Author: Tom Kern

¿Are you ready for some FÚTBOL?

I’m not a huge sports fan… I like the local teams in Phoenix (GO SUNS!) you know the usual suspects Suns, Cardinals, Diamondbacks, hell even those fighting Cannucks on the West Side get my attention from time to time. They are my local teams and when they are winning (like the Suns) they are my team and when the are losing (like the Cardinals and Diamondbacks) they are still my team.

Phoenix being such a young city really doesn’t have any identity in when it comes to the sports world. Chicago has the Bears and the Cubs… people love them why I don’t know but people do. Greenbay has the Packers and from what I understand not much else.

Phoenix… we have the Suns that started the current run and gun offense in the NBA and the longest tenured “pro” football team in the NFL The Cardinals.

The Cardinals came to Phoenix in 1988, so 18 almost 19 years. Basically any one under the age of 20 or 21 has never known Phoenix with out a “pro” football team. Two mediocre seasons in that time. Given how transitory so many people are in Phoenix I don’t see there being a generational fan base of parents bringing their kids to Cardinals games… though my parents did. And I didn’t apperciate it at the time. Now I do though.

Then I saw this….. FOLLOW THE LINK

The Chargers are not my favorite team in the AFC but they are now number 2 or 3 based soley on this single.

Then again when it comes to Football I will go against the majority in the room everytime except for when it’s the Cardinals (oh look their they are grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory) or the Broncos (DIE PLUMMER DIE). I now will also go for the Chargers when I catch them on TV (Insert heavy bassline)

Yah know the Chargers cheerleaders aren’t hurting the cause either….

The musings of a back porch….

You know I think I can really get used to this whole back porch thing… It’s February and I’m sitting on my back porch with a beer, laptop, and iPod. Just taking in the whole serenity of the evening.

I find that having a bit of alone time is good every now and again. I’m talking serious alone time 24 to 36 hours of the stuff. It’s good for finding a center of your being, it’s almost zen like. Well as zen as one can be with out being either a Buddhist monk or a Novel Netware Admin.

I live in the East valley… now I’m not that far out in the East valley, but it’s only 10 minutes in 2 diffrent directions to hit open deseret. (south and south east by freeway). I never noticed before but the clouds at night absorb the light of the city and glow reddish. It’s kind of strange but at the same time cool.

The album of choice is “Mezzanine” by Massive Attack. Everyone should check it out.

So with the brief winter that Phoenix experinces now over we are into the part of year that I like to call “Why we live here weather”. Let’s face it folks no one in their right mind lives in a place where it gets 120 in the summer and has 100+ days of 100+ degree heat. No I don’t count I moved here willingly and love it. I’m also a PACS administrator. If you ever meet another PACS administrator they will tell you anybody who does that job willingly is either stupid or crazy. I’m going to have to go with crazy people for $100 Alex.

I’ve come to the realization that everyone is beautiful on myspace. Which is why I use a comic for my picture (and here too). It’s not what the author looks like it’s what they have to say. Now I’m fine with the fact that this is page is a cesspool of incessant rambling and talking about things only I care about (for the record I haven’t talked about Linux in like 3 months). Myspace just feels like the sewer system of internet. Everyone goes there, but no one I know freely admits to going there on a regular basis. Actually let me rephrase that… people I call my friends admit they go there, they however have mostly moved to becoming flickr and blogger whores (welcome my brothers and sisters). So why have the myspace? I don’t know… part of me wants to be able to reconnect with my past… the other part of me doesn’t want to look back. I keep the myspace to keep the part of me that wants to look back happy. I keep this to keep the part of me that wants to look forward happy.

The first review… Fat Tire Amber Ale

Brewery: New Belgium Fort Collins Colorado

Type: Ale

From the Website: “Fat Tire’s depth of flavor, achieved with neither a disproportionate sway toward hops or malts, tandems well with a full spectrum of today’s engaging cuisines. Salmon, dry-aged cheeses, roasted chilies, omelets at midnight, sweet potato French fries and just about anything with grill marks or garlic are just a few of the edibles we like to partner up with our Amber Ale.“

My Take: Fat Tire is one of my favorite beers. I’m starting with this beer since I know it better then I know most any other beer. It’s a Belgium Style influenced Ale, but it lacks the bite of other Belgian style ales. To someone who is not used to drinking Fat Tire they would probably be struck at how strong the flavor truly is.

Whoops… Looks like I kinda forgot…

Whoa… Looks like someone kind of forgot they started a beer brewing blog.

I still want to chronicle my home brewing “experiences” but, I haven’t really had a chance to try it out and honestly I’ve been focused on other things.

I have been having a hankering to write about beer though. I don’t know why I just do. So while I’m waiting to bring myself out of my self induced beer brewing funk. I will share with you the reader the beers that I love here in the desert’s of Arizona.

Everything from large Macro brews (Coors, Bud, Miller) to local craft brews (Oak Creek, Four Peaks, Cavecreek).

Honestly this is just a excuse for me to go out and buy every beer I can and report back on it.

The most cruel time of year….

Yes it’s tax time.

I have spent the better part of the last 3 hours preparing my tax prep packet to take to my Tax Guy Who Walks On Water (TG-WOW). Every year I go through this sadistic ritual and every year I want to curl up into the fetal position and cry.

How do I know I’m not getting screwed? Easy. I also do my taxes using online versions of your favorite tax prep software (mine is TurboTax). I fill the online forms to best of my ability and it normally takes me 2.5 to 3.5 hours. Yes I’m that slow… Yes I think about it that hard… Yes I try to be that meticulous.

That has been my ritual for the last 3 or 4 years now. And every year on the first Wed in February I go to my tax appointment with TG-WOW and normally double what the TurboTax told me my refund would be, the last two years I’ve tripled the amount. And in one of the few areas other then computers I beat the pants off of anyone else in my family is in the size of my Tax Refund… yes some people gloat about their athletic ability… me computers and my tax refund.

OK now it’s time for me to get on my “Soap Box of Doom” tm

I’m 27 years old, I can’t tell you how many of my friends do not have a tax guy… much less a TG-WOW. If you don’t have a tax guy and you have any thing more then house intrest and a W2 for taxes get a tax guy. Ask your friends, family, single friend who blogs about his TG-WOW. Ask everybody you know just just get a tax pro.

Now when I say Tax Pro I don’t mean goto H&R Block… that is a great way to really screw up your day. I mean get a Tax Accountant or a CPA who also does income taxes. Check out your tax guy ask them if there is anything you need to do to prep. My TG-WOW sends out a packet that I fill out ahead of time with all of the info he needs.

Check your tax pro’s policy on what happens when you get audited. Mine will go with me to court. I checked out others and they may not. Your tax guy could very well vary.

The first hit is sometimes free… My tax guy doesn’t charge the filer who comes through his doors for the first time. Well at least he didn’t used to I don’t know about 2007. Follow my system if you don’t do so hot with the tax guy then nothing lost if you got a fat refund from the tax guy then bonus!

In closing… get a tax pro may or may not cost you in the short term and may or may not get you great gains in the short term. You have nothing to lose… maybe.

You play with our world like it’s your little world…

A.K.A the one with multiple posts part duex….

IT’S LIKE SCHOOL ONLY THERE IS NO RECESS….

I don’t know how this conversation came about today but it was somehow telling because the whole time I was flashing to a Myspace post that Kristina made.

So I’m at work today, like I am ~5 days a week. I’m upstairs talking with the consultant Mr.Smith about building some table in one of the systems I work on. Out of the blue I break from my conversation with Mr. Smith and start looking around the “new” (also known as newly remodeled) office that is the technical group upstairs. I’m taking a intrest because next week my happy butt gets moved into a similar office across the hall. Anyway I’m looking at this office and I start talking to one of our database guys and he just out of the blue (well what to me is out of the blue) about how my current cube has no personal effects in it. No pictures, no knick knacks, nothing.

Well thats not entierly true I did have a shipping crate that contained a ultrasound unit for 6 months but that is beside the point.

The database guy starts showing me the stuff in his cube… now I will say this he is one the cooler people that I have met in my time at my current position. Mean while I’m flashing onto what Kristina wrote…

“So far I have the essential office junk of pen cup, folder sorters of varying sizes, phone, computer, printer and a spot for all the office’s reference binders. Beyond that, BORING. I have in queue to bring; more pictures of loved ones, bamboo chute (a plant to make office life bearable—heck it may even show responsibility if I don’t kill it with florescent lighting!), a fake plant to disguise the fact I killed the living plant in a few months, a wind chime that was a present of past…what else could be fun and reflect some personality?!? Respond and give me some tips…looking forward to it!”

Kristina is speaking of her cube at her work… and this is all I’m thinking about.

I’m sitting here thinking about it almost 12 hours later… my cube at work looks alot like my office at home… alot of junk and alot of computers.

Anyone know where I can find a pirate flag?

How can I do Quantitative study on something that is very Qualitative?

On the subject of traffic… yes it sucks… I know. I knew that moving down here.

Once again Mr. Smith at work suggests a path home that I had never previously considered. Ok I have nothing to lose but 20 minutes of my life. What the hell.

It’s exactly the same time home as the way I would normally take. Now I don’t have a problem with this what I have a problem with is there is no way for me accurately measure traffic on routes A and B. Then make a comparison between the two mean while factoring in things like special events (Barrett Jackson 2 weeks ago and the FBR open this week) or the weather (anyone who’s ever driven in Phoenix knows that the locals have no clue what to do when it starts raining down here).

Nothing pisses me off more then having two things to compare and not having a solid way to compare them.

Of course I have never done anything like that before so why start now?

Winamp… It really kicks the llama’s ass!

A question for you all tonight…

At what point do you retire a computer? I find that I’m retiring equipment after 5 years. It’s either gone bad, no longer able to get parts, or as is most often the case I’m just tired of looking at it.

Just a thought… it’s one of those things that I think about but’s not important enough to bring up in causal conversation.

Sweet Revelations… Sweet Surrender….

When was the last time you went through your personal documents folder? You know if your a windows user it’s your “My Documents” Mac/Linux/*nix it’s “/home/%username%” I mean really went through it?

For me it’s been about 7 years. I have basically had one continously running “My Documents” since I was running Windows 2000 back in NAU. It’s been a while to say the least. So something that has been on list of things to do for freaking ever is to go through that folder and clean it up a bit. It’s amazing the shit I have in there.

Every paper I ever wrote at NAU and most of the papers I wrote at MCC. 1.75 gigs of pictures (I’m not sure how many of those are game screen shots, but I’m sure a fair number) I stopped printing at home 3 or 4 years ago and have been using PDF printers to print off reciepts and store them in my personal folder. It’s amazing the amount of useless shit I have. files I will never look at again are all piled in there just like my desk at work.

/sigh…

The sad part is your sitting there reading this and thinking to yourself “Damn when was the last time I went through my personal folders” The even sadder part is your still reading.

I guess it doesn’t help that I have only rebuilt my current PC once (the current install is only it’s second go round with Windows XP) The computer before this? In three years I probably did reinstalls 3 times. So figure once a year for the last 5 years and before that I really don’t remember. I do remember that I spent alot of time tweaking stuff and was militant about backups.

I find it funny that my longest install of Linux is 6 months I’m always eager to blow away a Linux box to try and learn more about it. So far my longest install of Windows is 18 months at home (the current install I’m working with) and 36 months at work (Windows 2000 Advanced Server for the surgery app that I supported). To my knowledge it’s still running in Kingman.

So much cruft so little time… of course it’s kind of interesting what you find hidden in all of this stuff.