TV Review: Shark Tank

I normally veg out the last few hours of the weekend on my couch in preparation for the weekend. It’s always a struggle to find something to watch this time of year. I stumbled upon this new summer replacement on ABC called the Shark Tank. The show places desperate entrepreneurs in front of a panel of blood thirsty investors. You might think the fact that these people are on television would make the want to cut honest deals with these people…not a chance. If they aren’t berating someone for wasting their money on a stupid idea they are presenting them with unreasonable investment deals. Much like a shark they can smell blood a mile away. The sadist in me loves this. Example: There was a 30 something school teacher who had invented a teaching tool. The tool utilizes songs he wrote to teach Shakespeare over rock style music. The entire teaching tool was complete; booklets, teachers manual, music and all. He was looking for 500,000 dollars for 15% of the business. The counter offer was 500,000 and 5% of royalties on the music he wrote and composed for 100% of the company spread across the entire panel. One of the panelist piped up with another offer, much to the chagrin of the other panelists. His rational was that their offer was absurd and that the guy would never be stupid enough to take it. Mind you this is all said in front of the teacher. He walked away to think, came back and made another counter offer to which the panel quickly dismissed. The panel saw that this man truly desired to be rich. So much so that he was willing to give up all of his hard work so quickly to get there. The worst thing was how they discussed how much of a stupid bad deal that was for that guy as they slapped fives. Check it out for yourself. It’s an interesting show, but I don’t think it will be on for long.

Anna Maria Surf

Here is a little video I made out of the pics and video I took on Sunday before we left the island. The surfers were out in full for due to the depression that formed that night. These guys arn't exactly shredding it up but it's still cool. I put a live cut of Sublime's "Bad Fish" underneath so crank up your speakers.

Urban Meyer Polk Theater

This Monday I had the honor of seeing one of the best college football coaches of my time. Last May Urban Meyer was scheduled to attend a speaking engagement/fund raiser for the Polk County Gator Club ,but was monsooned out. Since Polk county football appears to have a pipeline to UF, I believe he felt he might want to throw us a bone. So he returned for another try.
The event started out with a raffle of various signed memorabilia and then moved into some alum and booster speeches. Then came the VP of athletics promotion to get everyone hyped before Coach Meyers came out. He did his shpeel about the coach and then showed an awesome video. The video was a montage of plays from the previous season and locker room jumping around set to rap music...it was bad ass. Urban then came out cracked some jokes and ran through the roster a bit. He then showed a video about leadership featuring President Obama. The video was taken from the teams visit to the White House after they won the National Championship this year. It was also a highlight reel of both the SEC Championship and the Orange Bowl. When that was over Coach Myer broke into his motivational mode and told the story of Black Hawk Down. He invited the commander of that mission to speak to the team this year in the off season to set the tone for the upcoming season. The gist was that you have to prepare for the tough times and hope for the best. The whole thing was short sweet and to the point. I imagine the guy is pretty busy seeing as how we are less than 50 days away from the start of the season. So it was pretty nice of him to take the time.
It's not hard for me to get excited for Florida Football, but this event just made it a little easier. Go Gators

Fireworks

View from Lake Gibson on the forth... Not too shabby.





-- Post From My iPhone

Long weekend

It's 7:00 pm on Friday. I am waiting on Amber to finish getting ready to go downtown to meet some friends and eat. Thus far I have played golf, eaten at the newly opened Hooters on the noth side of Lakeland and cleaned my house in prep for company tomorrow. It's first Friday and fireworks at the lake downtown, so it's going to be busy. I have some ribs and corn on the cob ready for grilling tomorrow. It will be nice to get out on the boat.


-- Post From My iPhone

Is it me?

The show is over. It was a great success. After a long day of
entering orders in the room that resembled a basement, I was ready to
let loose. Everyone else was rearing to go as well. I enjoyed a mass
produced dinner and a magic show(pictured above) and a few free
drinks. After the prizes were given out we grabbed a drink and played
some mini golf at the hotel. We then headed up to the piano bar in
the hotel. I was sure I would see some craziness...no luck. I saw a
few people that were feeling no pain but nothing to write about. I
milked a couple of drinks but tempered myself throughout the night.
We called it a night at about last call. Before sleep I asked my wife
why nobody got crazy. She believes that it is somewhat my fault. I
have not been in a partying mood since the meningitis. I would not
mind being the sober one that gets to laugh at the drunk asses for
once. It seems though that unless I let loose, the people around me
do not feel so inclined. WTF is that shit? I guess it's better that
nothing too crazy happened. Or did it? I'm sure I will hear some
stories but it's not the same as being there.

Order Entry

This is where we will process orders taken on the floor.

Tool Expo Weekend

Every year my company puts on a tool expo. It is a pretty big
undertaking. This will be my second year attending. The real action
is after the show. They put us up in a hotel usually on site which
means no driving, which means people getting their drink on. Last
year was pretty out of control. I anxious to see the shenanagas that
ensue this year. I'll post some pics if I can sneak some.

Sent from my iPhone

The Perfect Day

My wife sent me this link to an article the other day about a Big Lebowski themed barber shop @ Channelside, Tampa. How bad ass would that be? It got me thinking of what an awesome day it would be to get a shave and a haircut while enjoying a cold beer. Then it would only be a short trip to one of my all time favorite places to eat...Stump's Supper Club. Not only does Stump's have buckets of Long Island Iced Tea, felt Elvis paintings and live band Karaoke, they serve fried chicken and waffles. This also got me thinking. If I were plan out the perfect day for myself, what would I do? Hmmm...Okay, I would wake upat a decent time, I don't like to sleep in, have breackfast in bed. Maybe a Moons over My Hammy from Denny's. I would then play 18 holes at a decent course stopping halfway for a beer or two. Take a shower and maybe sneek in a nooner. Lunch would have to be @ my local hang out The Gym in DT Lakeland. They have the best balckened fried chicken wings. I would play a few holes of Golden Tee while I waited for my food. After that, I think I would head down to the Loebowski barber shop and Stump's like I said before. Right around the corner from Stump's is a Piano Bar that is an absolute blast. If time and space were not an issue there would be something in there about going to The Swamp, tailgating and seeing the Gators trounce the Noles. So, okay it may not be the perfect day but it would be a pretty damn good one.

6/22/09 Meningitis

OK...so about three weeks ago I made a little trip to my local emergency room at the behest of my wife. I had what I could only describe as a severe migraine. To my knowledge I have never had a migraine before so when it did not go away after two days I figured something might be wrong.

Just to give you some background on myself. I rarely, if ever get sick. I have never broken a bone or needed stitches. Short of being born I have never spent more than a few hours in a hospital. I have been living in the same place for 5 years now and until recently settled on a primary care physician. It's not that I don't care about my health I just don't think I am vulnerable. Boy was I wrong.

So, I am in the ER and the doctor orders a "LP" or commonly known as a Spinal Tap. This is the only way to test for Meningitis. It sounds scarier than it is. They make you sit up and hunch your back over. The area is numbed with lidocaine which hurts like hell but for only a few seconds. In fact the LP was over so fast I was not aware the needle was in my back. The doctor warned me about this "spinal headache" and so did the nurse. He explained it would be worse than the pain I was already in from the meningitis...I told him I doubted that as the pain was already at a 10. Hospitals use this 1-10 scale to rate pain, I became very used to this routine as this let the nurses know when to give me my morphine. BTW!!! WOW!!! That shit is crazy. The first time the nurse feed it into my IV I was like, 'what is that?" She said "morphine", like it was nothing. I was in so much pain that I didn't care what they put in me. A tingle shot through my entire body, the pain faded but my chest felt like it was collapsing and made me cough for air. This turned into just a mellow overall feeling of euphoria that lasted about three hours. To my disappointment the nurse could not give me more until four hours had elapsed. Which meant I had to feel the head pain again for about a half an hour. This pain was so bad that when they transferred me and I didn't have the morphine, it made me vomit. Fun, right?

So the doc confirmed that I did indeed have viral meningitis which can be very bad if untreated. I was given a good dose of antibiotics and fluids to cure me. After being admitted on late Wednesday, missing a wedding I was supposed to attend in Wichita, I was released on Sat afternoon. I can no longer claim to be a super human that is invulnerable to ailments. Bummer.

With a weeks worth of pain meds in hand I returned home and to work the following Monday. Upon leaving the hospital the doc said the head pains should be gone in about a week. HUH. I wish. In fact as I write this three weeks later I am still in a bit of discomfort. So the week I returned to work was going okay until Thursday. I came in, started to feel a strong headache come on and then some nausea. I promptly headed home and laid down for a couple of hours. I returned to work once I felt better and stuck it out. I tried again on Friday only this time I managed to vomit on a laptop I was working on. This time I could not quite recover from this by taking a nap. I figured out that if i sat up or stood for more than 15 minutes a t a time I would get head pain and nausea. This is what is known as a "Spinal Headache".

I made an appointment with a doctor since the pain did not go away over the weekend. On my way to the appointment my wife mentioned that she heard from someone at work that this is common when having an LP or an epidural. Apparently the site of the puncture can take a while to heal and cause these symptom due to a leaking of spinal fluids. This can be remedied by preforming a blood patch. We mentioned this to the doctor which he dismissed since he though it was not likely. He ordered more useless expensive tests that came back negative. The doc suggested I see a neurologist, which could not see me for another couple of weeks. This was maddening considering i was burning through my paid time off just laying on my back. Not my idea of a good use of vacation time. My wife and I became very familiar with the nurses at the hospital since we were calling every few hours for some answers. We brought up the blood patch as an option that we self diagnosed and thankfully a nurse felt my pain. She put me in contacted with an anesthesiologist. Hallelujah! He said I was not a candidate for a blood patch...DOH...but with some pain meds, fluids and lots of caffeine I would be able to return to the living.

So here I am, still taking the meds, yoked on caffeine and peeing every half hour. It's better than using up all of my PTO at home watching the Travel Channel.