another class the following school year. Will hold a class for Desktop Publishing and teach the kids the ins and outs of desktop publishing and the printing industry. Could be fun.

Thursday evening was another opportunity to hear more about job opportunities with a lecture at the Allen Public Library.

"Bach to Books offers a program for those questioning what they are doing right now and/or considering making significant life changes. Dr. Helen Harkness, a nationally recognized career counselor, will present her well-developed strategies for finding your own right path in life at any age. She will have a self-directed search activity with which those in the audience can participate and a lot of proven practical wisdom to share."

At first I was a little freaked by the introduction of Helen. She is tike pushing 80 years old and reminds me a lot of my grandmother on my fathers side. So she walked all over the auditorium in her pink pantsuit and coke bottle bottom glasses and told us about what we can do to identify what we want to do to be happy in our careers.

I was pleased to see in a couple of basic test we did that I was heading in the right direction in my career. If I get a chance I might have to check out one of her books from the library and learn more about her strategies.

Well, that concludes another week in my life. Until next time.