Hear Ye, Yeah Ye, Year He ! New blog post by morning, ADD HUMOR !!

I'm busily working on preparing for my Mother's visit by trying to clean my apartment with the sort of cleaning intensity only reserved for preparation for a Sergent Major Inspection, and laughing at myself the whole time. Also I found the last post a little bit intense and I don't want to fall into that frame of thought while my Mother is here. She doesn't come down every week, so wanna be in the mind frame to laugh and joke.

Here's a bit of a teaser for you in the meant time.

Things that have happened already today while cleaning !

One of the things I have always struggled with that seems typical of ADD people is cleaning. Now as my treatment has progressed, its actually one of the improvements people have really taken notice of. Clearly things have improved dramatically, but I still have some room for improvement. See the following.

While mopping my kitchen floor, I noticed that while I'd been doing a much better job of keeping my counters wiped off, I'd neglected the cabinet and oven doors !! It hadn't occurred to me until just 45 mins ago, that my cabinet doors looked like Pigpen, Cookie Monster, The Blob, fifteen ultra muddy Labrador retrievers and 3 year-old kids had thrown a mud-pie making party in my kitchen !!! I rubbed-up against one of the doors while scrubbing something and I don't know if I'll every get the brownish gray streak out of my t-shirt !! Little bit of a detail I'll need to watch !

To my annoyance, I opened up the clothes washer to find one of my pet peeves, a damp load of launder still in there from three days prior. This is something I've gotten somewhat better about. Its typical of me for forget about a load of launder in the washer. At least now, I don't simply throw them into the dryer without rerunning it first. Before, it could be in there for who knows how long: a day ? A week ? a fiscal quarter perhaps ? and since I barely have a sense of smell, would simply throw them into the dryer without rewashing it. That this is a bad idea, actually was brought to my attention two years ago when I went home while wearing clothes from such a load. I was emanating such an overwhelming mildew smell, it nearly gagged my poor mother and sister. But that wasn't what bothered me so much. What REALLY bothered me was that since this was a fairly common practice for me at the time, who knows how many fellow co-workers it effected in the close confines of a call center !! I'm sure there were days at the office where it wasn't easy for people to be my friend. Glad it was pointed out before it became an HR issue !!!

So far today, I've misplaced my mop twice, my roll of paper towels several as well. I spent easily 15 minutes looking for the roll, only to realize I was holding them !!! Have had to re-mop twice because I forgot that the floor was wet and tracked dust across the linoleum. Reminds me of a time when I used to smoke while on active duty. I had a habit of putting the butts in my pocket so someone else wouldn't have to pick them up. Standard for me, I'd forget to empty my pockets and most guys would wear the same uniform 2-3 days in a row. So while on a work detail picking up cigarette butts, we were miffed because no matter how good of a job we did, we always found more when the sergeant inspected the area. After about 20 minutes of this, come to realize I had forgotten to btutton a cargo pocket that had about 30-40 of them in there. I'd been leaking cigarette butts from my pocket the whole time we were picking them up !! My sergeant nearly kicked my butt and can't say I blame him !!!

One of the things on my to-do list tonight is going through mail. I HATE this chore. I'd rather spend two hours cleaning toilets without gloves at the stadium after an Oakland Raiders home game, than spend 15 minutes going through my mail. This is an annoyance to some, such as the mailman and my family. Dad really got pissed with me when he got a call from Grandma asking if I had moved. Apparently I had let things build up so much, the mailman had assumed I was no longer at the address and returned the Christmas Card she'd sent me. More than once he's been unable to fit anymore in the box and left it at the rental office.

Alright, my stove timer is buzzing, more latter

RedHeaded Rambler out

Went for a "quick" erron run two days after Thanksgiving. What was I thinking ? !!!!! & How I am ADD Proofing my FLASH DRIVE

****Important Disclaimer. My legal team has asked me to error on the side of caution and make sure to add the following disclaimer. In this article I will be discussing different types of technology. I can not emphasize the following enough. The views and ideas expressed in this article in NO way represent the official views and policies of my employer, nor should they be interpreted as such. They are my OWN opinions and ideas and no one else's If you happen to know who my employer is and want to know their official views, I would advise you to go to their website and look for their consumer and/or public relations contact information. The people in that department do excellent work representing the public views and ideas of the company. Once again I only speak for me, NOT my employer. Also take note that I have been extremely careful to not specifically mention any technology or services they provide and have deliberately referenced several types of technologies so that I cannot be pinned down as being an expert on one specific thing. Anything discussed here would be considered after market technology that they do not specifically service. Even in my official role with the company, I am very careful to advise the customer only about things that I have specific knowledge and expertise on. None of the following would fit into that category. I only make mention of my field so as to explain why I took such a keen interest in such things. I wanted use the projects mention here as an opportunity to increase my own personal knowledge and understanding of what is on the market. My education and background is in political science and public relations, so I'm more qualified to write this disclaimer than I am to give exact advice on technology related matters. Any knowledge I do have, is strictly at the consumer level. To use tech speak, I can use the gooey application just fine, but if you ask me to do anything in the native application that the gooey draws its information from, I'm as lost as lost can be. Once again I do not represent any views or policies held by my company. Do NOT interpret things discussed here as speaking on behalf of my employer. They are my ideas and opinions only. Thank you, lets begin.

Had a nice surprise today. Just as I was about to drag my tail off the couch and into the bathroom to start my pre-work hygiene routine, got a call saying my vacation request had been approved and I didn't have to come in. Yippee !!

So I decided to make a run to the closest Best-Buy to get some ideas for a project I've taken on for my parents. Updating their computer and tv networks.

All I wanted to do was pick-up a flash drive and price RBG cables and usb wireless routers. Figured this all could be accomplished inside 30 minutes right ? WRONG !!!

I had a total ADD moment and neglected to take into consideration the fact that it is the first Saturday after Thanksgiving. The drive to the Polaris location which usually takes 10 minutes took 45. And when I got there, it was like that scene from Apocalypse Now where the USO show turns into a riot. I saw things there that frightened me and I'm not referring to the technology. Six year old screaming kids as far as the eye could see, Fat Khrushchev running around with Sputnik, 80 year old women fighting over the last WI-FI router, stressed-out men where trying to strangle themselves with HDMI cables because they couldn't take it anymore, three toddlers were chewing on Blackberry pagers !! Even now as I write about it three hours later, the thoughts bring chills down my spine. Like Monica Lewinsky's policy about cigars: NEVER AGAIN !!!

Actually it worked to Best Buy's advantage much as it pains me to say. Being that I was going to have to wait for the beginning of the next ice age to check out, I didn't feel like doing that just for a $5 flash drive. So I also picked-up a travel carrier for my netbook which I needed anyhow. And since my ADD brain likes putting off such arduous things till the very last minute I priced every single type of cable under the sun leaving with a ton of ideas on how to skin the cats I've gotta help my Mom skin.

Here's the funny thing about ADD. When you get focused in on something, you almost become obsessed with it and you look at things from every angle. For instance, my Mom wants to set-up a truly wireless network but her printer does not have networking capability. Perhaps a normal person would write that off and give-up. I have dug and dug and dug and now have three different solutions depending on how far she wants to take it. 1. Don't worry about it since it does use a usb cable, it is reasonably convenient to plug and play. I use this arrangement for my own network and it has been just fine for several years. 2. Purchase a printer networking hub and from its manufacturer ($150-$300). 3 And much less preferable buy a wireless usb port kit. I like option three less because it will require a usb wifi style card be attached to the laptop. It is more complicated and its a $50 part that is easily broke when dangling out on the side like that and it also drains battery life. I know because the reason I have a netbook is because such a thing happened with my broadband card on my old laptop. 4. I hope I can convince her to go with option number one as much as I love buying new widgets and whirligigs. Its a home network not a business network and I see no need to make things more complicated and confusing than they need to be. Seriously, why would you care to print stuff from two rooms away, when you still have to walk over to the desk to pick it up anyhow ?

I also wanted to find a way to link her laptop to her TV. Why ? Because you can. Same logic for a wireless printer network I guess :) I initially wanted to do this because a quick price check revealed RBG cables to be only $15 for a set. IE I was under the FALSE impression they were cheap. Typical ADD, I missed a key detail here. The ones on sale for $15 are like six inches long. Hell I couldn't even put the laptop in the DVD stand with that much cable, let alone use it !!! Unless Mom wants to drop about $300 into it, she'll just have to download her photos to her flash drive and put that drive into the TV for her slide shows. $10 for a 4 gigabyte memory stick v $300 you does the math :) Not really sure what I'd hoped to accomplish by linking the laptop to the TV anyhow, but I'm sure I could find one eventually :) I just thought it was cool that I could.

As I mentioned earlier, I've become obsessed with cables and connectivity lately. I work in tech support for a technology company so as much as anything I wanted to know what all is out there. For instance I learned that so long as you only need to take the signal 15 feet or less, any hdmi cable will due, but if you need to go further, buy as high a quality cable as you can get and know its gonna be EXPENSIVE !!! I can't tell you how it all works although I have read it. Also there are signal boosters available for every type of cable on the market from usb and coaxial to hdmi and ethernet. But if you are in a position where these options need to be considered, your first question should be is there an alternate solution and or is it a worthwhile endeavor ? Because you are going to be wrapping up several thousands of dollars into the project just for the cables. Unless its some sort of business operation, my guess is the answer to the last will be no. I mean an HDMI booster alone is going to run you $1750 to $2500 , think you can go cheaper by getting a component cable set-up ? Guess again, about $2000 for that booster also and if you are using those cables, you'll also need audio cables and a booster too at around $1500. Didn't price high grade audio cables and boosters, nor did I price Ethernet, usb, or wifi boosters except to satisfy my curiosity that they do exist, I just didn't have the stomach for it after that sticker shock. I did price long usb cables to know that long usb cables are very expensive too as are Ethernet cables to connect to wifi boosters.

While I was at it, I was also searching for a very cheap storage solution for my netbook which is my primary computer anymore. I only paid $150 for the machine and so don't want to go higher than $40. Well I've found I can back-up my files onto a usb flash drive for $10. Sure it isn't enough for a full recovery plan, but it'll allow me to quickly jump back into action once a solution would be found. But I had to laugh at myself as I ended-up having to buy two of them. Again typical ADD stuff. I made an impulse buy and got a 4 gig drive that is a pretty red and you slide the case down to reveal the plug. The problem is, this isn't ADD proof.

I loose anything that isn't tied down. I once went two weeks without my wallet, somehow misplaced the spare tire for my two door Blazer and it was in the BLAZER !! Actually somehow it ended-up in the laundry room which I obviously seldom use :) The how and the why for the last one is a mystery to this day. Anyhow back to the flash drive. The trouble is that I have to keep track of a small light red piece of plastic the size of my thumb. This is a challenge. This one had several hurtles that stand in the way of this challenge. It has a hole that is too thick to affix any sort of lanyard and the case still leaves the plug exposed. Red or not, its still the size of my thumb and there's not telling where I'll lose it at. So I had to go buy another one that is black, but has a protective cap. I then protected this investment from myself by affixing a three and a half foot, hunters orange, heavy nylon, lanyard to it. This lanyard is otherwise known as a dog leash that I found while wandering around PetCO even though I don't actually own a dog. Hey, I don't have many important files, but they are important to me. Just to be safe, I pulled out my drill and put three wood screws in it, thus permanently attaching the leash to my desk. I'm sure it has effected the resale value a bit, but it will give me an excuse to buy a new desk and new computer equipment to match it next year.

Until next time, Redheaded Rambler signing out.

Why this Christian likes Thanksgiving way more than Christmas Disclaimer listed under About Me section and Facebook profile applies as always

Why I like Thanksgiving so much and find Christmas to be more of a pain in the butt.

The first of several reasons I love Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the one unique holidays that is truly American. Everyone knows its origins date back to the Pilgrims and some of the original settlers of this great land Native Americans. So it essentially has its roots to all of the groups who were involved in the settling and creation of the American we have today. Not as well known is that people informally celebrated this holiday on a somewhat infrequent basis until a proclamation was made by President Lincoln in 1863 inviting people to join in a day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November. This started the yearly tradition we know today. I like this fact. President Lincoln is generally accepted by most historians to be one of the greatest leaders the United States has ever been blessed to have. In many ways Abe’s life and my own life have a lot of very frightening similarities and as such I feel a kinship with this great man. More on that some other time.

Thanksgiving has its roots in the celebration of a bountiful harvest from the fields. I have very close family ties to agriculture and therefore can easily identify with that. Even modern farmers are done or finishing up the harvest by the time Thanksgiving rolls around. This year being a BIG exception.

Least you be curious, due to the unseasonably wet year and warm year, combined with a very late planting season, the corn just ripened about two weeks ago, and the mud is preventing the heavy combines from getting into fields. Add in the fact that the corn is VERY wet, requiring it to be run through dryers before taken to market and its extremely slow going. From what I saw on my last visit home, I just hope they can get it off before the corn stalks deteriorate making harvest impossible. For any farmers out there, most of my farm friends say corn is averaging between 27%-29% moisture content and if anyone has hit 30% they aren’t saying. My uncle believes someone will see low 30’s at some point and just hopes it isn‘t him. For all you suburbanites and city slicks out there usually you prefer to have that number closer to 12%-15%. Anything more and you risk mold destroying the grain in storage, anything less and the grain will shatter as its handled. Also you might consider buying stock in natural gas or propane, no doubt its going to soon be in high demand as the seed dryers start burning it up in massive quantities !!!

Getting back on topic the main reason I love Thanksgiving so much is that it’s really just about enjoying four of my most favorite things in life: good friends, good food, good drink, and football. (Note I said football NOT good football, after all it always features the Detroit Lions and this year‘s star-struck itinerary also will highlight the blue chip Oakland Raiders. Ooohhh get the popcorn ready and the DVR tuned-up !!) People might accuse me of liking it so much because I don’t help cook. Be assured this isn’t my choice, it mainly has to do with my viewing of garlic as a major and essential food group instead of simply a spice or seasoning. But I am still allowed to fill the salt shakers and set the table so long as I’m highly supervised. But in all seriousness, I enjoy people coming over and helping out or hanging out around the kitchen as preparations are made. Laughing and joking, telling stories from the old year, speculating on the coming new one, catching up over a few drinks and appetizers. Dad started deep frying the turkey several years ago, and the guys will congregate on the back patio or garage like our forefathers gathered around a campfire talking, joking and all and all having a good time.

The food is amazing. Ten years ago, my parents discovered the Food Network and I’ve been delightfully entertained as my mother’s always excellent cooking grows in flavor and complexity. Mom has especially benefited as Dad has gotten much more involved in cooking and he isn’t half bad, in fact he pretty good and never afraid to try new things. Every Thanksgiving brings a new dish, or a new version of an old favorite, as they experiment with previously unknown spices and cooking methods. Granted on occasion Mom and Dad come up with some dish that makes me cry tears for the poor livestock and what they were turned into, as well as consider reporting this crime against humanity to the UN. Fortunately that is a very rare occurrence anymore. When it does happen, I simply pull-out some of the garlic bulbs I always carry, and mix in enough cloves to make it edible (usually only six or seven cloves is needed anymore).

There is none of this running around shopping, card sending, shopping, hiding what you bought while shopping, cooking, shopping, watching fifteen versions of a religious story by 3-year toddlers with no appreciation for the fine art of method acting, prepping the shotgun least a drunken fat man try and wedge himself into my chimney again, oh and did I mention all the shopping ? Yeah with Thanksgiving you have none of that. Its simply “Lets get together, give thanks for all of the blessings we have, and share some stories and jokes over food and games“. If that’s not the definition of a true holiday, prey tell what is ?

Even the US Army gets this and understands how important it is for soldiers to have a little holiday once in a while. Keep in mind, the US Army is an organization that often shows that the terms “military” and “intelligence” do not go hand in hand. I mean this is an organization that supposedly discourages homosexuality but every year celebrates its birthday by making soldiers eat cake while wearing berets !! But every year on Thanksgiving the Green Mother finds a way to get a hot turkey dinner to each of her soldiers. It is a point of pride for the Army dating back as far as WWII possibly longer, I‘m too lazy to research it. The stories of cooks hiking hot chow to far-flung, isolated positions that lack all modern comforts but have an abundance of enemy combatants are legendary. One of the bests comes from Colonel Hackworth while fighting in Korea, Google it or go to the History Channel website if you care to hear about it.

Honestly, I do not care much for Christmas and the reasons are many. Don’t get be wrong, as a Christian I recognize its importance and feel it is appropriate and fitting to bow our heads in respect for Christ‘s incarnation. However, the monster that we’ve created while doing so, resembles a chubby baby who has just woken up from a twelve hour nap. It wants to eat early, often, and in large quantities. It has no sense of responsibility in regards to the opening on the other end. I’ve always heard of the Christmas season getting longer and longer, but the fact really didn’t ring true with me until I saw a Christmas sales display at my local pharmacy. I initially thought was a joke being that it was the first week of October and even Halloween was too far off to be on my radar just yet. I asked the store manager about it, no joke was intended. Yeah, I always check my meds for signs of tampering when I go there anymore. Someone in their management team is obviously deranged and irrational !!!

Lets see, there are Christmas carols playing constantly and repeatedly over the radio and all the red banners and red decorations everywhere. In the days where I used to drink to great excess, and hard core benders that would make Charlie Sheen consider cutting back were far more common and intense this time of year. I’d often hallucinate and become convinced I was in a Soviet brain-washing/reeducation camp. More than once I confused a fat man in a Santa suit for Comrade Khrushchev carrying a Sputnik satellite to the launch site. This would set me on a rambling tangent about how Ronald Regan was going to kick his butt one day. I think one of my more memorable sayings was “Sure you might have more ICBMS than us, but being that more than half probably won’t make it out of the silo and half of the other half‘s ability to make it airborne is suspect at best, it will actually work to our advantage. Have you ever head of the term ‘secondary explosion’ my friend ? I encourage you to keep building them till Siberia looks like its been infested with giant gophers !!! BOOM, BOOM FATMAN BOOM, BOOM !!! ”.

Sure I like all the light displays, some of them are very nice. I fully intend to take my mother to the famous Columbus Zoo light display this year even. But some people get a tad carried away. Its good to be creative an all but my neighbor’s displays are so intricate and BRIGHT that my house plants think the extended day light hours mean its spring and start blooming as if they are a month behind on the deadline. I mean I have to wear a welding mask just to walk from my apartment to my car without being blinded. He doesn’t just get a thank you note from the electric company every year, they comp his yearly trip to Vegas. Recently they contacted ME to ask if I’d introduce my neighbor to the manager of my pharmacy. Sometime an airliner is going confuse his house for a navigation landing beacon and this will result in a wee bit of a traffic jam in the Westerville area. I’d hazard a guess it might even make the 11pm news.

People often laud about how fun it is to shop this time of year. For those of you who fall into that category, let me inform you of something. Black Friday is called that for two reasons. It is the time where stores cross over from the red into the black finically speaking, and because every year a few people are trampled to death. This usually happens to some poor store clerk by a rushing mob cramming into a Wal-Mart to buy a highly discounted TV usually made by some poor and disgruntled five year old in a god-forsaken, faraway country whose government doesn’t view civil rights as a pressing issue. I very unwittingly went with my parents one year and witnessed this spectacle of stress-driven mobs of people desperately searching for beanie babies and micro machines. By the time we were done, I felt like I’d just played a football double header, and was scared to take clothes off to take a shower for fear of what I’d find or what might fall out: perhaps a tooth, distended ankle, hyper-extended knee, or a rack of ribs ?

I resent the fact that during this time of year, shops are so crowded with aggressive shoppers I have to don a helmet and mouth guard just to make a run to the grocery or dime store. And when you get there, there’s fat Khrushchev among a horde of Ritalin sniffing six-year olds screaming and shrieking like they lost a finger playing with Sputnik. These kids tend to be in this super cooperative mood because of feeling the effects of sugar withdrawal and/or because mommy would only buy them two Tickle-Me Elmos instead of four.

People often stress out this time of year fretting about finding the perfect gifts to give. This is where having ADD is a benefit. I seldom have this problem. I wait till two days before, don my protective gear, then head to the nearest Meijer. In 45 minutes of focused walking, I’m done. If it truly is the thought that counts, a review of my past gifts will reveal the following thoughts: 1. I wasn’t 2. Dam I’m broke, and if I’ve actually thought things through sometimes 3. I might not like you that much and/or I’m an evil but very harmless genius.

I will now elaborate. I once gave my mother a frying pan (only thing that kept me from suffering serious bodily harm was the fact that I was 8 years old). Last year I won an air popcorn popper. I used it one time and discovered air poppers make popcorn which resembles packing material in both taste and consistency. Given that it was the first week of Dec when I made this discovery what was my first thought ? “Dam this popcorn popper generates crap. It will be a perfect gift for my future brother-in-law”. One side of the family does a $5 gift exchange and my mother long ago started bringing an additional gift to smooth over any hard feelings generated by recipient of my gift. Its ranged from the strange (fifteen pounds of long grain rice) to the bazaar (an entire case of Preparation H). Of that last gift one cousin was heard to say, “Its not the fact that he gave a case of hydroid cream that bothers me. it’s the fact that there is enough of a market for that product that they sell it in that large of a quantity and what hell-on-earth did Mike have visit to find it ?”. On that last thought, the funniest one I believe was a box of edible Christmas panties. Now we organize this gift exchange by numbering the gifts, and then drawing the numbers out of a hat. I assure you I had nothing to do with the organization or administration of this process. I surely would have influenced it differently if I had. Because the panties were selected by my cousin’s then girlfriend and now wife of nearly ten years. I didn’t know it was possible for a woman to blush so many different shades of red !!! One year I was contemplating how to deal with an unwelcome member of my entourage that I sort of had to tolerate since he was a friend of a very close friend of mine whom I‘ll call Bob. It wasn’t so much Bob I disliked (although I wasn’t too fond of him), it was his 5 year old kid. I only saw this kid stop moving, shouting, and screaming one time even only for a mere 2 minutes (he had run full speed, head first into a wall LITERALLY !!!). Like many people with ADD I am high strung and don’t have much tolerance for excessive noise. I don’t always deal well with these situations and it can put me into a panic attack. Excessively loud and constant noise has been known to transform my mood from happy go luck to very grouchy in two minutes. Especially when little Jr’s daddy never thinks he does anything wrong and acts as if its no big deal that his kid is screaming and running around the restaurant chasing other kids with a butter knife or gnawing on my remote control like a hungry dog gnaws on a steak bone. So after one especially eventful dinner that Bob’s future-ward-of-the-state had made more interesting that I cared for, it became apparent that something had to be done. Bob simply was not getting the hint. Now that says a LOT because I have the gift of being discretely-indiscrete when I want to. A real master of the back handed compliment if you will. So when Christmas time came around I held a small get together knowing full well Bob would invite himself along. As I was bidding my guests goodbye I surprised his kid with a gift so long as he promised to wait and open it Christmas day. The gift ? A small drum set complete with tambourine, a toy battery powered space gun, and ample batteries to keep it running till August. But I pushed it a bit too far by also including a four pack of Red Bull energy drink which Bob took offense to apparently. I found out through our mutual friend. Hell, I figured that was more healthy that the crack and pixey-stix I suspected Bob was giving him before coming to any social functions !! But Bob doesn’t come around anymore and when he does his remote-eating sidekick isn’t in tow. Wonder why ? Sorry about that Bob, didn’t mean to take the joke too far.

On a more serious note, as I’ve come to appreciate the diverse cultures and religions of our great Country, I understand how Christmas which at its heart is a Christian holiday can make those of different religions feel as if, our predominately Christian, society is forcing something down their throat that they don’t believe in. I’ve come to understand how my friends of the Jewish, Hindu, and various pagan faiths, understandably but wrongfully feel like only a marginal part of American society during this time of year. While I make no apologies for my beliefs in the Christian faith, if you are ridding in the biggest truck on the road, sometimes you don’t realize how much you are boxing in the compact in the next lane over. Its hard to defend Christianity as a religion of peace, love, and acceptance when things like Black Friday come around or a Santa shows up in the news for being too friendly with the children. Some of the more extreme fundamentalist use this occasion to bring attention to their extreme views. The kind of Christian fundamentalist out there harassing confused 13 year old girls outside abortion clinics, spewing hate filled rants about homosexuality ….. Those hate filled extremist that fail to realize Christ walked among and ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, and Gentiles. The lowest of the low in Jewish Society and he treated them with compassion, respect, and kindness. I see some of those knuckle heads on TV and regret not organizing a counter protest with the theme “We are also Christians and the idiots over there do NOT represent us !!!”.

Also the Lutheran church that I was born and raised in doesn’t see Christmas as the big deal corporate America makes it out to be. Sure we have a service or two but it pails in comparison to how we celebrate Easter. Trust me, I once served as the acolyte for the entire Easter season as well as for the entire Christmas season. I know we have two traditional services for Christmas but something like six for Easter (I don’t know for sure, I quit counting after four). Yes the Christmas story is important, but ultimately Christ’s visit to Earth would just be another hash mark in the time-line of human history had it not been for his death and resurrection on that tree in Calgary, which gave us the gift of eternal life. That is the ultimate gift of love and sacrifice. It is ultimately why Christmas has meaning.

To all my friends and readers I wish you a safe and happy holiday season. I hope you all get a chance to break bread with family and friends during this time. May the hope of joy and peace, which is the true spirit of the occasion, find you this year and the next one.

Redheaded Rambler signing off

Why leaving the Army was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make and how mental illness played the deciding factor

Why I chose not to re-enlist. A surprisingly difficult decision.


There is no way to tell this story without wading into political waters and discussing my views on what campaigners call “Hot Button Issues”. So I want to be very clear that the opinions expressed in this article or any other article listed on my blog are strictly mine and mine alone. I do NOT speak on behalf of my employer or any organization listed on my page or any other organization which I am involved with past, present or future. Nor should they ever be interpreted as such. I speak for Mike A, private citizen ONLY. Also note in this article, all names have been changed as I didn’t have the ability to reach these people to ask their permission to mention them.

Also while I’ll try to avoid long winded rambling, periodically I will have stop to explain why I’m saying what I’m saying. When I do so, I’ll set these sections apart from the rest so you can backtrack to my original train of thought more easily. Now lets begin.

Being ADD, I sort of fit into the Army like a round peg in a square hole. It gets the job done but isn’t the prettiest thing in you’ve ever seen. The Army gives you thousands of dollars worth of gear and expects you to keep it clean, neat, and organized. They demand attention right down to the most minuet detail. That was tough on me. I’m not a spit-shine parade-ground soldier and had little patience or use for white glove inspections. In the six years I was in the military, I wore my dress uniform only twice and went to extremes to avoid putting it on, even volunteering for KP and 10 mile marches. I was forever loosing gear and that cost me quite a bit of money forking over hard earned cash replacement costs. “Hurry-up and wait” often drove me to tears of boredom. The Army grudgingly tolerated this from me because my rifle and field gear were always clean and ready, and I always shined when it came to important tasks pertaining to warfare preparation. Much to the annoyance of every NCO I ever served under, I very much took to extremes The Murphy’s law of combat that stated, “No combat-ready unit ever passed inspection, but no inspection-ready unit ever passed combat”. No soldier I ever served with would ever question that I was combat ready, nor would they question my ability to fail a white glove inspection with flying colors !!! By the time my enlistment was up, the ways of the Green Mother, were wearing on me. It was obvious to everyone, which is why many of the soldiers I served with will likely be surprised at to learn that the decision to not re-up was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make and that I’ve only quit second guessing it recently.

But lets be clear on this. Like a lot of veterans, I often think back to those days and reminisce about the friends I made, experiences I had, feel a pull of obligation to my fellow veterans in uniform and consider joining up again. For me, this is almost every time I read the news. In many ways though is like a boxer or football player whose past his prime, but has a hard time admitting the game has past him by. While he knows it, its extremely hard for him to give-in and accept that its over. Sure from a physical standpoint I’m still healthy enough and young enough to endure the rigors of the Infantry, but due to my medical condition pertaining to mental illness, I know I would be unable to handle the stress and pressures of military life. Yet, it is a hard, bitter pill for me to swallow and admit to. Its only as I learn and understand more about my condition that I’m able to stop feeling ashamed of this fact.

By the time Sept 17, 2003 rolled around I had reluctantly made the decision to not re-up and after a final formation at the unit’s annual picnic, I saluted the CO, was handed my honorable discharge papers, and left the military for good. It was the end of a six year journey that had given me the opportunity to make some of the closest friends I’d ever have, meet some of the most interesting people I have ever met, see parts of the country and have experiences I would not have gotten to have otherwise. As much as anything, I knew then what I’d miss most: working as part of a team of people I could trust with my life, who were so in sync with each other that we could tell by the tone in one another’s voice or walk what was on the other’s mind. I doubt I ever get to experience anything like that on that kind of level again. And a lot went into the decision to walk away from it.

One of the things foremost on my mind was the ongoing combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite George Bush’s declaration of the “Cessation of Hostilities” in Iraq, things were white hot there and Afghanistan was flaring up again too. My unit in fact was in the middle of preparations for a “volunteer” deployment to Kosovo to free-up active duty units to deploy there. How that “volunteer” deployment was being managed by our leadership turned out to be final straw for me but more on that latter.

Digression for explanation on how I felt politically. To this day I have very conflicted feelings about the Iraqi conflict and it was far worse back in 03. I an neither a pacifist or a war-hawk. If anything I am pro-soldier. I dearly want peace so that our young men and women can come home to stay, but I can’t decide the manner in which we should withdrawal. Listening to veterans who have been to both conflicts you hear strong yet intelligent, reasonable opinions for both cutting our looses and getting out as well as staying for the duration and seeing the thing through to the end. Some would say it’s a “black hole with no end in sight so stop this thing and get out and end this needless bloodshed or we’ve served our purpose time to go home”, others say “If we pull out without reaching the our goals, then our dead and wounded soldiers have sacrificed in vain”.

Personally I feel very conflicted about the war. But George W. Bush and some of the war-hawks that supported his administration pissed me off something awful and it all started with his reelection efforts. By 2003 they were already tooling up for the campaign and the theme seemed to be “Reelect me because of 9-11” and through out the campaign W shamelessly carried on in this manner. As far as I was concerned he was holding a political rally at Arlington National Cemetery using the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for a podium while vendors sold t-shirts from booths set-up over grave sites. This would bother me so much that the following summer I would leave my job, as a political staffer who specialized in campaign work, to peruse college full time and reevaluate my chosen career field. At the time I was pretty outspoken about how I felt and this did not go over very well with my fellow political co-workers. I was called a traitor to the Republican Party, my patriotism questioned more than a few times and some who had never worn the uniform flat-out called me a “sunshine patriot” who was too scared to answer another call to duty. Words cannot describe how angry this made me.

Be assured just as I am now, I was then, no less willing to answer the call should my country ever need me. I may not volunteer or be overly eager, but if the need should ever arise I will put down my plow and pick-up my rifle again. By the fall 2003, I was already so sick of these war-hawks who have never worn the uniform, never had a son or daughter serve in the military or possibly at risk of being drafted, going around saying "America needs to turn half of the Middle East and South Asia into a giant parking lot". It is very easy to say we should be out there gunning-down everything in sight if you aren‘t going venturing into the line of fire and pulling the trigger. War-hawks fail to understand another of Murphy’s laws of combat, “If the enemy is within your shooting range, you are within the enemy’s shooting range” and “Incoming fire always has the right of way”. If you know you are at no risk of going into combat and neither is anyone you love and care about at risk of going into combat, you can be phony brave like that. Those of us who have, while more than willing to do so, aren’t quite so trigger happy. The night I got the call to active duty I was proud and frankly scared shitless. Honestly, I would never want to go into combat with anyone who isn't scared. It means you have a health respect for incoming fire. See Murphy's laws of combat, "Never forget your weapon was made by the lowest bidder " and "NEVER share a foxhole with someone crazier than you !!". Only a week before at a Buckeye Football Game my father, also a veteran, had it out with someone who was spouting such “Kill‘em all and let God sort them out nonsense“.

The decision to go to war should not be taken so lightly and should never be driven by mindless rage. It’s a decision to be made knowing full well that people will die and feeling fully convicted that in spite of this, it is necessary. The people coming back in those flag draped coffins were and are real people to me. People I had broken bread with only a short time ago. For George W to shamelessly campaign by saying you should reelect me because of 9-11 was beyond despicable to me and I’ve yet to forgive him for it. Furthermore after having it out with one of these war-hawks I came to the opinion that if America truly wants these wars, why is the Army barely able to make a mere 75% for its recruitment goals, why aren’t military in processing centers overwhelmed with patriots wanting to do their part ? Why are these knuckle heads running around the US shooting their mouths off and beating the war drum instead of shooting rifles and beating down Iraqi “freedom fighters” ? In the interest of non-biased journalism, Kerry wasn't any better either. I was equally disgusted with both of them. But I felt betrayed by "W" given that I had worked on his initial election campaign.

For the above reasons, I felt that until some of those people took a turn on the frontline, I’d fulfilled my turn on the defense line for America, and wasn’t getting back in line for another rotation till some more people had done so, until some of these war-hawks had put their money and their ass where their mouth was.

The second reason I left had to do with my distrust of the senior leadership of my Army unit. Over the course of my active duty deployment as well as a briefing and training maneuvers two months prior, it had become apparent that the leadership above company level was horribly inept and quite frankly corrupt. Only three months prior my old team leader had chose to return to civilian life solely because of this and it heavily effected my decision. For the sake of protecting him, I’ll just call him Phil. Phil had served four years with the 101st Airborne Air Assault Division and proved to be one of the best soldiers I ever worked with and one of my closest friends. He had protected me from making bad mistakes several times and I am in his debt. Phil flat out said on several occasions “Sooner or later this chain of command is going to get us all killed, either get out or transfer asap”. He was one of the few people who knew how much I was struggling with the decision to stay or go and made clear that I should get out. He even drove down from Cleveland to Bowling Green the night before my final drill to party with me and make sure I didn’t re-sign, so strongly was his feelings. Only two days before in a phone conversation, he had said “Dude stop with that Band of Brothers drama. You stay with this unit and you will face certain death, if and when it goes into combat. The guys left in our team need to transfer to a better unit NOW if they are serious about making it”. I agreed with him and I wish I could say this feeling was unfounded paranoia, but it is based on several facts. I will now break off into a another paragraph and switch to italics to qualify this thought.

Digression for explanation: I actually saw a ton of actions taken by the senior leadership of my Army unit that I found appalling, unethical, and so irresponsible that it nearly cost the lives of soldiers (during peace time operations) on at least three different occasions. However in the name of brevity the situations I witnessed which left the most profound impression on me, while not life threatening, did result in undue personal and finical hardship for many soldiers. When my battalion was called to active duty we were so called under Federal Orders from the President of the United States. This qualified us for protections under the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act of 1940. The list is long but the chief protections are that any civil court actions must be delayed until you return i.e.: law suits, foreclosures, .., also since in most cases you are taking a pay cut when you leave civilian life, you and your family are protected against evictions and the bank must reduce the interest collected on any loans to 6%. It is important to understand this law only applies to military personal on active duty per orders of the Federal Government and you are not afforded such protections if you are on orders by the state government of say the State of Ohio. Our orders called for four companies to be sent, our battalion sent five. How did they do this ? Well they sent the fifth company with us under state orders. The unfortunate soldiers caught in that faced a great deal of finical hardship for lack of those legal protections and eventually this resulted in an investigation by US Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (CID). One of the things that came out of that investigation was that some soldiers had essentially been coerced into extending their enlistments. You see many Guardsmen work in civilian law enforcement or have ambitions of doing so. When we were mobilized many soldiers had less than one year left on their enlistments. These soldiers were told if they did not reenlist, while they would receive an honorable discharge, they would also get hit with a bar to reenlist. This is a disciplinary action that can end the career of a highway patrolman or someone with ambitions on becoming an FBI or CIA agent. So they re-upped. CID came along eight months later and said this was wrong and illegal, and per orders of the Federal and State governments declared their enlistment papers null and void. The soldiers were then given the option to re-enlist or go home. Half stayed, half went home. I can’t blame either half for the decision they made. I’d have had to think long and hard had I been given the choice to go home.

Sort of in that same vein, three months prior to getting out, we had been called into a briefing about possible upcoming deployments. Leadership wanted to poll us on the question, “Which would you prefer ? Another stateside deployment or an overseas deployment” and we were asked to write our preference down on a signed piece of paper with our signature. Well, I felt that if I was going to be deployed I may as well get the chance to use this TOW anti tank weapons system that I’d spent the better part of six years preparing to use; instead of playing security guard at another ammo depot . So I put down that I preferred an overseas deployment and forgot all about it. Two weeks prior to my last drill weekend, I got a call from the unit’s readiness NCO stating that since I had volunteered for a Kosovo mission, they would require me extend for a year and a half. This surprised me, since I had not knowingly put my name in for any such thing. Apparently that “poll” I had taken was a certain NCO’s trick to get enough volunteers to justify the Army taking him along. It took four days, countless phone calls, and eventually I had to threaten to take the issue up with my congressmen and the Commanding General of the Ohio Army National Guard, before my name was taken off the roster. To say this upset me was an understatement, I was so angry I almost had a stroke !!

Yet it was that very deployment that had me feeling so conflicted. By 03 I was an acting team leader, charged with the training and welfare or four junior soldiers. I did not take that responsibility lightly and I had been worried. I fretted that if I did not go with them to Kosovo, a lesser soldier would take my place and get them hurt. However, two weeks prior to that call from the readiness nco, our company commander had made a wise decision and promoted my long time friend Todd. Todd was an excellent soldier and had much better leadership skills than me, so I knew my guys were going to be in good hands.

Also long that same vein of thought, these were my friends. For six years we had worked with each other through the bonding experiences of long marches, rain soaked field problems, for a year on active duty we had spent nearly every waking moment together. That year I had jokingly told my roommate’s wife that I had spent more time with Tim than she had. Even as I write this I get choked-up. It is hard to walk away from those friendships. Its been six years and I still miss those guys very much. We shared a common experience that only we can understand or relate to.

But in the end, I had to make a decision based on what was best for Mike. And I knew then that I needed treatment for mental illness and it just wasn’t going to happen if I stayed. Twice in our year long deployment I had suffered mental break downs. Those incidents by themselves weren’t what I found concerning, this happened to several of my close friends of the time and two of them are still in the Army. But after the second one, I wasn’t the same person and it had bothered my roommate enough to go behind my back and ask our CO to order me to get some help. In fact he and I both sought treatment and were shocked at how little the Army had available. That’s a whole story of its own that I’ll save for another day. Staying on topic, in 2003, I was getting treatment by a civilian doctor and knew that the medication I was on (Celexia) and the diagnosis he had given me (Generalized Anxiety and Major Depression) would automatically disqualify me from being considered fit for duty by the Army. So when our unit’s number was called for another deployment I’d have to either hide the condition and risk another relapse or suffer the embarrassment of a medical disqualification and not be able to go anyhow. Clearly it was time to get out. For that reason alone, it was the decision that was best for Mike. But it sure wasn’t easy.

Dude I can't read this ? Can you translate it for me ?

That's what I felt like yelling at to the writers of all those "help" pages after 40 minutes of tirelessly pawing through reams of information on how to get your website noticed by search engines. I have a college degree and work in tech support, but all that may as well have been written in Klingon. I punched a couple buttons and hoped for the best.

But that's life with ADD. You forever have to go back and reread what you just read. Nothing makes sense to you till you get to the end and find out where its going. Because you are easily miss key words or phrases that can change the meaning of a sentence, you are forever double checking yourself. Its why reading tech manuals and other such documents can be a painstakingly tedious endeavor. Times like this I unselfconsciously find myself turning down the TV, fan, removing that dangling wind chime from the wall that's casting a distracting glare... Because a mouse fart could distract me halfway through a page of data making me have to go through it all over again.

But when my crazy brain gets it, it grasps hold of it like an iron trap and I become a master of it. But until I do, to get to that point is a brutal and very undignified process sometimes !!

I laugh at how college classmates found my research paper writing method so unorthodox. They would research and write the paper almost simultaneously using a preplanned outline for the framework. I could never write that way. No way I could even formulate an outline until I'd finished the research and fully grasped the topic. Then one day I'd lay all my notes out on the floor and stare at them for about an hour, developing a vision in my head. Then I'd put the notes in a folder, sit down and write in a nearly continuous stream for the next six hours without referencing my notes. Then I'd go back through double check my facts and mark out the source citations and spend the next week editing the thing. I usually got very good grades on big papers like that but it drove my buddies crazy seeing me work. They could never understand how my unorthodox study and research methods could work in their systematic organized world.

I had little use for the folders and neatly printed, highly detailed notes they used. I kept class notes haphazardly folded in with the text books, which were bullet points with page numbers to reference back to. Three sentence summaries of 50 page concepts and so on. My brain couldn't digest all that stuff anyhow so hit the key points, know them well, and get on down the track. And heaven help you if you interrupted me when I'm focusing on stuff. Back then I'd be quick to get in your face with a profanity laden speech on respect. But my system worked for me, and while it was never pretty somehow I always found a way to come out on top. Sort of the story of my life. Wade through a river of crap and somehow come out smelling like roses on the other side. Loved how it frustrated others to see me do that. How my methods would define the term "gloriously undignified" but I'd still be holding the blue ribbon come showtime.

I am analog man in a digital world. If we were still living in caves and hunting wholly mammoths for dinner, my intuition and visual learning style would be seen as a strength. But many many moons ago we starting growing our food instead of hunting for it and my brain didn't keep up with the evolution. Still I have been able to make it and have every reason to believe I'll find new and better ways to achieve.

Red Rambler signing off until next time.

Why I started this blog: ADD Life, Analog man in a digital world or as they often say, "Hunter in a farm society"

I'm starting this because I"ve always wanted to be a writer but just been too lazy to actually sit down and start something. Perhaps one day this will become a World Famous blog and I"ll be a minor internet celebrity or it may be become something that I lose interest in and eventually it goes the way of the Buffalo or however you spell the name of those cattle.

As much as anything I want to start a journal about my battles with mental illness. NAMI runs a campaign to beat back stigma. I hope you'll follow this and realize that not everyone or even most people who deal with mental illness are crazy people who bounce around in a padded hospital room wearing a straight jacket. We're real people function in society and it may surprise you to learn who has dealt with it. It is estimated that nearly 1 in 4 Americans have had a point in their lives where they've had to wrestle with mental illness. Some people are obvious to everyone but themselves, others quite the opposite. I feel fortunate to live in a time where US society has grown more open minded to these issues. It is more accepted and understood by the public than it has been in years past. Still we have a long way to go, and it isn't easy. Mental illness is not easily understood by anyone even and especially many of us who fight it everyday.

My own story is simple yet complex. I've been diagnosed with Adult ADD and looking back on my own life, have come to understand that I've always had it and its helped me make sense of the path I've followed and why its gone the way its gone. Its a long story and I'll take it on soon. But for the time being I want to focus on the present. ADD is my not only my greatest weakness, it is also my greatest asset. It holds me back yet also thrusts me to high achievement that I would not have earned otherwise. When I'm good I'm really good and few can hold a candle to me, but when I'm bad it can sometimes be frustrating.

There's a lot to it, but the long and short is that contrary to what the name may suggest, people with ADD tend to hyper focus. When we're locked in on a goal, we go at it with an obsessive passion that cannot be matched. We've been known to go days without eating or sleeping while we work away at our labor of love. We become passionate about it because we vest so much into achieving the goal it becomes a part of us. We'll conquer the objective and in such a way that few will be able to match it to the level quality we've just achieved.

Well I'm already very much past my bedtime so its time to pinch this off. I promise to elaborate on things in more detail soon. Next time I write, I'll walk you through my journey and history with mental illness. Until then know, you are NOT alone, someone out there is someone who can identify with what you are going through regardless of whether you are suffering from mental illness or are close with someone who does. NAMI can help get you pointed in the right direction in either situation. Their site is listed in my links.