Buss Grows Up

You know…I’d forgotten about this place.

Seriously…three and a half years since I’ve posted? Looking back, I think writing was a way to deal with my depression and anxiety. It was a way to get my voice out there while in a job and a life in general where I felt I wasn’t being heard by anybody.

And I cannot believe how much my life has changed in that tiny amount of time. As the clock neared midnight on New Year’s Eve, my wife and I looked back, as I’m sure many people do, on the years before us and the year to come. I had to marvel at how, in a couple measly summers, that our lives had changed far more dramatically than it had in the previous ten years combined. Through some VERY hard work and a VERY supportive wife and network of family and friends, I managed to finish school and graduated Summa Cum Laude with my bachelor’s degree. While doing my capstone project, I seized an opportunity to use that project to build an application for a local company on the outside chance that it might be seen as a six-month long job interview. Turned out, I was right. They hired me on a month or two before the project finished.

This means I am no longer with the company I’ve written a few entries about, and no longer working for the boss I was working for (to my one former boss who has any chance of reading this, I am not referring to you. You have been a solid friend and I truly appreciated working for you during the short time that I was). I’m working in my new field and have been immensely enjoying myself since I started. That may sound weird, I know, but going to work makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something. I may only be arranging ones and zeroes around, but when I build a process it feels like I’ve made something (more or less) permanent.

Enough on that. Suffice it to say, the change, and the chance to start over, has been very good for me. I will always value the “family” I had collected while at my old job, and try to keep in touch as much as we are able, but it was time to move on.

Graduating, though, was one of the five biggest moments of my life. In high school I knew I was going to go to college, and use that as a springboard for…whatever I wanted to do. Walking down the aisle to get my diploma with a gold cord draped over my shoulders was not only proof that I was NOT as dumb as I was previously convinced I was, but finally completing something I had secretly been beating myself up for in the last decade or so. My stepfather, who I have had issues with for many years, choked up as I walked. That itself meant I had graduated in more ways than one. :-)

But even that was dwarfed later that year when probably the single biggest event of my life occurred…the birth of our daughter.

I have never experienced such a surreal moment at when she was handed to me and I just sat there holding her and counting fingers and toes. My life had changed so much, and yet it was about to change so much more. No degree, no job, nothing else can compare with the job title of “Daddy”.

I have to keep that part short, as I can likely drone on about her all day. She’s getting closer and closer to her second birthday now, and she can still blow me away with her smile. I kind of laughed when these commercials say “when you’re ready to love more than you’ve ever loved before”, but I now understand. She’s the single best thing I’ve ever accomplished.

Since then, life has been largely raising her and trying to work my way up in my new career. We sold our house and built a new one this last year, and spent the holiday season in our new home. It doesn’t feel like home yet, but I seem to remember that taking a year or so before as well. The house is absolutely gorgeous, and I look forward to truly settling in completely.

Lest this post just be a brag session (anybody reading this likely knows all this stuff anyway), I have also been reflecting lately on how all this stuff came about. It took more than a bit of luck, but honestly a lot of the changes in my life have been accomplished through hard work and the courage to make decisions that aren’t easy or safe. Going back to school was damned scary, as I’ve written previously. Even knowing it was one of the only ways out of the rut I was in, it was going to be incredibly expensive and difficult, and I wasn’t sure I was smart or enterprising enough to handle it. But in the end it just required me to set it as my goal and not give myself the option to fail. The decision to step up and take on the capstone project for this outside company meant that we’d have a more difficult time than most projects, as we had to conform to a real business environment. While we could have stopped with minimal work and documentation and probably passed, we went a lot further, and it paid off by landing me a job even before I graduated. When our professor called us outside and told us what a tremendous job we’d done, and asked if he could use our project as an example to show people how well not only the class, but how well the IT program itself was doing at educating people, it was worth every second we had invested.

I also think back on my previous job, and realize this outlook could have created an entirely different working environment for me. Any job is capable of being horrid or great, and it’s often the attitude that it’s approached with that defines your experience. I didn’t excel at my last job because I didn’t want to do the job. It wasn’t what I had gone to school for, and while some aspects were very enjoyable, the day-to-day tasks that the job entailed were a lot of what I didn’t like about my field. It’s not the job’s fault; it was simply that I’d had it with the entire thing. So while I do not believe my former working environment was the healthiest, I acknowledge and accept that I could have still made it a great job, yet I chose not to…so I have to accept some of the blame as well. I’m taking this as a learning experience, and at my new job I keep a sharp lookout for the same sorts of attitude problems in myself. These are lessons I will never forget, and I always try to be and do my best.

This whole “courage and hard work” philosophy has really changed me and how I approach life. I’ve stopped running from life-changing choices just because I don’t want to create ripples or problems for myself. I acknowledge that very little in life is handed to us, and I understand that if I want something, I have to be willing to work hard to get it, and believe that it’s possible. I also have to hold myself and my work to a high standard, and make sure I can be proud of my accomplishments when I’m done. Keep doing that...task by task, day by day...and you’d be amazed at what you can do.

Making these choices and changing my attitude has improved my life in every way possible. I feel like I’ve lived more in these three and a half years, than I have in a long time, and only more major life changes to come in this next year!

So maybe I’ll head back over here every once in awhile. Not to ease my depression, but to occasionally write down a few thoughts pinging around my head. Until then...


“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” - Lao Tzu

Zombie Apocalypse!

I heard this just now on a podcast I frequently listen to whilst mowing and thought it was awesome.


Say you're in a mall, and it becomes overrun with zombies. You have one weapon of your choice, one song to blast on a stereo, and one famous person or character to fight alongside you.

Which do you choose?

My precious.....

Thanks to the new every 2 discount and a bit of a price break for working at Wells Fargo, I managed to get ahold of a Blackberry Pearl as my new phone.

I've wanted a smartphone since I broke my PDA. I adored having the task list and the calendar for reminders, but I hated having the cell and a PDA to carry around. I was going to get a Palm Centro smartphone, which was just as cheap as the Pearl, but didn't require a data plan. I blame the wife for derailing that plan. While we were in Verizon she looked at me with this compassionate loving expression and asked me very simply which phone I wanted. Of course the BB was the one I wanted, so she said to go for that one.

I really think our thought processes differed a bit on this. To her it was just trying the Pearlout to know what the alternatives were, so I wouldn't always be wondering. But to me, I already knew the Pearl was a more complex and feature-filled phone than the Centro, but it also required the data plan. So a week later when we started discussing whether I'd take the Pearl back for the Centro, the one thing that I was dwelling on was that now that I knew what the Pearl was like I would spend two years pissed at the Centro for every little thing that the Centro couldn't do as well.

(Note I say this without knowing precisely what the Centro is capable of. I just know most if not all reviews mention that the Centro is a nice phone, but it just doesn't have some of the features of the Pearl.)

Long story short, I think I'm sticking with the Pearl. If we nix the data plan I'll go back to the Razr and just use the Pearl for the task list and calendar.

I've found there is a honeymoon phase with any new toy like that, and I'm currently in it now. Every day I'm spending time looking up every guide and free software site and forum site on it, trying to glean a few more tidbits of information on how to best use it. Unfortunately the one thing I have yet to master is the phone part (namely the sound profiles and volume bits). That and SMS and MMS. My Razr just had 'texting'. Which MS is the equivalent to 'texting' is something I'm still wrestling with.

I despise saying this, but it may finally be time to RTFM. :-P

Colorado Trip Day 4 - The Family

Okay here is where I start failing everybody. Sunday we had our big family cookout. The entire trip I had my camera held fast in my hand, but once the sunburn set in (about the time we hit Estes Park again the previous day), I was a bit too distracted to snap pictures. So the one thing I should have taken pictures of didn't get any. :-(

The cookout was at Uncle Bill's again, with Bill, Grandma, Ray, Brandi and myself being joined by my Aunt Mary and her husband Lyle, Ray's son Jay and his wife Bambi and their little ones, Bill's son Bill Jr. Bill's daughter Ann and her two little ones and one or two other members as well. I had a great time talking to people I haven't seen in far too many years, but I was in enough pain that it was a little...distracting for me. But I got a chance to talk with Lyle for the first time, met my cousin Jay and his wife for the first time ever, and it was good to hang with the side of my family I never get to see for awhile as well and hear all the old stories about how they grew up, about my dad and the type of person he was, and about how life was back then.

That night, Grandma, Ray, Brandi and myself stayed up for a bit and had some wine, cheese and crackers and talked and told more stories and all got a bit tipsy. It was a nice and informal way to end a long and fun trip.

Colorado Trip Day 3 - The Rockies

We woke up on Day 3 to breakfast cooked by my Uncle Ray (I have never in my life had eggs, hashbrowns and pork chops for breakfast, but it was pretty tasty) and he, Brandi and myself took off in his convertible towards the Rocky Mountains.

The best way in the world to see the mountains will always be to walk or climb up them. I dream about someday taking a backpacking hike through the Black Hills or Rockies and travel for a few days. That being said, if you don't have the time and gumption for a backpacking trip, the second best way to see them has to be in a convertible. It was all open air and sunshine and a view I can't even begin to describe....

First stop was Estes Park and the Stanley Hotel. This is where Stephen King wrote The Stand, and where the movie was shot. More recently the Ghost Hunters did an investigation there and I believe declared it one of the most haunted hotels in America. Sadly all we could do was drive through the parking lot and look at it up close, but it was cool seeing it.

We continued up Fall River Road, which eventually wound up to Chasm Falls, which is where Brandi and I were officially engaged. We hiked down to the bottom of the falls and saw a guy setting up a camera tripod with a bunch of other equipment and his two daughters helping him. We asked one of the girls if they'd take a picture of us with our camera.

After another hour or two of winding roads and breathtaking views, we pulled up to the top of Fall River Road, where it met up with the larger Trail Ridge Road. At the top there is a little cafeteria area, gift shop, a really nice overlook point, and a trail leading yet further up the hillside. The trail looks like the sort of incline that a reasonably out of shape person could easily tackle if given some time. The only problem with this theory is that this particular trail is a filthy filthy liar....

Sure it looks like a pleasant walk, but the thin air this high up gives you the stamina of someone 20 years your senior...and very out of breath. The fun of finally being out of the car lasts until about step four, and by the time you're halfway up you are fantasizing about that car seat. Or at least I was.

Brandi on the other hand, who was up here many many years ago and crapped out on step 3 or so, seemed to be doing okay. Not great mind you...nobody runs up this trail....but she walked the same speed and got the entire way up this time around. Yay Brandi!

And at the top of this trail, the view gets even better. It's almost 360 degrees of pure "Wow!". You can see out for miles and miles and miles, and since it's all a preserved national park, you're seeing nothing but trees and rock and snow and rivers and wildlife. I've often heard of God's country....I have to believe this is it.

After coming down from the trail, we did some gift shopping and descended Trail Ridge road towards Estes Park again. We stopped at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (for Brandi) and the Estes Park Brewery (for me), and a small winery with free samples (for both of us). Then we had to hightail it back to Greeley to meet my Grandma and Uncle Bill for grilled steaks and steak fries for supper.

Also along the way back down I noticed something else....annoying. Remember when I mentioned the sun? Yeah my skin had turned a very alarming shade of red, and by this point it'd started seriously hurting, so I went to bed early.

Colorado Trip Day 2 - The Black Hills

Well a brief trip summary after that night.

We started our Friday off by going to get old-time photos done of ourselves (a place in Keystone just puts them on a CD for you so you can get some or all printed as you want). It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. The guy doing the shooting was pretty cool, and Brandi and I kinda got into the fun of posing for silly old west pictures.

We then headed out of Keystone towards Cosmos, which is an interesting optical illusion made by a cabin being built on the side of a fairly steep hill, but angled out from the side as if it were level ground. This meant that to keep balance we needed to stand straight up, which meant according to our perceptions we were seriously leaning to the side. I knew the illusion before I even walked into the place and I still got major vertigo when I walked in. Fortunately closing my eyes for a few seconds reoriented my balance, but the interesting part is that even though I know how things were supposed to be, my brain just couldn't wrap itself around the fact that the cabin was build leaning out, not straight up. All in all, Cosmos is an interesting place because of that illusion, but if that isn't the kind of thing you're into, don't waste your money on it. Cosmos is not the Bermuda Triangle of the Black Hills (that is Rapid City).

We then went to see Mt. Rushmore and eat some lunch, then took a serious wrong turn trying to go south to Jewel Cave and ended up driving through Black Hills National Forest (which was good and all except for the being lost part) and finally made our way down to the cave, only a half hour or so late.

Jewel Cave had actually had a power failure due to a storm that came through the night before, and tours were running late already, but Brandi gave her big-sad-eyes look to the person handing out tickets and got us on a tour that was only an hour or so after we got there. We did go on the tour, it was awesome (for me anyways...I love caves), and we left the Black Hills headed for Cheyenne about two hours late.

At 10PM we finally pulled into Greeley, CO and found my grandmother's house. She was still awake waiting for us (thanks Grandma), and we talked a bit and hit the hay.

Top war crimes suspect arrested in Serbia

Let's hear it for justice!

Being a die-hard hippy Democrat, I'm not usually one for hellfire and wrath against our fellow human beings, but Karadzic deserves any horrible death he gets and whatever dark fate is waiting for him afterward. The torture and massacre he is responsible for is on a level that we have trouble even grasping.

Screw this guy. I hope some sense of comfort is brought to the families of all those he is responsible for killing and to all those he's responsible for s3xually abusing when he is ushered out of his mortal coil. I can guarantee you that if half the stories about him are true, he gave out far more misery than he's going to get.

Colorado Trip Begins (Keystone, SD)

Today we started off our Black Hills/Colorado vacation. After working the morning, we took off towards Keystone, SD. After stopping for an awesome burger at Al's Oasis for lunch, we hit Keystone in time to go to the President's Slide, which essentially has us riding up in a ski lift chair to an area that has a nice view of Mt. Rushmore and a burger, brat and beer place, then you ride down the hill on a wheeled cart. While the ski lift wasn't my favorite part of the day (I haaate heights), admittedly after the ride through the hills with my wife driving, it seemed...less scary.

We then shopped around Keystone and had a great dinner on the boardwalk at a place where the women dressed up like cowboy women of ill repute (I'm sure I'll eventually remember what we ate and drank), went mini-golfing, and came back to the hotel room to finally rest.

Tomorrow, we do an old time photo, maybe Mt. Rushmore, Jewel Cave, and then we take off for Greeley, CO (where I was born) to visit my grandma and aunt and uncles. Saturday we head off to Fall River Road and Estes Park, CO and then do family stuff until we come home on Monday.

I doubt I'll have any net connection until then, but I'll keep stuff written down if and when I can and post it when I get back to civilization.