One Graham's View

Happy Birthday, Pop

2008-09-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

Today is my father’s birthday, who is hitting the three-quarter century mark. But this is a poignant stamp of time in my life, as well.

On this day in 1993, all of my family and a good collection of my dad’s friends, assembled from his various paths of life had gathered for a surprise 60th birthday party for him. I recall so well all of the special steps that had been orchestrated to make everything just right.
My brother and I took special care to move the cars of the party attendees, parking them around the corner from Mom and Pop’s house, so when he came home from work that afternoon, he didn’t know what was up. Everybody milled around the covered back porch and pool area, getting ready for him to come home. The icing on the cake was that two of his best friends had driven in from North Dakota just to be there and they would be the last to pop up and say “Surprise.”

It was also that day, fifteen years ago that I last saw Pop’s face. I'm 46 now, so that means I've not seen him for a third of my lifetime. The good thing for him is that, to me, he looks the same today as he did that day when he received his assorted collection of black balloons and other “Over The Hill” items for his birthday. In my mind’s eye, he hasn’t aged a day since then, even though I personally know how much he has slowed since then.

I’m not wanting to get too reflective here, but just wanted to mark time and celebrate the growth we’ve both made in our lives since then. It was the events that followed on Oct. 9, almost one month to the day after his surprise party that all our lives took a wicked and unexpected twist, changing us forever. All of us in our family have come a long ways since then and that is what we should recognize, not any negative downsides of the aging process.

To that end, Pop, I wish you a happy 75th. And I’m very proud to be your son.
Love,
Ron

Looking for my half sister

2008-08-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on a search for a half sister for the past several months and the returns have been pretty fruitless to this point. So, I turn to the power of the internet in hopes of locating her.

Her name at the time of her birth was Deborah, or perhaps Debra Jones, born in late 1958 or early 1959. I believe that she was born in Leesville, Louisiana, but this might have also been on Fort Polk or elsewhere in Vernon Parish. Her mother’s name was Marie Jones.

She has a sister, perhaps half-sister, named Shirley, whose last name may or not be Jones.

The father’s name on Deborah’s birth certificate most likely is that of Marie’s husband, who was not around during the time Marie became pregnant and whose name is unknown to me.
Marie Jones and my father Bobby Graham met in Leesville, Louisiana. Marie worked at The Barn, a bar owned by J.L. and Margo O’Bannion.

I’ve looked over the birth records in the Leesville Leader from July 1958 to April 1959. The earlier date was the last time my father saw Marie, when he shipped out overseas with the U.S. Army. She was noticeably pregnant at that time, which is the reason I looked over birth records that far into 1959. There were no listings in the Leesville Leader showing that Marie Jones gave birth during that time. I don’t know what else to do, so I am posting here so that maybe the search engines pick this up and the right person reads it.

I would like to make contact with my half-sister, or find out where she is today. Anybody who can help in this matter can email me at
houstonpsycho@yahoo.com
(Explanation: I live in Houston and psycho in that address references my field of study-- psychology. I'm not a psycho!)

My favorite trick or treater

2007-11-02T19:29:00.000-07:00

Can you guess who this is? I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.

OGV

New blog for the 516th Engineer Company Reunion

2007-10-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I returned from my dad’s military reunion in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

One of the neatest things that happened there was that I came up with an idea to help the soldiers who had been in this company and wanted to find the reunion group. At first, my idea was to get a domain and put up a web site, but then I thought it might work better if we just got a blog. So, that’s the idea I pitched to the group. Of course, I had to explain what a blog is as some of them didn’t know what a web log was, but when I finished my pitch, everybody was all for the idea. So, there is now a blog for the
516th Engineer Company Reunion.

Heere's what the blog's heading states:

The purpose of this web log is to act as an informational resource for the U.S. Army soldiers who served with the 516th Engineer Company on Pioneer Kaserne in Hanau, Germany, active 1942-1993.

So far, the blog has worked well. In just its first week of existence, there were three emails from soldiers inquiring about the group. Two of these had served with the 516th and the other with a sister company.

Hopefully, this blog will help others find the group. It really is a lot of fun getting together with this bunch of guys. Even though I didn’t serve in the military and am only associated as an Army Brat, they took me as one of their own last year when I first attended with my dad

Underdog and advertising overlords

2007-08-05T17:00:00.001-07:00

Good evening,

Never fear…you know who is here.”

Well, I’ve got to hand it to the marketing masterminds at Disney. They have a finely tuned and well funded promotional team at work for them.

My point of reference is the just-released movie Underdog. I’m in my mid-40s and remember this show on Saturday mornings when I was a kid. That was back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since then, the only time I saw or heard of Underdog was an ad that used to run in the back of Rolling Stone or other similar publications featuring a rumpled Underdog character on the front of a t-shirt or sweatshirt.

Now, here we are in 2007 and I’ve got a 5-year old son who is leaping with his favorite stuffies, saying, “Underdog is here.” It isn’t just playing it once or twice, he does this several times during the day, or at least says that line. This isn’t even taking into account how animated he gets when those movie trailers come on television.

Where has he heard about Underdog if the cartoon hasn’t been running on the regular kid vid channels? That leaves only the heavy media blitz Disney has been using to promote this film. And, smartly, they have been running the ads on not only the kid channels like Disney and Nickelodeon, but also on about any other local outlet they could buy advertising space from, which means most of them.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the movie sounds like a fun romp and I want to make sure I’m with the little dude when he goes to see it. I’m just seeing how Disney has resurrected an old Saturday morning cartoon with a likeable character and given it a new and, most notably, live action representation to build a whole new following for Underdog.

I don’t know how much the advertising budget was for this movie, but it was no doubt in the millions, as they have really saturated the television channels with the various trailers of the movie. I also feel certain that they will see a big return for the advertisement investment. If this movie scores big at the box office, which I predict it will, I’d say we’re in for more Underdog movies. Who knows, they might already be filming the sequel as you read this, just banking on the success of the initial launch.

The bottom line is this, if you invest heavily to build a name and have the bucks to fund the onslaught of advertising it will take to do this, you can probably bank on success. Add to this that when you work to bring about loyalty fueled by the patronage of the parents with familiar ties to the character, then you could probably make and sell anything that strikes the nerve of fond, nostalgic reminiscence.

Underdog marketing is not alone. Austin can easily sing along with other familiar jingles that have bombared his young mind. One of his favorites is a Dodge truck ad that says, “Bigger in Texas, better in a Dodge.” When that ad’s opening sounds play, he will jump up and say, “Daddy, our song.” I don’t recall when that became our song, but it no doubt has become such. I have also noticed him chiming in with the “Thanks, By Owner” ads.

The above examples are just more proof of what advertisers know very well. Kids minds are like sponges. Throw something at them that appeals to them and they are going to remember it. And, when it comes down to it, these kids are going to grab mommy and daddy by the wallet and head out to find the product.

OGV

Our Jimmy Buffett concert experience

2007-04-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

I want to share our experience this past weekend at the Jimmy Buffett concert. Maybe, the better word for that would be carnival, because his shows draw a crowd together that you’re not going to find anywhere else. The ages of concert-goers ranged from the late teens to somewhere in the 60s and 70s. It was truly a gathering of generations. And, many of those generational members donned the appropriate gear of Parrothead (as Buffet’s fans are affectionately known). This gear included Hawaiian shirts, leis, grass skirts, and coconut bras. The men were as prone to wear any or all of this stuff as the women. If you’re a Parrothead, you already know this, though.

An additional feature of this concert was the opening act, Robert Earl Keen. Just having an opening act is unique for Buffett, but having Texas’s own Robert Earl Keen was a real treat, especially for me as he is one of my favorite singer/songwriters. I’ve been a fan of REK for about ten years now and have seen him at least three times before this one. The only difference in the past performances is that at those, he was the headliner, two of those being daylong concerts with many other Texas singer/songwriters, and the last time being a REK concert at the Historic 1892 Opera House in Galveston.

Never had I ever thought that Robert Earl would be an opening act. However, this was a great gathering for REK to put his music out to a whole bunch of music fans that would not usually otherwise hear him. Being the venue for this show was Minute Maid Park, where the Houston Astros play, gave REK the opportunity to share his down home musical philosophy with a whole lot more music fans than he might have ever had before him at any given time. Estimates of the gate said that attendance was about 40,000.

Our seats were on the floor, as were more than 8,000 of our closest friends. It was all assigned seating and the field of Minute Maid had an elevated flooring system that let us all get out there and also keep the field intact for the ‘Stros when they return for their next game.

The acoustics of a ball field are different than the standard concert hall. We had to adjust our listening, if that makes any sense. It was sort of like a filtering we had to adjust to, to compensate for the echo bouncing off the sides of the stadium. I had never been to the park, so I had no idea what to expect acoustically. When REK promptly took the stage at 7:30, though, it became clear that I had to tweak my listening.

While REK has a catalog of several albums behind him, including four live albums, and a fan base that is as loyal as a hunter’s favorite hound, he still lacks name recognition by many music fans. That’s a real shame, as he’s a fine musician and a great showman who loves to perform for these fans. The shortened stage time meant that he had to pick his songs carefully so he could present his best to this large mass of potential new fan base. For the REK faithful, though, it meant they got to hear choice live cuts of some of their favorite REK tunes.

He first jumped out with 1998’s Feeling good again, and quickly transitioned into the similarly rythmed Gringo Honeymoon. He then burned through songs spanning different periods of his career including Mr. Wolf and Mamabear, Merry Christmas from the Family, Corpus Christi Bay, and Amarillo Highway. Of course, as any die-hard REK fan knows, he finished with a fine presentation of his jamming, storytelling tune The Road Goes on Forever.

All in all, those who were REK fans before the night just got enough to hunger for more. For the uninitiated, though, they got a good sampling of what his regular shows give his fans. There are some concerts when I can take or leave the opening acts, but this one was a must see for me. And, I’m glad I was there for it! Like REK said when he led into Merry Christmas, “The next song is a slow song that we normally don’t play this time of year, but we usually don’t play at a ballpark in front of 40,000 people.” Good choice of both words and song, Robert Earl!

As for Mr. Buffett, I’ve been to one of his shows once before, about 11 years ago. It was at a smaller venue, the Starplex Amphitheater in Dallas. Because of that, I had some idea about what a circus-like atmosphere the show can be. I had told Mrs. OGV and our friends Susan and John about the festivities that surround the show. I think my description was a good start, but still fell a little short in grasping the festive atmosphere that is a Jimmy Buffett show.

It was a special night for Houston Buffett fans. We haven’t had one of his concerts in the Bayou City in several years and he made up for it in grand style. We were the opening city of his Bama Breeze tour. (Bama Breeze is the country-tinged lead-off song on his latest album, Take the Weather With You.)

He started off the show with a nod to another Texas musical gem, Willie Nelson’s On the Road. He then hit all of his fan favoritesmaking sure to interact with his fans between songs. He played Fins early as well as Volcano, amid many other faves.

I have one gripe about his show that bugged me. During the second half of his show, which was presented without his usual mid-show intermission, he threw out a string of several new songs from the latest album. In a string of about six songs, there was only one that I recognized in the middle of it. I believe it would have been a better presentation to intersperse the new songs throughout the show instead of having a big chunk right together.

Then again, I’m just a fan, what do I know about the music business? He’s probably got mega-honcho types on staff who analyze this stuff and they’ve figured this is the best way to present new music that’s unfamiliar to those who don’t have the new album. After all, this is a tour promoting the new album, so he needs to sing a good selection of the new stuff.

Anyhow, following the slew of new material, he followed up with several more of his signature songs. I knew that the show wasn’t over before he played what is probably his best-known song Margaritaville. Once it played, though, I knew that the end could come at any time. And, so it did.

Like at any other concert, once Jimmy left the stage, the crowd kept clapping, calling for an encore. Like at any other concert, he gave them one. He came back out and played three more songs, leading off with his tropical version of the CSN song Southern Star. As that song finished, we made our way up the many steps from the floor. As I told Mrs. OGV, if he plays two more songs, we can be up the stairs and at the door exit before the main crowd converges on the stairway. He gave me what I needed and it was perfect timing.

I was at physical therapy yesterday and talked about the Buffett concert with John, my therapist. John is about 30-ish and had been a student of my brother in law several years ago back when he coached at the junior high level. John said he didn’t go to the show, but his father did. Ohmygosh! I think that’s another thing that is typical of Parrotheads, we’re an aging bunch.

Still, it was an event not to be missed. Like Mrs. OGV said, it was one of the best concerts we’ve been to. That about sums it up.

Surgery recovery update

2007-03-13T15:48:00.000-07:00

Good evening,

It has been way too long since I’ve posted anything on OGV and I’m going to change that right now.

I am still progressing in my surgery recovery. I am now 7 weeks post surgery and had the walking cast removed one week ago. I had my first physical therapy session yesterday. I’ll undergo PT three times a week, for four weeks. The biggest trick is to train the nerve that usually pushed down my right foot to think differently. It now needs to understand that when a signal is sent to it, that I want it to pull the foot up, not push it down.

I’ve been made to understand that this will be slow work. However, after my first PT session, I am feeling encouraged. John, my therapist, did some light work with the foot and ankle yesterday. In one of these, he had me lie back on the elevated mat and he pushed the foot up, as if the foot were being normally raised. I tried to help, but that muscle isn’t working yet. When he had it raised, he slowly let go, letting the foot fall. My job was to try to hold the foot in the raised position. It felt futile as he repeated this exercise for about twenty reps. Finally, at the end, it felt like I was actually holding it up just a little bit. He could see my leg relax when I stopped trying. This is one of the main exercises that is going to help train that nerve to learn its new job. This felt like some real success on this first day of therapy.

There were several other exercises he had me do, some with the foot and others with the right leg. I was there for just at an hour, the last ten minutes of which included a cool wrap to help reduce the swelling in the ankle. That felt really soothing after doing the exercises.

The fact that the swelling is still present seven weeks post-op has really surprised me. It was really noticeable yesterday and John said we need to get the swelling to go away for proper healing to begin. He explained that when a joint is swollen, it sends a signal to the nervous system and brain that it is not ready to begin working and they respond accordingly by not providing the support they would otherwise have in place. It made sense when he told me, and I hope this does now when I’ve explained it here.

Today, the swelling seemed to be worse. I’m thinking that maybe the PT aggravated the ankle, more so than just walking on it has in previous days. I’m working on keeping the foot elevated and icing it down to get the swelling down. Hopefully this will work in short order. From the way it has been today, I’m worrying a bit about it. After getting up this morning with a noticeable reduction in the swelling, it was swollen bigger than ever three hours later. I have kep the foot elevated and iced down all afternoon, even missing out on going out with the MRS and little prince. While the swelling has gone down some this evening, it is still pretty large.

Yesterday, after going to PT, the three of us went to a girl’s soccer game at the local high school. The reason we went was two-fold. First, the opposing team was the school from where Mrs. OGV teaches and she knew several of the girls. The long-time girlfriend of one of our nephews was also playing for the home team.

While we watched the game, our nephew showed up and sat by us. His girlfriend’s parents also sat next to our small group. He introduced us and we made some small talk. I said something about having just left physical therapy following a recent surgical procedure. The mom seemed interested in the subject and I explained that it was to help me fix the foot drop and hopefully get out of the brace I’ve worn for 13 years.

The mom then surprised me. She asked me, “Oh, do you have an AFO?” The term AFO is not something that a lot of people know, so her bringing It up was what surprised me. (The term AFO is an abbreviation for the type of brace I have, an ankle foot orthesis.) I usually call mine a brace, because most folks don’t know what an AFO is. I figured she knew somebody else with one of these assistive devices and tried not to make too much about her comment.

However, she totally blew me away by her next question after I told her that it was an AFO. She asked, “Oh, did you have a tendon transfer?”

I can’t imagine my face when she asked this. I know my eyebrows raised noticeably and I think my jaw dropped. I believe that my head shook in disbelief as this woman I had never met asked me out of the blue about this obscure procedure that I had never heard about before a couple of months ago, and I only learned about it after doing research into a similar operation I had read about. Nobody that I’ve explained this procedure to had ever heard of it and these include some very knowledgeable folks.

I looked in the direction of this woman’s face. I acknowledged her question with an awestruck “Yes,” but had to ask her how she knew of this procedure.

She laughed, Oh, I’m a therapist. I know the language.” After a little more Q&A between us, I learned she has been a physical therapist for 26 years. That also explained her knowing about the AFO.

I should’ve known.

That is the long and short of what is going on with the surgery. Still not much evidence of the muscle working yet, but with time and dedication to the PT, I should hopefully report some positive news in the coming weeks.

As for the family, we’re all out on spring break this week. We’re not doing anything like a trip or something like that. One of us has physical therapy to go to! We’re hoping things will look a lot better trip-wise for the summer.

OGV

Texas governor's son hired by firm dad consulted

2007-02-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

I usually don’t do politics on OGV, but when something isn’t smelling too good, I think it needs airing out.

So, let’s air some stuff out…

Governor Rick Perry, aka Governor Goodhair, of the great Lone Star State, is currently contemplating selling our state lottery. UBS, one of the large financial firms he has consulted about the sale,
hired Governor Perry’s son
to work in its Dallas office two weeks ago.

Hmmm, do you smell that? Stinks doesn’t it?

Governor Perry and UBS can say all they want about there being no connection between these two actions, but it just doesn’t pass the smell test. I also find flaw in the governor’s son Griffin for poor taste in seeking employment with a firm that has a lot of business potentially in front of his father.

While there may not have been any impropriety done on anybody’s part, it just doesn’t look right.

So, let’s have a sensory review of this whole thing.

Smell. The odor of this deal is stinking up the joint.

Taste. The governor’s son has none.

Visual. This whole deal doesn’t look right.

Touch. Borrowing from randy Jackson of American Idol…I’m just not feeling it, dog!
Feel free to add your own thoughts on this.

OGV

Six Man, Texas: More than just a movie

2007-01-16T08:14:00.000-08:00

Good morning,

A unique aspect of the Friday Night Lights in Texas is the small stage, namely six man football.

If you’re like many and unfamiliar with six-man football, let me share a bit with you. In small communities where they don’t have the enrollment to sustain a typical team with 11 players on each side of the ball, there remains a designation that allows for a school to have a six-man squad. In Texas, there are more than 100 such schools. It is a unique slice of the pie where the play and rules vary from the norm. First, many of the kids play on both sides of the ball out of necessity. Secondly, these games are frequently very high-scoring events with final scores resembling basketball scores. Finally, the specific
rule variations
are very different than what you are used to with conventional high school football.

Two rule variations that exist in six-man that stand out to me are: The field is typically 80 yards long instead of the standard 100; and, teams must advance the ball 15 yards in four downs to get a first down, instead of the usual 10 yards.

My reason for blogging about this today is that I just read about an upcoming movie, by Texas-based NEVERTOOLATE Films, about six-man football in Texas called, aptly enough,
Six Man, Texas.

I’ve been to one six-man game in my life and I’ll never forget it, even though it happened more than 14 years ago. It was in Silverton, TX up in the panhandle, where I was visiting with a couple of good friends. It captured the spirit of what the game is all about, and from what the film’s web site leads me to believe, exactly what the film is depicting.

The movie’s web site offers the following two paragraphs to describe the film:

“Although there are many similarities among the more than 120 Texas towns whose small public high schools play Six Man Football, the film highlights the story of two schools, Three Way School in the far western region of the South Plains and Aquilla in Central Texas. Both schools are metaphors for Texas' shrinking rural economy.”

“The film focuses on public schools because they are such a vital part of small-town culture. At one time in America, public schools were the backbone of the educational system; in Six Man towns, they still are. The film highlights the many similarities among the towns whose small high schools play the game. Those similarities seem to create a community of towns united by their common priorities, the school and a passionate commitment to their children. It is as if there exists a state within a state, the state of Six Man, Texas.”

Oh, and if you need another reason to check out their web site, there is a link titled “Free Stuff” that will get you just that for the asking. I clicked on the email link to ask for mine and was surprised that it was for Alan Barber, the filmmaker responsible for the project. I quickly wrote out my request and included my memories of the game I had witnessed in Silverton and how the sense of community was as obvious as the smaller team size. An even bigger surprise in this day of impersonal, corporate dominance was that I had a reply later that day from Mr. Barber himself thanking me for sharing my personal reflections. He also said they were considering creating a blog about the film and passing along some people’s stories and memories about six-man football. So, check out the site, send in an email and share your story if you have one as well.

As a big fan of Texas high school football and with the warm memories of my one six-man game, I can’t wait to see what the film has to offer.

OGV

The things we do for our kids

2007-01-15T05:11:00.001-08:00

Good Morning,

Yesterday, the Mrs. and I took the little prince to see the stars of one of his favorite television shows from the Disney Channel, The DoodleBops. The show was in Beaumont, which is just over an hour and a half away. Yes, there was a Houston show, but when Mrs. OGV tried to buy tickets, the only ones available were nosebleed. Besides, to see the show in the Bayou City would have taken about an hour to get to the theater from our home, so the drive wasn’t that much of a difference. When that show had been virtually sold out, Mrs. OGV kept checking on the pending Beaumont date to jump on the best seats when they became available. We wound up having second row seats at center stage—not too shabby for the extra 30-minute drive.

When we got to the show, there was about 15 minutes before show time. Let me rephrase. That was after we got there and then spent a little while and several bucks in the line at the overpriced souvenir table. When we made it to our seats, she decided it was a great time to let Mr. Austin go to the bathroom, lest he decide in the middle of the show he had to go. The worst-case scenario would have been that he had to go during the show, but was having too much of a good time to notice and only told us when it was too late. Supermom wasn’t going to let that happen, so she took him for one last stop before the show.

In the restroom, she overheard some of the other moms talking. One of them had a bunch of souvenirs and commented, “Oh, the things we do for our kids.” Mrs. OGV thought to herself, “Tell me about it.” No, she wasn’t thinking about her efforts in trying to get the best tickets she could. She wasn’t thinking about driving that extra 30 minutes or so to get to this show. No, it was the extra effort we had made as a family.

The other women looked at her neon pink hair, sprayed to match the female singer Dee Dee Doodle. They then noticed Austin had orange hair like Moe Doodle, the break dancing drummer of the group. Being I was seated in our seat during the nature break, the women didn’t notice I had electric blue hair so I could complete our family group by having locks that matched Rooney, the guitarist of the bunch.

Yes, I agree-- the things we do for our kids.

We heard several comments about our hair from the moment we stepped out of our Trailblazer in the Civic Center parking lot. Kids thought we were pretty cool. One mom at the show asked the Mrs. where we got this done, believing we had gotten our hair sprayed at some booth there at the show. She said she wanted to get her son’s sprayed like this, but I guess she had to do without as we didn’t bring the washable hairspray with us. Even when the show was over, people were commenting about our hair. It was a total hoot.

However, the truly coolest acknowledgement came at the very end of the show. The group was about to “Get on the Bus” (a signature song of theirs and also how they left the stage) and were saying their farewells to their adoring, young fans. While Dee Dee was bidding adieu, she looked the Mrs. right in the eyes and spoke into her microphone for the entire audience to hear, “Nice hair,” then winked at Mrs. OGV and hopped on the bus.

When we got home and got settled in, we realized we had beaten the cold front to Houston. Whew! We didn’t want to get into the wicked storms that were forecast to lead that front into town. We also realized we still had our colored hair and each of us went to wash it out. I must admit I was surprised how easily it came out in one shampooing. We’re all back to our normal hair colors.

In the past, we’ve taken Austin to a few different shows including two Sesame Street Live shows and the Ringling Bros. Circus, but this was, by far, the most he’s enjoyed himself at any of these. He was so excited when the show began. He was grinning from ear to ear, anxiously kicking the front/bottom of his seat when the Bops came out on stage. He sang along with many of the songs. (Admission: So did I! That’s what I get for listening to the DoodleBops CD with Austin many times over the past several months.) Austin danced and waved at the performers when they were right in front of us. It was a total blast for him.

Toward the end of the show, the Mrs. asked me if I was enjoying the show. My answer was simple. “They’ve made my son very happy, so I’m really enjoying it.”

On the way out of the Civic Center, Austin was walking about a step ahead of us. They had DoodleBops tunes loudly playing the songs without the vocal tracks over the loudspeakers throughout the arena, and the exiting crowd was talking, combining to create a din that made it hard to hear my son when he spoke to me. But, when he turned and proudly said, “I loved this show!” I heard him loud and clear. That’s what I needed to hear. I don’t know if Austin could see the huge, warm smile that came across my face when he said that. Those four little words made all the extra effort worthwhile.

This was one of those days that we’ll always have as a memory for our family. Thanks DoodleBops.

OGV

New year means new hopes for OGV

2007-01-12T21:28:00.000-08:00

Good evening,

Soon, I’ll be undergoing a surgical procedure that will affect the rest of my life in one of two ways. Ever since my life changing accident thirteen years ago, I have had to deal with a nerve condition called Foot Drop. From the injury I received in my right knee, I damaged the sciatic nerve and it no longer works to raise the foot. Whenever I take a step with that foot, I have to raise the leg higher than usual because the foot cannot raise itself-- hence, the condition’s name.

I have worn an assistive brace on this foot for the past thirteen years that helps raise the foot when I walk, but, while it helps me walk safely, it has its downside as well. The brace, called an ankle-foot orthesis or AFO, is L-shaped and hinged with springs to assist in lifting the foot when I walk. It is kept in place by a velcroed strap at the top of the device, which goes around the top of my calf, and another velcro strap that goes over the top of my foot. The straps have to be pulled very tight to keep the AFO in place and this means that it can get uncomfortable after a long period, especially the one that goes across the top of my foot.

One more thing is that the brace causes my shoe size to go up on that one foot. This translates into buying two pairs of shoes every time I buy new shoes, one a size 13 to accommodate the AFO and also a size 12 for the other foot. This always leaves me with a pair of shoes that don’t match and that I can’t wear.

A recent Houston Chronicle article told about a University of Texas lineman who had received a similar injury in an auto accident that left him with foot drop. The first prognosis was that he would be lucky to ever walk again, and they offered virtually no hope that he would ever play football again. He and his family would not take no for an answer and he was able to connect with another doctor who had pioneered a procedure where a tendon is transplanted from a cadaver. This young man underwent a tendon transplant to restore mobility to the leg with Foot Drop and he played his senior year at full tilt this past fall.

After reading this news story, I followed his medical trail by contacting the doctor who had performed his surgery. That doctor’s nurse told me that I was not a candidate for that surgery, as it had to be performed within six months of the injury. Being I was thirteen years out from my injury, I told her I understood. She did, however, recommend another surgery that may offer hope for me and referred me to a specialist who performed this procedure.

Before I called the doctor’s office, I figured I should do my homework and see what this doc was about. It turned out that he is an ankle/foot specialist who works with many of the Houston Rockets and Dynamo, our professional basketball and soccer teams respectively, as well as the Houston Ballet. I figured if these professionals can trust their million dollar feet to this man, then I should be able to do the same. So, I called a made my appointment.

On the phone, I asked his clerk if she knew of any time line within which the surgery had to be performed. She said she didn’t know of any and that the doctor had performed the operation on some people several years after their initial injury. I told her mine was thirteen years ago and she said, “Oh. I don’t think anybody has been that long after their injury. But, come on in and let’s see what the doctor says.”

I went in to see the doctor to see if I was actually a candidate for this procedure. He checked out the foot and asked about my medical history. He said the key is that the muscle tissue has not been damaged and mine appeared to be intact.

He also explained the procedure to me. He said the sciatic nerve comes down to the foot and splits into two tendons, one goes to the inside of the foot and the other to the outside. The inside tendon causes the muscles there to push the foot down and pullit inside. The outer tendon raises the foot and pulls the foot outward. He said my outer tendon is not working and that this procedure takes the good tendon and transfers it to the other side to work the muscles. This explains why the muscles must be intact. He also said that the inside has other muscles and nerves that will continue to work to support the muscles without the moved tendon so there will be no lapse in strength what has been the strong side of the foot.

He deemed me a good prospect for this surgery, but cautioned that this isn’t a guarantee. They are having an 80-85% success rate with this surgery. I reasoned that if I didn’t have the surgery, I would be wearing the AFO for the rest of my life. So, if I happen to be in the 15-20% of the cases where this doesn’t work, I’m no worse off than if I didn’t have it. I told the doc I had one question: “Where do I sign up?”

That was right after Thanksgiving. I had my pre-surgery physical this week and will have the operation in a week and a half. The doctor who performed my physical is also another one associated with professional athletes. According to his Methodist Hospital web site, he is the team physician to the Houston Texans, Rockets, and Astros. Borrowing a sports metaphor, I’m batting a thousand when it comes to lining up quality physicians.

The procedure will take about an hour and a half. I’ll go home in a cast that same day and cannot bear weight for two weeks. Following this, I will wear a cast for another six weeks. After that, I will still wear the AFO for another 12-18 months while the muscles in the foot build up. The doctor told me that these muscles strengthen very slowly, so to be patient. Wearing the AFO will protect the newly formed connections that will allow the nerve to innervate the muscle and make my foot operate as it is supposed to.

As you can probably guess, I’m excited about the prospect of what this can mean for me. I live with some moderate pain every day. Its just something I thought I’d have to live with and have learned to tolerate the discomfort. From the time I get up in the morning to the time I lie down at night, I deal with discomfort and am constantly repositioning my foot throughout the day so that I can find some level of comfort. I hadn’t even thought about how much I did this until I read that article.

When I discussed this procedure with my various family members, I told them that, due to the pain, this Foot Drop bothered me more than being blind. Think about it. Being blind doesn’t hurt…unless I run into something. The Foot Drop causes me a constant pain daily. Besides, having the ability to fully use my foot will give me stability I have not known since being blinded.
I’ve had three surgeries since I left the Lubbock hospital in January of 1994. Two of these were to repair bone/joint problems that occurred from the same knee injury that damaged the sciatic nerve and caused the Foot Drop. Perhaps I’m minimizing how much these surgeries meant when they took place, but I don’t think I was as excited about getting any of those like I am about this procedure. Maybe that has to do with the settling I’ve done with for so long just to walk.

And, don’t worry too much about me. Mom is coming down for a spell to help out while I’m at the non-weight bearing stage. I’ve got a ball of energy named Austin and an equally energetic hound that will need some things I won’t be able to give them for a little while. Maybe I’ll be able to play on her sympathies and talk her into cooking one or two of my favorite meals that she makes.

I’ll be back with more after the surgery and keep you up on how I’m progressing.

Till I get back, stay safe and, with the coming cold front threatening to bring sleet and ice even to the Bayou City, stay warm out there!

OGV

Reflections on Christmas and fatherhood

2006-12-27T06:11:00.000-08:00

Good morning,

The date is now two days beyond Christmas, but my stomach is still trying to put this year’s feasts and festivities behind it. We here at OGV house have had a most blessed and enjoyable Christmas with both sides of the family. We have literally eaten our way through a six-day road trip that included one quick overnight at OGV house followed by a speedy departure Christmas morning, enjoying fabulous foods all along the way.

With all that said, I hope that each of you have been able to appreciate the same joy of family that we have. The only thing that could have made this better would have been to have my sister and her family here. That would have capped everything off really well.

A couple of thoughts occurred to me while I was on this road trip that I want to share with you. Both of them revolved around being a father.
Just before Christmas, while we were visiting my parents and brother in Central Texas, my brother received a day planner from the local dry cleaners when he picked up his laundry. There was one particular sentence offered among the collection of quotes in the planner that stood out to me. This one was one that Bill Cosby offered in his book Fatherhood.

“Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap on a rope.”

I didn’t get soap on a rope this year, but I did get a gift from Austin that he picked out for me. He gave me a new coffee cup for Christmas that is emblazoned with the words “No. 1 Dad.” (He gets extra points in the sucking up to daddy department!) Contrary to Mr. Cosby’s words of wisdom, I don’t have to pretend. I have a new favorite coffee cup, even if it only holds half the amount of the larger mug I’ve used for several years. Even if it means I have to get up twice as much to drink the same amount of coffee each day, I’ll use this coffee cup every day. ..until he gets me another one that will, no doubt, become my new favorite.

The second thought involves something I’ve learned while trying to motivate a child. I have learned to used different techniques to get Austin to do tasks such as cleaning up, paying attention, or going to the potty. One of my tools is to say to him, in my most commanding and assertive Daddy voice, “Austin, I’m going to count to three and you better start (doing whatever the targeted task is) by the time I get to three.”

This technique worked well for a short while. Then Austin really began to love counting. Oftentimes, when I try to do this now, Austin will answer by saying, “No daddy. Count to ten.” He’s so happy that I want to play the counting game that he wants to count with me and go beyond the simple little one, two, three that has become so passe.

Aaaarrrrggggghhhhh!!

This was followed up with a final step last night, when I was putting him to bed. He didn’t want to hear any bed time stories. He wanted to count. He went up to 30, then told me he wanted to go on. I think we made it to 78. One of us fell asleep. I think it was him, but am not sure. I was pretty drowsy and that’s the last number I can remember saying with him.

Anyhow, these are some of my favorite memories from this year. I hope your Christmas was also very joyous and you have memories of your own to recall.

OGV

Matilda Ziegler Magazine goes on-line

2006-12-21T05:02:00.000-08:00

Good morning,

The latest offering of the
Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind,
an on-line version of the publication, is a decision which is past due and notable, but the web verification process leaves me a bit curious.

I am personally very pleased with the magazine’s editors for embracing the advent of technology and the internet as accessible media, but their decision to produce an on-line version comes at a time when many blind people have been on-line for several years already. Perhaps I shouldn’t ding them for this as this decision may have been a hard fought and protracted legal battle to present copyrighted material on the internet.

However, given this potential premise, I would think the editors would ensure access is granted to only those who have some form of registration with the site, much like their other versions are mailed out. This would ensure that only verified blind readers are getting their material and cover any question legalaties, I would think. On-line, this could be easily achieved with a registration process where readers would log on using a user ID and password, much like thousands of other web sites already do. However, the Ziegler has curiously made their magazine accessible with only a single mouse click on a dialogue box stating, “ By clicking, I certify that I am legally blind.”

On the surface, this might meet the letter of the law for verification, but I would think that, given the historical tenacity of publisher’s to protect their printed works, the publishers of the magazine’s original copyrighted content would press diligently for tighter access controls.

A personal note: When I hit the escape key instead of the enter key on the dialogue box, the page of content loaded just as if I had clicked the verification that I was legally blind. Maybe this is a fluke in the web page’s development, but I would think that by pressing escape would cancel the requested page to load. Instead, it lets someone who basically says, “Oh, no. I’m not legally blind,” gain the very access the site is attempting to control.

I have been a subscriber and reader of the Ziegler for many years. With my personal love for the magazine, I’ve been surprised with the large number of blind people I’ve met that have never even heard of this fine publication. I personally believe that the magazine works hard to present articles that have broad appeal and are interesting to a broad scope of readers. There are always included humor pieces at the end and a reader’s forum.

With all this said, I hope my above comments don’t come across as negative of the publication. I think it is a fine magazine and applaud any efforts to maximize its readership. I am just scratching my head over their seemingly flawed access control to copyrighted material.

For the uninformed, The Ziegler, as it is commonly referred to by its readers, is a monthly magazine produced for the blind in an alternate format; braille, 4-track cassette, floppy disk, email, and, in the latest offering, an on-line version. The magazine began production in 1907 by its namesake matriarch and is a collection of recently published articles in popular magazines reviewed and gathered by the Ziegler editors, and then produced in an accessible format for the target audience.

According to the magazine’s web site:
“The magazine's peak circulation was reached in 1936, when its three editions went to 12,400 readers. Despite the many new channels of entertainment and information now accessible to blind people, circulation is as high as it has ever been since then. Almost 10,500 names are on the subscription list, with almost 4,500 taking the braille edition, and more than 6,000 taking the four-track cassette.

With the above referenced number of braille subscribers, the Ziegler Magazine claims to have the largest braille circulation of any secular publication, which makes it worth noting in its own right.

While tightening the access controls to the on-line material may initially cause some to grumble about setting up another on-line registration, it will show a good faith effort of the Ziegler to respect the copyrighted material. If changes occur, then both access to copyrighted works can be restricted and another accessible format can be offered blind readers.

OGV

Who would you be?

2006-12-20T06:25:00.000-08:00

Good morning,

Monday night, Samuel L. Jackson was on the Tonight Show and told host Jay Leno something that caused me to think and I feel compelled to post it here. He said that if he could be anybody else, he would choose to be Tiger Woods and then went on to explain why.

This got me to thinking…given the opportunity, who would I want to be. More than who, I pondered why I would choose to be that person.

I thought this was an incredibly thought provoking subject and that’s why I wanted to post it here. I’ll explain whom I chose in a moment, but who would you want to be?
Don’t forget to say why.

I don’t know if that thought provoker has rules, like if the person has to be living or dead, or if you get to be that person for a particular moment in time or if you would just assume the rest of that person’s life. Or, can you be somebody for a particular moment in time? Or, does that person have to be somebody living today or could you go back in time and live in another period?

I discussed this topic with some family members while heading to dinner last night. My father in law thoughtfully said, “If I had to live the rest of the person’s life, then I’d pick a baby.” Mrs. OGV said she wouldn’t necessarily want to be Mother Theresa, but she would like to be somebody who gets to spend some time with the noted and renowned nun, just to understand her insight on life and people.

For me, when considering the subject, I let my mind run. I first thought that I would love to be Sammy Hagar, a rock singer I’ve been a fan of since I first heard him at a concert in my high school years. I used to think it would be so cool to be this guy who went from venue to venue, singing the songs I loved. This feeling was magnified when he joined the already monster rock group Van Halen, which was one of my favorite groups. When that first happened, I thought how cool it would be to get to hang out with that band. I’ve read a lot about Sammy and followed his career from his early days with Montrose, to a successful solo career, to VH front man, and then again to being a solo artist once more. Along the way, he also opened The Cabo Wabo Cantina, a restaurant/concert venue and popular destination in the tourist city Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. I think his creative processes and business acumen would only be rivaled by the joy of performing his songs in concert, living out the mantra of discovering something you love to do and then finding a way to get paid for it.

However, after a few seconds of reflection, I discounted that selection as being very one dimensional and rooted in the rebellious and raucous male self from the days of my youth that has rumbled secretly inside of the calm and conservative me that everybody else has seen most of my life. I would need more depth for this venture.

Then I thought about Jimmy Buffett. His life presents a situation very similar to that of Sammy Hagar, but goes beyond it in many ways. Buffett is a musician who has crafted a unique cultural place and developed attributes that I think would be great to have in my own life. Aside from still being a top concert draw throughout a thirty-plus year career, regularly bringing out tens of thousands of ParrotHeads from coast to coast, he has also done so much more to transcend the musical landscape. He has authored several books, including a novel, a collection of short stories and an autobiography. He has co-written a Broadway musical, Stop the Carnival. He has successfully launched an international string of his Jimmy Buffett’ Margaritaville Cantina theme restaurants. Additionally, he has launched a line of frozen foods from these restaurants marketed under the Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville brand.

Those are an overview of his personal accomplishments, but he has always worked to redefine who he is. He began his life living near the Mississippi River and developed a love for boats and sailing. He incorporated that love into his music and launched the laidback Key West sound to pop music with his two chart hits in the 1970s, Come Monday and Margaritaville. Outside of those two songs he wasn’t known by a large part of the American public. Still, he persevered. He continued building his musical following to grow into the entertainment magnate he is today. Along the way, he took his love for boats and made the natural transition to a love for seaplanes that can both fly and land on water.

Then when all that had been done, he recreated his musical styling to fit a natural target, the contemporary country music fan. He partnered with some of the biggest names in Nashville and got his first professional award for his work, an ACM award for his song “Its Five O’clock Somewhere,” a duet he recorded with Alan Jackson.

Along the way, he has continued to put on the major production concerts his fans have come to love. Whether it is the banana-shaped air cannon shooting rolled up t-shirts into the cheering crowd, or the carnival atmosphere that his the Buffett show, or if it is the intermission featuring Buffett’s home movies of flying in his personal seaplane, he has continued to give his fans what they want. And they keep buying, which means he is doing it right.

All the while, he still gets to come out on stage wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops, singing the songs he loves and doing what he started more than three decades ago.

Yes, this is who I’d love to be. More for the life he has led, though, than where he is heading. He’s older than me and I’d much rather prefer to have my years ahead of me than his.

Now, that choice is made on the assumption of being one person for their life. That choice would be different for me if I chose one person to be at a particular moment in time. If that were the choice, I would love to have been Neil Armstrong when he first walked on the moon. What a wonderful and unique feeling that must have been. What an incredible place in history to hold. All that and he got paid to do it!

Now, what about you? Who would you be and why? Rules don’t exist. It could be somebody alive or dead, for a particular moment of time or for his or her entire life.

Please tell. As the old television ads used to say, “Inquiring minds want to know!”

And, if I don’t get to say it to you personally, Merry Christmas! I hope the spirit of the holidays bless each of you and your families.

OGV

Some bad news, but lots of good for Texas football

2006-12-12T14:04:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was a sad one for Texas football fans, in one sense. I say this as a fan of both the Houston Texans and Dallas Cowboys.

Vince Young, the rookie quarterback of the Tennessee Titans, handed the Texans their lunch when he capped a comeback by personally scrambling for a 39-yard touchdown in overtime. That last, best effort on VY’s part was somewhat of a signature thing he was known for in his years leading the Texas Longhorns to a national championship this past January. When the NFL draft came around, scores of Texans fans called for Vince as the obvious choice for the Texans #1 draft selection. Besides being the heralded champion hero of the Longhorns, Vince first got attention in the Houston area when he played QB at Houston’s Madison High. So, I’m sure it was a sweet thumb Vince got to stick in the Texan’s eye when it was his valiant scramble that was the difference maker in his homecoming game on Sunday.

Before the Texans were formed, I was raised a Cowboys fan. As a result, I’m always cheering on the Boys…unless it is that once every fourth year game where they play the Texans. I still feel their pain any time they lose and Sunday night was no different. After the Texans’ heartbreaking loss, I was hoping for solace from quarterback Tony Romo and the rest of the Pokes.

Their opponent was the feel-good team of the season, the New Orleans Saints. BTW, the Saints have the other much-ballyhooed rookie this year, Heisman winner Reggie Bush, who other Texans fans felt we should’ve drafted if we weren’t going to take Vince Young. The Saints were an impressive force, dismantling the usually stalwart Dallas defense, upending the Cowboys 42-17.

In the opening paragraph of this post, I said it was a sad weekend for Texas football. That one sense is for the two professional teams. In another sense, fans of Texas high school football really had many points to celebrate because some of our best young players are out there taking the national spotlight.

In the Monday sports section of the Houston Chronicle, three of the six featured sports articles on the news page were about NFL games of the previous day. Each of those three headlines prominently featured the name of a former Texas high school football standout. Aside from Vince Young, whom I’ve already said played at Houston Madison, there was also Drew Brees (QB for the Saints) and San Diego Charger’s star running back LaDainian Tomlinson.

Brees led the Saints in the offensive field day at the Cowboys expense. He played his high school ball at Austin Westlake. Before Sunday’s game, he recalled the last time he played in the Cowboys’ home, Texas Stadium. It was when he quarterbacked the Westlake team to the state 5A championship.

Tomlinson, or LT, as he is commonly referred to, made headlines for breaking the record for the number of touchdowns scored in a single season by a player. He scored #29 on Sunday, surpassing the mark of 28 set last year by Sean Alexander of the Seattle Seahawks. What really gets my attention is that there are still three more weeks in the regular season and he doesn’t look like he’s slowing down. That means he will probably raise that bar a good bit higher before he’s done this year. LT played high school football in Waco. He still goes back there in the summers and runs a camp for teens to work on their football skills.

So, like I said, while it might have been a bad weekend for the Texas professional teams, our brand of football is all over the place in the professional league. Continuing that tradition, I will proudly brag on my hometown Copperas Cove Bulldawgs. For the first time in school history, they are playing for the state championship this Saturday in the Alamodome. It is the first year the Dawgs are playing in 4A, but I think it is more a proper fit for them than 5A. Like my sister commented when I told her how the team was doing, “See what they can do when placed in the right division.”

Go Dawgs!

OGV

Winter is here!

2006-11-30T13:58:00.000-08:00

BRRR…it sure got cold fast today.

This morning, I put Austin on the bus at 7:50 and it was a nice and balmy 71 degrees. It actually felt a little humid. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, which was normal. I knew the cold front, an actual Blue Norther, was coming in this morning, which is why he wasn’t wearing shorts to school. That’s also why his heavy jacket was stuffed in his backpack.

At 9:10, just an hour and twenty minutes after I had experienced the warmth of the last day of hurricane season, It was down to 45 degrees and a cold rain was falling.

What a drastically wicked change of weather. It will last for a few days, then get warmer again. That's winter in Houston, but then again, that's what I love about it. It gets rid of the heat and humidity for a little while, but it doesn't last long enough to make us really suffer.

It is supposed to get down to 33 overnight, which is pretty chilly for the Bayou City. I really shouldn’t complain, though. In Central Texas, where my folks live, it is supposed to be in the 20s and the local street departments have their sanding crews on standby in case there is any freezing precipitation. Additionally, Dallas is calling for up to three inches of snow and ice overnight. Further north, Tulsa is expecting up to a foot of snow. So, I guess we don’t have it too bad down here.

Still, it’s a great evening to make a pot of homemade chili. Heck, even store bought chili wouldn’t be bad. Its one of those evenings where you want to grab your loved one and cuddle up on the sofa. Sounds like a great idea.

OGV

Internet Archive offers tons of free downloadable music

2006-11-16T13:46:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon,

I’m back with another music post. This one isn’t like Napster that lets you stream files for free or sells you the downloadable music. This one is a free site that is a virtual warehouse of live music by hundreds of artists, some of whom I recognize and many that I’ve never heard of before. If nothing else, look over the list of artists whose files are offered for the sheer entertainment of the creative names some of these bands have created.

The site is called the
Internet Archive,
Whose goal is to offer a dynamic archive of the internet. They must have boatloads of money to shell out for storage, because just the music files listed will take up tons of memory on a hard disc. Added to these files are the other internet files the project is ambitiously attempting to archive.

(Note: If you tried the link above and it opened on a page that did not contain the list of more than 500 bands, then do a right mouse click on the link above and select “copy shortcut”. This will copy the URL to your computer clipboard. Then go to your web browser and select “Open” then paste the URL into the field. One trick here is to make sure to delete the last “/” from the field. This should take you there. I don’t know why the other one is not working properly.)

The music files are all concert clips. You can get an entire concert in a single zip file, or from the artists I’ve looked at, just individual song clips. There are some nationally recognized bands that have huge fan bases, like the Greatful Dead, Little Feat, and Blues Traveler. There are some artists I know from Texas, like the Asylum Street Spankers, Bad Livers, and Charlie Sexton, all from Austin as well as Houston’s own Hays Carl and Sean Reefer and the Resin Valley Boys. There seems to be a heavy dose of bluegrass bands represented, most notably Big Smith.

Take some time --because that’s what it will take-- to just read over the list of artists on the site. If you see somebody you like, see what’s available and download it.

The site purports to be a legal, free repository. Maybe the legality of the files have to do with the fact that these are live recordings at public venues. I don’t know, but see what you think.

OGV

Napster: it isn't what it used to be, but it ain't bad

2006-11-16T12:54:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon,

If you know me, you know that I love listening to music and have an extensive mp3 collection. I first got into gathering mp3s using the original Napster file sharing program. However, I also have ripped my entire CD collection, numbering several hundred CDs, onto my hard drive. So, the most consuming portion of my hard drive is my music folder.

After Napster lost its legal challenges and settled, I didn’t really think it would really be able to do anything worthhwhile. However, just because you can’t download songs for free doesn’t mean the site has no value.

Have you tried the
Napster
site lately?
You can search the site’s vast database of music and spoken word files for your favorites by artist, album, or individual track name. Don’t let the term “spoken word” make you run screaming from the room, thinking you will be facing hours of drudgery as people recite poems you don’t understand. Think about your favorite comedian. Yes, stand up comedy is spoken word. I’ve seen many comedians in my time and most of them can’t carry a tune in a wheelbarrow, so spoken word is the best way to describe what they are offering. One of my favorite comedians, Eddie Murphy, is represented very well on Napster.

If you find your favorite artist or band, you can find albums and listen to the entire album on the site as a streaming file. You can also choose to listen to individual tracks. You must first set up a user profile. Then you can listen to a track three times for free before you will not be able to play it any longer. However, if you like it that much, you can buy it and download it. That’s the Napster model—three for free, but then you pay to play.

It isn’t a bad site. ON the contrary; it is a very good site. I like it as it is very comprehensive. I’ve listened to a Molly Hatchet album that I have most of the tracks for, but had a few missing pieces, a Great White album and several Eddie Murphy tracks. I searched for several more mainstream artists and liked the selection. There are so many of my favorites that I could probably play tracks from most of them and still never run beyond the three play limit.

There is one downside. If you are like me and have a family member working overseas, the files most likely won’t play for them. The user must be using an IP address in the US. I suppose that has something to do with copyrights, contracts, or some other legality.

Anyhow, if you want to listen to music on your computer (and are in the US,) give Napster a try. It isn’t the peer-to-peer file sharing system that it once pioneered, but the model it has evolved into is a pretty good way to listen to music.

OGV

Criminal Justice: more than just a phrase

2006-11-04T06:30:00.000-08:00

Good morning,

Even though it has been nearly 16 years since I read it, I still recall one particular comment about the phrase “criminal justice” in one of my CJ textbooks.
The only ones who get justice are the criminals.”
It was accompanied by an editorial cartoon that showed a District Attorney and the accused’s attorney cutting a deal in the hallways outside the courtroom. The cartoon was captioned, “The real halls of justice.”

To correctly comprehend the phrase and the cartoon, one must understand the context in which they were used. The chapter was discussing criminal courts and prosecution of criminals. The passage was discussing plea agreements and how they serve both the prosecution and the accused, but the deals struck in the hallways outside of the courtroom often give the public impression that a prosecutor let somebody off light.

I’m a pretty strong advocate for strict sentencing and punishment and often cringe at some of the plea agreements that prosecutors strike. I understand that these usually indicate a case that is weak or that is on-going, but one where the jury’s sentiments are seeming to be slipping away from the state’s case.

All that being said, I really like a couple of recent incidents where justice has been served. One was handed down by the court and the other was dished out by a vengeful family member.

First, in a Delaware case,
a flasher convicted of twice exposing himself
to a 10-year old girl at his workplace was ordered to wear a t-shirt with the words, “I’m A Registered Sex Offender” in bold letters. He will have to wear the t-shirt for 22 months after he serves the 60 days he was also sentenced to serve in the county jail

The 69-year old pervert owns a gardening business and there is a strong potential that other, unsuspecting children may fall prey to his flashing. The prosecutor wanted the t-shirt as a punishment to help warn others to his sick past. If his past is any indication—he has 10 convictions in the past 30 years for the same charge of indecent exposure—there is a strong likelihood that he will do this again. At least, with the t-shirt on, parents will have a head’s up. Maybe the publicity from the story will cause community advocates to cause social pressure on him as well.

The punishment is similar to those often handed down by former Texas judge Ted Poe. When he was on the bench, Poe often would bring the public scrutiny and shame factor into the punishment by having those convicted of crimes in his court to perform some public duty with a sign declaring their guilt. An example might be someone who was convicted of stealing from a store would have to spend a week walking in front of that store with a sign declaring, “I stole from this store.” (I’m glad to say, Ted Poe is now my congressman and I did vote to re-elect him yesterday.)

Then, there is the
Katie’s Revenge case,
Where the killer of a 10-year old Indiana girl named Katie, had the words “Katies Revenge” forcibly tattooed on his forehead. Of course, this was not a court ordered punishment, but the act of another prisoner, who, lo and behold, just happened to be Katie’s cousin.

I’m not advocating vigilante justice, but in a world where all too often there is not a punishment severe enough to atone for the most heinous crimes, it did bring a smile to my face when I heard about the cousin avenging the death of a little girl who couldn’t do so for herself.

So, these are my thoughts on criminal justice. I like to see justice served and commend the judges and juries who do their duty. I like creative sentencing like the t-shirt to bring shame and attention to where it needs to be. If somebody breaks the law, let them face the music. If somebody is convicted of a shameful act, bring them out of the shadows and make the public aware. And, last but not least, if somebody hurts a child, look out! You never know where their kinfolks are!

OGV

Boo to you

2006-10-31T08:58:00.000-08:00

Happy Halloween!

Its that time again, the evening when spooks and goblins roam the streets to find friendly houses that will give out treats.

I’ve always love this day as far back as I can remember. Maybe it was the candy. Maybe it was the wearing of a costume. Maybe it was just the scary feeling about the whole thing.

As I look back, I think it was the costume that was the best part of it. Think about that. You get to be whoever you want to be, even if it is unrealistic, creepy, or just goofy. The day is all about escapism. In some ways, this would be an ideal day to have year-round. We’d never have to be ourselves and deal with our day-to-day lives.

I never liked the formed, plastic masks that came with so many of the costumes. These were always held on by an elastic band that would sometimes break, forcing you to find some way to fix it. These masks also had the tiniest hole cut out for breathing and always caused condensation to build up inside.

My favorite costume was a furry gorilla mask that I kept for several years. The face was molded of rubber and the rest of the head was covered with shaggy, brown fur. I liked it because it was pretty realistic and didn’t fall off my head. I got the mask when I was a teenager, but don’t recall where it came from. I never had any of the rest of a gorilla outfit, but seem to recall that I tried to do something like wear padding under my clothes. Just a goofy kid thing to do, trying to have fun and not be recognized.
In my 20s and 30s, I loved Halloween night for the parties that were taking place. I think it had an element of the childhood fun of costumes, too. I recall getting excited going to a Halloween store and stating that Halloween was like an adult version of Christmas as far as the fun they get out of it.

Today, I’m not doing anything big for Halloween. I’m a parent of a 4 year old and its about the kids, not us.

Austin has worked through the various costumes and finally decided that he wants to be Robin from the Teen Titans. Honestly, I had never heard of the Teen Titans until earlier this year when Austin’s youngest cousin introduced him to the characters. His cousin is almost 8 years old and is Austin’s favorite playmate. Austin just adores him. When his cousin wanted to be Robin, Austin wanted to be the same thing. On Friday evening, the pair of Robins got to test run their dynamic duo presentation and all went well. Hopefully, tonight will go just as well.

I hope you have fun doing whatever it is you have planned for the eveneing.

Happy haunting!

OGV

A Freaky Friday post

2006-10-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

Good morning,

In addition to personal notes, I also like to post information on OGV about strange things I read in the news. Just to let you know, I read three newspapers almost every morning and bookmark those news articles that stand out as quirky, interesting, or just downright weird. Additionally, I read a collection of blogs regularly, doing the same things there.

With this technique in mind, I present to you today’s strange and weird news…

Imagine if you will, a bird. This bird is not your typical sparrow, crow, turky or chicken. Nope. He’s not even in the same category as the larger birds we know like eagles, hawks, or vultures.

This bird was more in line with the ostrich or other large, flightless birds. It was a running bird.
This bird stood about ten feet tall.
Yes, that’s right, ten feet tall. And, you’re right…I did use the past tense in that earlier sentence. I said “was.”

This bird is extinct, but a bird that tall that could run. Wow! And, top that off with what its typical prey was—a sheep-sized rodent.

Ugh!

I think today’s rats are huge and disgusting. Can you imagine a rodent whose size is larger than most dogs? I’ve read that rats have been known to nibble on sleeping humans. I’d hate to think what kind of bite this dude would put on some poor, sleeping schlub.

With all the turmoil in the world today, the crime and corruption, and the threat of some idiot getting his hands on a nuclear weapon, I’ll still take today’s crazy world over the potential of being eaten by some huge, hook-billed feathered freak or, even worse, by its prey!

Have a nice weekend!

OGV

Come Walk in Our Shoes

2006-10-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

Good morning,

This past weekend, I had the pleasure to participate at Come Walk in Our Shoes, an annual experiential educational event in Central Texas. Sponsored by the VIP support group in Temple, the event had a strong showing of support from the local public. While the event is designed to be an educational outreach for the sighted public, it also served as a good networking of blind resources and as an information gathering opportunity as well.

The event had several challenge tables set up where sighted people were allowed to don a blindfold and attempt to do various tasks they are used to doing, but taking away their ability to rely on visual input. This is what the original concept of the event was—educating those who do not usually know how blind people function, but are interested enough to learn. However, as the event has evolved over the several years of its existence, it has grown to also include an offering of information and resources to the blind people in attendance.

One of the presenters at the event was Mark Marvel, with the
Blind Ambitions Groups,
A blind support group based in Dallas. The group’s web site offers its mission and purpose as follows:

“The mission of Blind Ambitions Groups is to educate blind and visually impaired people and their families about available resources – and to encourage each person to move to the next step – whatever it may be for that person."

"PURPOSE: Through support, we teach blind and visually impaired (hereinafter referred to as blind) people to advocate for themselves in getting what they need to facilitate a better quality of life.”

I met with Mark and am impressed with the work his group is doing. While they are based in Dallas, he said they are planning to offer their services state-wide in the future. Already, they host two radio programs on the Reading Radio network, Eye on Employment and Sound of Sight. There are archived shows available for download on their web site. There is a strong emphasis on advocacy and Mark is a really dynamic spokesperson who seems to have a good grasp of his resources. He also said their web site was going to undergo some updates in the coming days.

Take a little time to check out the group’s site and look through the archives of past shows. They present a good resource to offer your blind and visually impaired students who are looking for information and will eventually be seeking employment.

Also, while I was at this event, I had the opportunity to investigate, first-hand, the
Kurzweil - National Federation of the Blind reader.
At my last position, my colleague and I had read several news articles about this innovative piece of OCR scanning technology. Since the time I had first heard about it, I had been very intrigued by what is in essence, a portable scanner that runs OCR software. It is built with a digital camera linked to a PDA running OCR software designed by the granddaddy of OCR himself.

I think the KNFB Reader does a good job in scanning the photographs it takes and extracting out the text, but has a couple of drawbacks. In this age where computers are always processing information faster with each passing month, this device seemed a bit slow. The Reader also seemed a bit bulky for my taste, in its traditional camera bag-sized carrying case. For $3,500, I expected something a little more compact and also thought it would process the images faster. Perhaps, these aspects are coming in a future build of the unit. I have to admit that the whole concept of integrating the technologies that this device does is putting the tools in place to make independence among the blind a fact of life, even if the pricetag is a bit hefty.

Additionally, representatives from the Seeing Eye, the Texas Division for Rehabilitive Services, and a technology trainer who teaches blind consumers how to use JAWS and Zoom Text were also present and sharing information about their specific services.

Overall, the Come Walk in Our Shoes event was very successful in its mission to educate and provide resources. I look forward to seeing how this event grows for next year.

OGV

Woman on death row gets pregnant

2006-10-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

Good morning,

Did you hear about the
woman on Viet Nam’s death row
who had been held in solitary confinement for a year and got pregnant?

Gee, I wonder how that happened.

Aside from her pregnancy, three big things stand out to me about that story.

Point 1.
Trafficking more than 600 grams of heroin in Vietnam is punishable by death or life imprisonment.
Point 2.
The woman was set to face a firing squad for possessing approximately $63,000 of heroin.

Point 3.
She went to trial last year and already has had an appeal hearing.

Here are my thoughts about those three points:
Now, I’m not a drug traficker or advocate for them, but that kind of penalty (Point 1) is one to get my attention and make me weigh my options if I had been. The price of doing business in this profession are pretty steep and if you’re not ready to pay that penalty, get out of the business.

Call me a chicken, but I couldn’t take that trade off.

Now, as for her specific penalty:

First, she said that her life was worth only $63,000 of smack (Point 2). What a low valuation of life.

Secondly, the justice system in Viet Nam is swift and moves without any apparent bogs (Point 3). I have no idea if it is a fair system, but that is a very efficient speed. I just don’t know the effectiveness of it, whether it provides the opportunity for innocent people to keep from being swept up in the swiftness of it.

OGV

As the worm turns...

2006-10-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

Good evening,

I just had to post this article here!

Do you want a pet that doesn’t make noise or one that you don’t need to buy any special food for?

How about a pet that you can go away and leave for two weeks and not make any special care arrangements for?

And, what if the state encourages you to bring this pet to work?

Well, then go to California and get some worms!

I couldn’t make this stuff up. For details, read the below Associated Press story.

OGV

Oct. 11, 2006, 7:53PM
Calif. encourages bringing worms to work

NOAKI SCHWARTZ Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Next to a copy machine on the 10th floor of the city's public works building sits a plastic bin filled with worms wriggling in rotting lettuce.
Public servants walk by without even glancing at the box or the note above it: "Quiet please. Worms at work."

Always on the cutting edge of all things environmental, California is encouraging public and private-sector employees to bring worms to work so that the creatures can chew up apple cores, sandwich scraps and other lunch leftovers and produce compost.

The employees are then invited to take the stuff home and use the all-natural fertilizer in their gardens and on their houseplants.

The state's Integrated Waste Management Board is so serious about this that it has posted on its Web site a list of top 10 ways to recycle on the job, and No. 2 is: "Keep worms in your office."

Supporters of the idea say that once you get over the ick factor, it's not so bad. Open up a bin and it looks like a box of odorless, wet coffee grounds.

"Worms are the most forgiving pets you'll ever own," said Carol Parker, the "worm lady" who cares for the worms at the public works office. "You can go away for two weeks and ignore them and they're fine."

Tips for keeping happy worms are available on the state's Web site. Among other things, it suggests buying your worms from a worm supplier, to make sure you get the right kind. ("Unless you are pretty well brushed up on oligochaetology, do not try to dig up worms from your backyard.")

The site provides a long list of suppliers across the state to choose from, including As the Worm Turns, Live Nude Worms, and the Happy D. Ranch Worm Farm, which sells a three-tray "worm factory," which for $117 includes a bed of shredded coconut fiber and two pounds of worms.

To start a homemade bin, experts recommend putting down a little dirt and shredded damp cardboard or newspaper. Be sure to poke holes in the bin _ air flow is necessary to promote decomposition and keep odors down _ and make absolutely certain you've bought the right kind of worms. Apparently if they are not red worms, they may try to escape en masse.

The waste management board _ part of the California Environmental Protection Agency _ began promoting composting at least a decade ago, though the Top 10 suggestions are more recent. Andrew Hurst, who oversees the program at Cal EPA, acknowledged that only "very, very small numbers of businesses have worms."

"It's a weird thing to do," he admits. "It's not normal behavior to bring a bucket of worms to your office and put food scraps in there."

At the Cal EPA complex in Sacramento, hundreds of thousands of worms process some five tons of food scraps per year. The 60-some bins are in offices, halls, even the daycare center. There is a waiting list for bins among employees, some of whom have been known to compete over whose office has the more productive worms.

Over time, the caretakers have learned a thing or two about the worms' preferences.

"Worms don't like ranch dressing," Hurst said.

They also seem to harbor a special dislike for bologna sandwiches, though any kind of dairy or meat product is problematic because of the smell, he added.
Like other slender creatures, worms are also finicky about fatty foods and carbs, and eat bread only in moderation. Coffee grounds, on the other hand, and rotting fruit go over very well.

"They don't have teeth, so things have to rot," Hurst explained. "Worms need to be able to slurp it."

At least one Los Angeles County employee acknowledged that her popularity did not exactly skyrocket when she brought her new hobby to work.

"People found it objectionable that I had worms behind my desk," said Janet Coke, with the county sanitation agency. "They would just kind of tease me about my worm pile."

___

On the Net:

http://www.zerowaste.ca.gov/Top10Office.htm

Happy rebirth day to me

2006-10-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

Today is Oct. 9, the anniversary of the accident that forever changed my life. You’ll notice that I didn’t say that in a negative tone. I didn’t say it was the day that forever ruined my life or any other focus on a negative facet of the change. The reason is that I love the life I have and if I hadn’t had that accident, so much of my life as I know it wouldn’t exist. Nearly all the good things that I know in my life today have come about as a result of the changes brought by that fateful day.

It is a day I call my rebirth day. It is the day when my life changed and allowed me to start all over again, considering education and career options, much like I did when I first graduated high school.

I’m not going to blow my own horn and list my accomplishments. While those are meaningful, they are almost exclusively so to my family and myself. No, those aren’t what I’m talking about as good things. Instead, what I’m talking about is the life I live today is a result of what happened 13 years ago. I have my lovely wife, my wonderful son, and so many friends that I have made because of the path my life took when I flipped that car.

Yes, if that car had not flipped, I might have kept the career I cherished and ultimately reached the lofty career goals I had set, but there is more to life than accomplishing success at work.

So, aside from work, what other yardstick can one use to measure success in life?

For me, personal happiness is a big one. I love my life, doing what I do, even if that means that I’m not working right now. Without a work identity, I’m very much at peace with myself. I work hard, but at things other than my vocation. I work hard at being a good man, a good husband, good father, and a good friend.

As for material things, I don’t want for anything. I don’t mean to sound spoiled, but I have what I want. That makes it hard for those who want to get me a gift for my birthday or Christmas, but I think this is a good problem to have. I can think of so many that have many needs.

There was a time that I lived paycheck to paycheck, counting down the dollars in my checking account to make sure I had enough money until the next payday, and I’m not talking about the candy bar. I lived fast and loose at that time, but really had an empty life outside of work and a few friendships. This meant that my bank account and happiness accounts were equally low. No, this wasn’t when I was just out on my own at age 18. I’m talking about that last year that I had sight, that year leading up to my accident.

I’ll gladly take what I have today over what I had back then. And, that’s really saying a lot, as anybody who knows what my career with the prison system meant to me. However, like I have been saying, life is a lot more than the job one has. It took me giving it up to realize that.

When I took disability retirement, that was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. It meant letting go of the one thing I knew I could do and do well. However, it was letting it go that freed me to pursue interests outside of working for TDCJ.

I was listening to a broadcast a few days ago that discussed people’s adjustment to blindness and the host said for two to three years after he went blind, he didn’t do much, trying to figure out what he could do. Hearing that made me think back to the difficulty I had accepting that I was blind. I didn’t want to accept it, refused to accept it, and finally conned myself into accepting it for today, if not forever. At that time, still in the first six months of being blind and out of the hospital, I was clinging to the hope that there was a miracle surgery just around the corner that could restore my sight.

When I came to the realization that the fix wasn’t going to happen overnight, I still clung to the hope that this was going to be resolved in a short while. I had been seeing an ophthalmologist in Austin who added to those hopes by telling me about all this research he knew about. I’m not knocking him, because his enthusiastic support was something I think I needed to get my head where it needed to go. I really bought into his talk and figured that within five years, I would be able to have a surgical procedure that would restore my vision. He said that the technology would evolve in about five years. While I allowed that far off dream to linger, I was also thinking about how far off five years seemed like it was going to be.

Well, it has now been thirteen years and I’m still as blind today as I was the day I awoke in the UMC hospital in Lubbock. That five-year timeline passed a lot quicker than I thought it would when the doctor first told me about it. It came and went without me really marking that date on any calendar. By the time that date finally came around, I was more in tune to the acceptance that I was functioning in high gear and wasn’t longing for that surgery.

Its not that I’ve given up hope for seeing again. I’d truly love that to happen so I can see the many beautiful things in my life. What I’ve done mentally, though, is shift that to a prospect that I plan on eventually occurring, not setting it as a priority. That change was a critical one for me to move on with the adjustment process. As long as I was putting my life on hold and pinning all my dreams on the hopes for restoring sight, I was unable to move on with the rest of my life. I did that for the first few months of the time I was blind. It was that shift in priorities that let me move on and embrace life.

Thirteen years of being blind. That was something I perceived as unfathomable during those early months of being blind. However, that time now makes the time I’ve been away from the prison system equal to the time I worked there. That’s a strange thing for me to consider. I have such a big part of my identity tied to that career. I still have dreams about that period of my life. Just the other morning, I woke up having a dream about one of my Wardens giving me my performance evaluation to sign. I was in the REM stage, dreaming really well when that alarm went off. That means I could vividly recall what was going on in that dream, so I know exactly what it was.

Still, that time in my life is just where it needs to be, in the past. It was a great experience, one where I learned a lot, but it was a chapter of my life I had to move on from. And, I think I’ve done so very well, if I do say so myself.

Happy rebirth day to me. The same goes for you too,
Marcus!

(That link is for Marcus' home page; for more insight to who Marcus Engel is, check out
Engel's Ensights.)

OGV

Strong memories and what triggers them

2006-10-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

Good afternoon,

Something happen today that took me back to one of the most vivid memories I have of my stay in the hospital after awakening from that long coma nearly 13 years ago. That reminder was when I was giving Austin a bath. He has got into the habit of eating a popsicle when he bathes. It makes the excitement of bath time even more fun. However, Austin doesn’t like to eat alone and insists that I have a popsicle too.

Today, right after Austin came home from school, he said, “Austin take bath.” He’s so cute when he says this, because he whispers it in a tone that is so excited, as if he’s keeping a secret from the rest of the world. Of course, I gave him a bath, he handed me my popsicle. His job before getting in the bath is to grab our popsicles and mine is to get the water warmed up. He gave me mine and said, “Daddy have orange.” Immediately, my mind raced back to that day so long ago, to a time Austin knows nothing about. I must say that those orange treats will always hold a special place in my heart. BTW, it was pretty darn good, sharing that one with Austin today, too!
For me, the significance of a popsicle goes back to Christmas Eve, 1993. I had been out of the coma for about two weeks, but was still connected to the ventilator and was also still not able to eat anything aside from ice chips. I had a feeding tube down one nostril and another tube going down the other to take out anything produced when processing the liquid nutrition. I was getting tired of ice chips and talked to my doctor about eating something. He said he could let me have a popsicle, but the other tube would suck it right out of my stomach. I told him I didn’t care, that I just wanted to taste something.

For Christmas that year, one of the best gifts I received was an orange popsicle. I still recall how good that frozen pop tasted. I had been chomping ice chips for way too long and I didn’t care if it didn’t stay on my stomach. I declared that afternoon that popsicles were one of the best foods ever made. In context, they sure were.

The other best Christmas gift I received that year was a phone call to my sister. This was no small feat and I’m not sure if it had ever been done before at University Medical Center. My brother had finagled to get a phone line dropped through the ceiling and into my ICU cubicle. A phone was brought in and tested to make sure it would work. Then, the connection was made and I got to talk to Diana. The rest of my family was there with me, but she had to leave while I was still comatose and return to work at her Air Force post. So, the loop was made and Christmas was saved.

All these memories brought about by a single orange popsicle this afternoon and Austin still doesn’t know what he triggered. That is the beauty of innocence.
OGV

The relationship between prisons and parenting

2006-09-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

Good morning,

A thought occurred to me this morning that brought my previous career of a prison supervisor screaming back into my face. If you don’t already know, the fundamental job anybody working in security at the prison has is counting. There are several designated count times throughout the day and night, when all inmates have to be accounted for. This gives the staff the earliest notification when anybody has escaped. Well, there are times when that isn’t exactly the case, but times when dummies get passed off are rare. The mantra “count only living, breathing bodies” is a phrase that correctional staff get drilled into them repeatedly concerning proper count procedures.

When count time occurs, all inmate traffic ceases. If the initial count doesn’t tally up correctly, then a recount is called for. When all the convicts are accounted for, a signal is given and an announcement is made that the count is clear.

Counting goes a few steps further throughout the day behind prison walls. The staff supervising outside work crews have running counts of their squads. The work squads have tools they work with and there is accountability and a check-out procedure to allow inmates to use the tools. In the kitchen, where inmates prepare and cook all the food that is served to the inmate population as well as staff, utensils like spatulas and even knives are issued with tight security count procedures to maximize accountability.

Before you go to jumping to the obvious conclusion that I’m now counting the basic 1, 2, 3s with Austin as part of my Daddy Duty, stop for a moment. Give me some credit here. I figure that part was a no-brainer and wouldn’t have mentioned it except to acknowledge that some people would go there first.

No, what struck me this morning was when Mrs. OGV and I were discussing Austin doing crafts with his cousin at their Grammy’s house. The Mrs. told her mother, “Make sure you count how many markers you give them and that you get that many back.” Simple thing there, but it is how you keep the little Picasso from becoming a home decorater. Trust me, it’s already happened and history is a great teacher.

Besides counting markers, I also regularly keep up with things I give the little guy so that we can get things cleaned up. Being I can’t see what he might have laid out on the coffee table, I use the count technique to know when he has cleaned up the right amount of things. I have had him bring me the paper plate or napkin after eating a snack, then had him carry them to the trash because I needed a helper.

Counting is truly a fundamental part of our lives, even more so as parents. I just never thought that I’d make a parallel like this one between prisons and parenting.

Count clear!

OGV

Dog and cock fighting making the news

2006-09-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

Good afternoon on this warm and lovely Labor Day,

I was reading the Houston Chronicle today and couldn’t help but notice two stories for their relation to each other. In the listing, the first one was about
the secret world of dog fighting,
and the very next article was titled
Fort Bend Cockfight ends with fatality.

I’m no dummy and know that these sorts of senseless and cruel fights take place on a regular basis. The sick means of wagering and profiting at the expense of animals doing what their owners have raised them to do goes back many years.

Personally, I know that I have at least one relative who has been fighting his roosters for most of my life. As far as I know, he still does.

I once worked with a man who talked to me frequently about his cocks and how he traveled on weekends to fights in Louisiana and across East Texas. He regularly invited me to come along. The picture he painted didn’t sound like one that I wanted to be part of. I pictured this large group of rednecks, probably half-drunk, toting their roosters to some dark and mysterious location way off the beaten path. I figured that most of them were armed. I still believe I had an accurate image of what all that was about. I didn’t have the stomach to watch then and still don’t today.

I think Joe Ely painted a pretty good picture of the fighting scene in a song he recorded a few years ago called Gallo Del Cielo. The song tells the story about a Mexican man who steals a fighting cock and travels around the Southwest, betting his meager belongings. Soon, the theif is winning some big paydays. However, what the song points out so well is that this is a do-or-die kind of thing. When his ill-gotten bird loses the last fight, and his life as well, the theif also loses all the money he has won and bet on the fight.

I don’t know why I felt compelled to write about this bloodsport, but the contiguity of the two stories stuck out to me. The story about the secrecy in the world of dog fighting is one that they might have had already written and ready to run for a short time. The reference in that article with the death leading to the discovery of a farm of more than 300 pit bulls wasn’t too long ago. It happened just outside of Houston and I recall reading about it a couple of weeks ago. The second story is one that just happened. So, it was sheer irony that these two stories ran together, I believe. However, it was irony that I thought needed to be passed along.

Run for the border or just act like it

2006-08-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

For the sake of discussion, let me ask you a question. Would you like to go to a
theme park
where, for only $15, you get the chance to spend hours following masked men acting as your guide while you are traversing through hot desert sands, across the big river, crawling through thorny underbrush, get tossed around in the back of a truck traveling over rocky terrain at 50 mph, just to understand what illegal immigrants to the US experience? How about if they added in simulated gunfire and US border agents coming in over a loudspeaker telling you to go home and not cross the border, would you want to do this and spend your own hard-earned denero doing it?

Check out that link. You’ll see that I’m not yanking your chain. It already exists.

I might be crazy, but my need to empathize with the plight of illegals doesn’t extend that far. I don’t need to go through their experience to know it is harsh and one that I don’t want to undertake myself…much less pay $15 to do it!
The whole concept of this theme park makes me raise two questions.
1. Does this park glamorize the act of illegal border crossing at risk of personal injury or, even worse, death?
2.
2. Does this have the potential to prove as a training ground for those who plan to make their own in the future?

Okay, here’s the real kicker. The park receives some of its funding from the Mexican federal government. Way to go, Mehico!

What is $160,000 worth?

2006-08-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

Good morning,

Nearly every city in America has subsidized housing based on income levels and usually the levels to get into those housing units are fairly low. This is a government program that works well and doesn’t really get too many second looks.

Have you heard about the subsidized housing project being discussed where the family earning income level is
a mere $160,000?
That is not a typo. $160,000 is the earning limit for a family to qualify for getting into the proposed housing project being discussed by the city council in Santa Barbara, California.

Whoa! If the Mrs. and I took in that much cash, I’d be more than happy. Then again, I’m saying that living in the Lone Star State, not Calii-forn-I-a. Out there, what I consider riches, is only welfare status.

It just goes to show that so much in life really does depend on perspective.

On busses, cars, dragons, and dinosaurs

2006-08-23T07:57:00.000-07:00

I have been relishing in the role of proud daddy for some time now. I’ve been happily noting the regular advances Austin has been making as he has been getting older. I have also been putting the changes into the context of developmental stages that I learned about during my graduate studies.

Austin is just about where he should be when looking at mental development. He is at the stage of “magical thinking,” where he can use his imagination and create play from objects that aren’t as concrete as he use to need them to be.

For example, we have several of those plastic storage bins, approximately one and a half feet wide and two feet long, with a depth of about a foot and a half. He likes to get inside one of these and take in a couple of his “stuffies” (Austinese for stuffed animals). Quite often, he wants this box on my knees. While I’m sitting on the couch or in my computer desk chair, he’ll put the empty box up on my lap, then gather his stuffies, and get into the box. He’ll then announce that he has to buckle in the stuffies. He’ll then tell me that he’s driving the bus to Sonic. He will rock the box back and forth, telling me when lights are green or red, so I can make either accelerating or braking noises, whichever is appropriate. When he tells me he is at Sonic, he wants me to be the voice in the box and ask for his order. Sometimes, the Mrs. does this. He always orders the same thing, cheese sticks and a blue icee. (Can you guess what he likes to get when we actually indulge him and really go to Sonic?) No trip to Sonic is complete until you get the ticket and pay for your food. He has to get his ticket from me and hands me his money to pay for it. Of course, neither of these is real and I’m loving that he can play like this.

Then there are other times when he tells me, “Daddy, get on bus!” That’s his way of saying it is time to load up his stuffies and he is now Bus Driver Bob from the Doodlebops. (On the Disney show, whenever Bus Driver Bob appears, they sing a song called Get On The Bus.) Nothing much happens here except he loads them up, gets them situated, announces they are buckled, and he assumes the driver’s seat, grabbing the molded handle for a steering wheel. He then rocks back and forth in the box, not really doing anything else until he gets tired of this and takes his stuffies out of the box.

He also shifts gears with the box at other times, and he is “Red Car,” his name for the Lightning McQueen character from his favorite movie, Cars. When he is this character, he just wants to race, which he does while the box is sitting on my lap. He rocks the box and gives me periodic updates about the blue and green cars he has passed.

Another game he has been playing a lot lately is dragons. He is always either the red or pink dragon, Mrs. OGV is the purple dragon, and I’m the green dragon. Every now and then, he gets Boise in the action, calling him the blue dragon, but not really doing anything with him.

The red/pink dragon and green dragon always fight on the couch. He comes from one end and bounces over to the end I’m sitting on, and grabs my shirt to pull me down onto the couch. He likes to win, even if I’ve grabbed his feet and let him fall backwards onto the sofa. He will jump up and tell me that he won, then grab my shirt to pull me down, just to prove he is the winner.

While playing dragon is very physical between he and I, he knows that the purple dragon doesn’t play rough. He goes up to her with hugs and kisses. What’s up with this disparate treatment? Why does the green dragon only get the brutal treatment?

Finally, he also likes to play dinosaur. This is different from dragon. He tells me that dinosaurs fight. When he comes at me on the couch, he roars. See, this is something dragons don’t do. Then he will tell me to fight. We pummel each other softly in the chest area until he decides that one of us has won.

That winning thing is a funny thing with him. With dragon, he seems to think he has to always win. However, when we play dinosaur, he is happy to go back and forth on who wins. He even asks before he comes at me, “Daddy, who wins this time?” Being that I don’t get the purple dragon treatment, I make sure that I get my share of wins as a dinosaur!

Anyhow, that’s about it. The red dragon is off at school and this green dragon is getting sleepy. I think its time for me to drag myself back into the cave for a little nap.

Latest thoughts on Daddy Duty

2006-08-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

Here it is the beginning of the second week of school and Daddy Duty is in full swing. I’ve about got a routine down for myself and the little prince in the mornings, but we’ll see what minor tweaking has to take place on Thursday when Mrs. OGV heads back to work. There are things she does in the morning to help get Austin ready that will shift to me because she will need to get herself ready to head off for the day.

By the end of last week, it was very obvious that Austin was loving school. His grumbly bear impersonation on Monday was the only day he showed that side upon being awakened. Until today. Today is Monday again. Let me think about this a minute. Maybe the dislike for Mondays starts a lot earlier than we really know. I might want to keep a check on this as the school year progresses. I’ll let you know what I find.

Now, like I was saying, Austin really digs school. He comes home all smiles as he bounds happily off the bus, jumping into my arms. He will chat a bit about his friends and what they did at school. On Friday, he was very happy heading out to school. He had on his new Doodlebops shirt. As soon as he had it on, he said, “Show to friends.” When he got home and I asked what his friends thought of his shirt, he summed it up well in one word, ”Nice.”

The hardest part for Austin about getting back to school seems to be his sleep patterns. For most of last year, he had afternoon class which allowed for sleeping in every morning. Now he has morning class and he has to get up early. That means getting your sleep without sleeping in during the morning.

Last week, he tried to compensate his sleep by taking a nap on Tuesday and Thursday. The cutest one of those was on Thursday afternoon, when his nap was unintentional. He was sitting at my computer, playing his Pooh game, and fell asleep in the chair. Noticing the game sounds from the study had gone silent, the Mrs. checked in on the little computer whiz. He was slumped against the back of the desk chair with his head leaning on the armrest in, what appeared to be, a very uncomfortable position. It must not have been uncomfortable, though, as he was sawing some serious logs. I picked him up and shifted him onto the leather sofa in the study, about two feet from where he was. He slept soundly for another two hours before I roused him.

I’m sure I sound like so many other parents gushing about their kids when I write this stuff, but I can’t help it. Being a parent brings this side out in me. I think most parents would say the same thing. Or is that the parent side of me just being defensive of other parents? Is this a parent conspiracy?

I suppose I’ll always feel this way, sort of mushy, about my child. As I said, I can’t help it. There is this overwhelming force that comes from being a parent. It defines this to me as one of the most meaningful things that I have ever done. I just don’t see how that feeling can ever go away.

Google: God and Sex? Money and Jesus?

2006-08-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the folks at
Google
are Never happy to sit still, not even for a minute.

I just read a Houston Chronicle
article
detailing one of the latest free tools Google is offering.

Google Trends
is a neat little gizmo that lets you see what terms, by city, what other people are Googling.

The Chronicle article reports:

“For example, a search on Monday of Cruise, Aniston, Pitt, Jolie and Cage turned up a graph charting the movie stars' Google traffic since 2004. You'll also get a list of cities with the most searches on the actors. Orlando, it would seem, has the greatest number of Googles for these stars — and the favorite is Aniston. New York City was more interested in Cage, and Atlanta searchers had their eyes on Pitt.”

This tool joins the ranks of Google’s Zeitgeist, but lets the user enter the search terms they want to see trends for, as opposed to Zeitgeist’s Google-generated list reporting the hot search terms.

You can’t search by city, but you can Google terms you might think people of a certain geographic area might be interested in. To illustrate, the Chronicle article also showed:

topics you'd think Houstonians may be interested in showed Houston ranks No. 1 for searches on Yao Ming, Ken Lay, Andrea Yates, rapper Paul Wall and oil.
“St. Louis tops searches for God and sex, and Salt Lake City takes top honors in the search for money and Jesus.”

God and sex? Money and Jesus? Interesting pairings in the Gateway City and the Land of the Mormons.

I played around with the site a little myself. When I searched the terms “blindness” then “disability,” most of the top ten list were cities outside of the U.S., predominantly in Canada and Australia. I also entered the name “Hillary Duff,” which the Mrs. and I had discussed earlier after the young, actress with Houston roots was on a national talk show. Out of the top ten cities that generated searches for her, there was only one U.S. city among them, which was her hometown Houston at #10. The list was as follows:

1. Caracas, Venezuela
2. Perth, Australia
3. Auckland, New Zealand
4. Brisbane, Australia
5. Melbourne, Australia
6. Sydney, Australia
7. Ottawa, Canada
8. Toronto, Canada
9. Montreal, Canada
10. Houston, TX, USA

Carracas, Venezuela? Wow! I never would have guessed that Hillary was such a popular hottie down in South America. And, what’s up with so many Aussies Googling her?

Okay, I’ll get serious again. There is another tool Google has rolled out, called
http://www.google.com/analytics/>Google Analytics.
This one is a practical tool that, while some report being slow and bloated, should be of interest to web masters. It is a web application that tracks traffic to your web site and analyzes the information for patterns and trends.

According to the official web site:
“Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You'll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors. “

I don’t see this one to be as much of a fun time-waster that Google Trends can be, but I guess I’ll let Google off the hook as they are offering tools that let web masters operate more effectively.

I hope I made this report of today’s tech news a little entertaining.

More back to school thoughts

2006-08-15T08:10:00.001-07:00

Good morning,

Standing outside the house this morning while waiting for the school bus gave me a few thoughts I wanted to share with you.

First, it is so darn muggy outside. I was strategically standing on the shady side of the driveway, to keep from getting too hot while waiting, just in case the bus got slowed by traffic like yesterday. Within 1-2 minutes of going outside, my forehead felt like a soaked sponge. It wasn’t so much the heat, but the humidity.

Then again, my own body heat might have been raised by the little boy I was holding in my arms. He is more than capable of walking outside on his own, but he was so cuddly this morning with no grrrrumbliness that I thought it was the least I could do for him when he asked me to hold him. While I was holding him to my shoulder in my left arm, there came a moment when we cast a shadow behind us and he got very intrigued with it. I thought two things—First, “That’s so cute,” and started raising my free arm, waving the hand so he would have a more interesting shadow to investigate; Then I thought, “I’m not as good as staying in the shade as I thought I was.”

For the most part, Austin was content to just hang out there, looking back towards the house, and occasionally dropping his head, nestling against my shoulder and neck. Then came that distinctive diesel sound rumbling down the street towards our house. He shifted, swinging his head around to see the school bus coming at us. He got a little excited, but that was no match for the point where we got up to the bus. Then, I put him down and he giddily jumped up to the steps of the bus. He was so happy to go to school, even more so than yesterday.

While Mrs. OGV and I waited there for the aid to get our son secured in his car seat, I noticed the smells and began doing some mental associations that took me back to my teenage years.

The smell of diesel exhaust in the morning seems so different than any other time of the day. Maybe it’s the heat just beginning to come on for the day, maybe it’s the humidity, maybe its how it all blends together, or maybe its all in my mind…it just seems so unique. That smell always makes me think of the summer I worked with my Uncle Hans, helping him out on his delivery route when he worked for the Coca Cola Company. It was only a few days that summer while my father was stationed in Germany, but they were so rich in detail that it marked that thirteenth summer of my life with an imprint I’ll never forget.

Mom or Pop would drop me off at Uncle Hans’ house, then he and I would go to the bottling plant. We’d go to his truck, fire it up, and pull it into the loading area. That was where I would get that first blast of diesel fumes. It would always seem so rich and strong. He was given a manifest, telling him where his route ran and what each client had ordered. Uncle Hans used this manifest as a loading ticket to make sure we had the proper supplies to take care of the customers. He then set about on a forklift and loaded the truck.

While he loaded the truck, I was free to roam through the plant, which was actually a huge warehouse with several trucks pulled in for loading and a small army of forklifts wheeling about with pallets of Coke products to put on the various red and white trucks. The whole atmosphere seemed busy, but at the same time, the cavernous expanse of the building made it seem like the bustling activity was insignificant in the larger scope of things. The neatest part of the plant was the several soft drink fountains that were scattered throughout the building. We could go up to any of them and get as many cups of the drinks as we wanted. Boy! That job was any teenagers dream gig.

When the truck was loaded and my uncle was ready, he would tap twice on the horn. I would then climb up into the truck cab ready to head out. The truck was loaded with cases of the old glass bottles in plastic crates, canisters of soda syrup for fountains, and several stacked cases of canned beverage. As soon as we pulled out of the warehouse and into the sun, he would stop and have me reach in back to get a couple of bottles out to take into the cab. These were for us to drink while we were on the road.

We made our way to a whole list of stops, mostly different grocery stores, some of them chains and others the smaller, mom and pop variety, to a snack stand at a resort area on a local lake. I remember marvelling at my uncle’s ability to put that big truck wherever he needed in order to unload. He could pull in to the tightest spot and leave not even the slightest rub mark behind. Many of the streets in Germany are narrow and work well for the smaller cars most Germans drive. However, when a delivery truck pulls in front of a grocery store to unload, if there is no rear entrance, the driver often has to make his own space. This leads to hurrying to get unloaded so you don’t impede traffic.

To keep our parked truck from being a traffic hazard, we would work quickly at most stops. We’d load up the two-wheel handtrucks and dolly the drinks into the different stores and set them wherever they were to be stored. Looking back, I guess Uncle Hans knew his customers well, because I don’t recall him ever asking anybody where they wanted him to put the sodas. As we made our way through the store aisles, I can also recall the distinct aromas that permeated the air, the smell of fresh baked brotchen and the always-present meat markets.

I also remember that my favorite stop was at the lakeside snack stand. There was this young girl I met there that made me feel tingly inside. I never learned her name and can’t remember what she looked like, but I’ll always remember how she made me feel. I think it was just the eye contact and my own imagination. I remember thinking that she would be impressed by this strapping American boy who could heft the cases of soda like they were made of styrofoam. I hoped she was impressed. I remember how I was so shy when my uncle introduced me to her after we finished unloading the drinks. I said, “Hi,” and shook her hand. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. More than that, I was so bashful that I couldn’t look at her. It was such a deflating moment after I had made this big, romantic story in my imaginative mind while I was unloading her parent’s order for their family business.

Like I said, that summer job didn’t last long. It might have been only two or three days total, (I know the job lasted for at least two days, because we went back to the lake for another delivery and I was disappointed when the daughter wasn’t there on my second visit.) but the memories I have were all stored forever and can be pulled up so easily by something as simple as diesel fumes in the morning.

These are happy memories from my past, deeply engrained because they were so meaningful. I don’t know if my uncle remembers me going in to work with him that summer, but I know it is a time I’ll never forget. These are the kind of memories that I hope Austin gets to experience growing up.

Only time will tell what other thoughts and memories come to mind as the school year progresses. After all, this is only the second day of class.

School days once again

2006-08-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

Good morning,

Its that time of year again that is familiar to all parents and drivers—back to school time. So it was this morning around OGV house. At least it was for Austin. The Mrs. is still off work for more than another week as she is still recuperating from her surgery.

Getting up at 7 is something that Austin didn’t take to very willingly. I’ve always known him to be a little grumpy if awakened too early, and this morning was no exception. He grumbled a bit while I got him dressed. I don’t know if that was because he didn’t want to be awake or if I was interuppting his viewing of the Disney Channel.

Boy, I’ve got to get down a routine for this school year. Last year, he went to school just before noon, so he could sleep in until he awoke on his own, which wasn’t that difficult for me to schedule. I knew what time I had to have him up by so he could get bathed and dressed, then eat lunch before heading down to catch the bus. With the bus coming so late and him being gone until about 3:30, that left my afternoons free for lunch with friends. No more!

Now, I’ve got to figure a whole new routine so he can catch the bus just after 7:30. Mrs. OGV leaves shortly after 7, so she might be a little help getting him stirring, but the final heading out of the door thing is all on me after she goes back to work next week. I got up at 6 this morning and this gave me time to feed Boise, take him out, and have one cup of coffee while reading the news on-line. Then, when the clock showed seven bells, I went to begin the new routine. This seems like a good and workable schedule for now, but it will take practice and repetition to fine tune.

The bus ran more than 10 minutes late. The driver said that traffic was heavy. Traffic is beyond his control, so I guess I shouldn’t begrudge him that. There were a few other kids already on board, so I know he has some pick ups before getting Austin. I suppose the driver will need to work the bugs out of his schedule just as we will here.

The final result this morning, was that no matter how much he disliked getting up early, the little prince was smiling when the bus pulled up. He loves school and I hope he always does.

And, after the bus took off, I got to go back inside and have that second cup of coffee.

Ahhh. Life is good.

Big Brother and Beyond

2006-07-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

Good afternoon,

As life and recuperation at OGV house continue to progress, I’ve been reading up on some incidents that have been re-emphasizing that Big Brother is always out there, lurking and waiting.

Oh! What’s that you say? You doubt me? Then consider the following:

First, there is
ZabaSearch,
a free people search and public information search engine. It gives more detailed feedback than most others that I’ve explored and its records go back a bit further than any other I’ve explored. It even puts a person’s birthday along with the accompanying information.

Go ahead. Give it a try. You know you want to.

I tried it. I used my own name…no, not OGV, but my real moniker, and found my three previous addresses stored along with the correct phone numbers for those addresses. It wasn’t up to date, though, but I’m sure that was only because we moved and changed phone numbers just three months ago. I’m certain that they will update the database soon and have me correct for four previous addresses.

I played around with the site a bit, using other foks names that I knew. Hmmm. This is a powerful tool. If you know somebody’s general age, this can help you pinpoint a specific location and phone number for them, much better than Yahoo or Google’s peop.le searches.

Second, if that wasn’t enough to creep you out about who’s keeping information on you, then think about these thoughts:

You know your previous creditors report information that is checked any time you apply for some new credit. What other information is being tracked about you? Go ahead and take a guess.
Do you think information that is gathered about you is checked by anybody else other than creditors? Go ahead, take another guess and figure out who else is checking up on you.
For the answers to these queries, check out this Baltimore Sun
article.

Now, consider this final question:

If there isn’t enough information about you already out there which was gathered when you had to provide when applying for credit, insurance, jobs, housing, or any other routine divulgences you have undertaken, what other information have you knowingly and willingly given to people?

If you think you are immune to “phishing,” think again.

If you’re interested in how your own divulgences can be used against you, especially if you use MySpace, you will want to read
this.

Now that I have made you a little paranoid, I can only offer you a nice, “Smile, Mon,” as my t-shirt from Jamaica proudly proclaims, with its dreadlock-adorned Smiley face.

Be safe out there.

OGV

Just checking...

2006-07-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

Good morning,

I'm seeing how well this works for me. If it is better than it was before, I may migrate
My other blog
here. Waddaya think?

Greetings and welcome to my new blog home

2005-05-17T15:47:00.001-07:00

This is OGV, reporting live from Texas once again.
Yes, I am now on blogger, which has a reputation for being cutting edge inthe blogging world. The good thing is that if you don’t bookmark this site,you should be able to search on Google (The parent company of blogger) for“One Graham’s View” and easily find it. Now, I may be wrong, but that seemsto me how it should work.
I’ll post this now, do a search, and we will see how that theory holds up.