If only...

I drive in the car more than I want to these days. It used to be 14 miles a day, but gravejob has me doing 30 more.

So, I listen to the radio a lot. I like it when I have Kirara because i can listen to free XM stations (If they don't collect, it's free, right?) which are quite entertaining. But, I typically drive the "buu" car as I want Jay to have the family vehicle in case she needs to take my daughter to the our Rand'y doctor so he can tell us that she has Croup.

Btw, Em has Croup. This is how she sounds:

The buu car has no XM, so I was listening to the local "80's, 90's, and more" station (doesn't every city have a radio station with that slogan?) and they had a commercial come on. It expressed the point that they're all about serving you not just as a "customer, but more like a neighbor." Paraphrasing, they explained that just like a good neighbor, they offer great To-Go service for their restaurant's food.

So... apparently, it is now socially acceptable to invite your friends over for dinner, and when they get there, you're able to bag their food, take their money, and thank them for coming without them entering your door. (That last sentence reminded me of the test Cristtin recently gave me on facebook: Results: Cristtin 100%, Mike 100%)

I've yet to try this out, but I'm hoping for good results. If I perform well enough, I might even get a good tip!

More vids just for fun:



Cell phone video quality; but still.. very cute daughter o' mine.

BAM!

{All right!}

Well, I did commissions for the company and the boss had me add 10% to the 2% I already received! Translation: I got a raise! A nice one too! It should boost my yearly gross income from 21k to 36k.

More than the money, it was also good to know that I had the owners trust and confidence in handling the company. I also feel I can do my job without griping (much) about Utah sales guy. Now, instead of trying to see what jobs he can give me so I can get my own commissions, I can either 1- give him and know I'll still share the commissions or 2- do the job/bid myself and probably get more margin than he ever would.

It won't be that easy. I still won't be doing sales calls in Utah so it will be hard to have my own jobs. So the only things I can do is what comes in the office.

Before, I also felt that although I wanted 12% of all of Utah, I thought it may not have been exactly fair. But I would estimate that 70% of my work is actually for Idaho. We're doing one job in particular that is about 150k, however, I'll never see any commissions for that. So, I now feel the 12% surely compensates for the additional work I do for Idaho.

Well, this blog should have been of our cute kids and other life things that you actually care about, but I blame Jay for not beating me too the punch :P

Around the blog in 38 days

Hey, wow! Long time-no see! How have you been? What have you been up to?

...If you're answering these questions, you do realize nobody can hear you answers, right?

I found time to read Dave's blog yesterday when I realized... I'm in danger of being just as neglectful to our family and the public as he is! My problem is that he can get away with it as the looker of the family. Speaking of looks: Dave/Dan, have you started receding? I digress... So, it's time to get you all caught up!


When did we post last... back in March? Ok.

April 1st - My boss was bringing back the NEOS from being on display at BYU-I (Caryssa, they might buy one for the Manwarring Center or elsewhere... let's hope!!). He left a message on the phone telling me he was 10 miles outside of Burley where he rolled the truck. This is how bad I am... My first thought was that he was making an April Fools joke. But then I doubted that he'd do that on the company voice mail. Well, I found out later it was true.




Bossman escaped unscathed, which surprised me after I saw these pictures as you would assume. His tone of voice on the phone was quite deceiving in regards to the seriousness of the accident. However, he was extremely sore after that first night of sleep and the insurance guys had him take the rest of the week off. He was able to come back in the following week, but was still very sore. With the owner of the company having bad hip trouble and his Parkinson's never letting up, it gave me a weeks worth of responsibility dropped on my shoulders. I had several large bids to complete in very little time, went on several sales calls to which I had no experience, and of course, had to perform my usual duties as well. But it was no big deal, it was only for a little more than a week.

I write this next part to explain a little more about what transpired during the month, and also to illustrate the busyness of our lives which kept us from calling, blogging, e-mailing, or even reading your blogs. But in no way do I want it sounding like "it's all about me and my woes." I only want to state the facts of recent events as it is still hard for me to imagine and deal with feelings that emerge from this tragedy.

On Thursday of the week my boss returned to work, I received a call at home in the evening. It was my boss explaining that I would have to tell the owner that he would not be coming in to work for the next few weeks. I could tell he was distraught so I asked "...what happened?" It took a few sentences for him to get out that his 16 month old son, Keelan, passed away that afternoon.


I don't feel that this is the place for details. But I will say that the Lord works in miraculous ways. The wreck gave time for my boss to spend a week with his Son as a way to say goodbye. His presence was severely evident in the comforting of my boss and his family, as well as Jessica and I. For example, there is no doubt that my boss, I, and many others know that the truck accident in the previous week was meant to be. I had several personal experiences where the Spirit comforted me when I had difficulty... 'contemplating' the situation.

Well, my boss and his family are doing fine. They are still sorrowed often, particularly my bosses wife, but they have had personal witness that Keelan is already serving his Father in heaven.

Needless to say, this did give me quite a bit of work in the office. The boss didn't return until Monday, April 21st, but even for the next 2 weeks he had limited hours. It was sure good to have him back in the office, however. It gets rather lonely when you have no one to talk to or punish with my eloquent jokes. it was also a good experience. I believe I moved into a new light of reliability and responsibility in regards to this business. My boss always knew I had it, but no matter what responsibility he gave me, the president was never around much to witness it. I know now that Alan trusts me with the business -- sure, he really had no choice, but it was good that I was able to show my worth.

All that lead to the ever growing problem that my current wages were not covering the costs of our families needs. We scrape by each month with no money for new clothes that Jay and myson badly need, as well as doing our best to live from our food storage and low cost recipes (macaroni and tomatoes will never get old!). With my 1 year work anniversary coming up on May 15th and the fact that I was promised 12% commissions of sales I perform last November which never came to fruition, it was time I ask for a raise/additional compensation. I had a hard time asking my boss about it, as I knew it may not have been the best time for him to talk about such things. But I was able to get it across to him that I needed that additional compensation or I would have to look for other employment. He agreed that I deserve better but asked that I talk directly to the CEO instead of him in my behalf. he had talked about it a few times before but they could not figure out how to get me employed by Idaho (I'm only employed by the Utah company) for the additional company commissions from that state. I'd go into details, but I don't want to post company information on such a public forum.

Needless to say I brought it up with AY (the owner) when he came in one morning. He said that it would not be possible for me to be employed by Idaho and the only way to get an increase was out of Utah. I was amazed I didn't just shy away but I boldly said, "Well, I don't see that ever happening. With the way (the Utah sales rep)'s contract is written, he will get all commissions I make in his territory. And I don't believe that (the sales rep) will ever make enough margin for 2% to make a difference for our family." It was then that AY mentioned that he will change that to "ten plus two"...

I really didn't know what that meant and today I still don't. AY said briefly during the same conversation that I may have to get it from his brothers area of Northern Utah. I got an idea that he might want me to travel to N. Utah and be sales rep, but I'm not sure that was what he meant. When he said "ten plus two" he highlighted the 2% on the commissions sheet we use each month. So that should means that I will get 12% of what all of Utah makes. That would boost me from my meager below-20k year salary to about 34k, with upwards potential.

!!!

I so wish that is what he means. Unfortunately, because of the owners condition, we never see him often enough to have him elaborate. The best I can do is wait until the 15th of this month when I do the commissions report and see what he does. My boss (I'm tired of saying my boss. Thus forth, he will be called soiree, for obvious reasons), soiree, isn't sure that is what AY meant. He feels that's a huge boost and I probably shouldn't get my hopes up. Respectfully, I hope he's wrong and I'm not!! :D

Lastly, If you haven't noticed, I've been replying to recent e-mails and posting on your blogs at very early hours of the morning --I began this post at 3:10am today. This is because Jay snores all night and I can't stay asleep.

...All the women reading this may hit me now...

Ok, she doesn't snore .. often. But when she does it's so cute!! I can actually get her to snore by wrapping my arms around her when she's asleep and slowly squeezing. So fun :)

Back to topic: Effective yesterday, I now work a 2nd job at early hours in the morning at AlarmCo. It's an extremely easy job. I sit in front of several monitors and monitor camera and alarm systems and respond if I ever need to (which is 1 or less per night). Sure, the hours suck, but I much prefer this to a night job. I did night jobs before and I just hate, hate, hated how I was never able to see my kids. Now, I wake up at 1am, work from 2am-6am, drive to my day job and sleep in the office for an hour, work 8a-4:30pm, go home and play with the most adorable children ever, and go to bed when they do (hopefully around 8, but so far the children don't agree with us on that time). Jay and I won't get our alone time, which no doubt will probably cause a little bit of stress, but I think as long as we still have family time, it should all work out.

If the good news and a huge raise goes through on my previous job, I probably won't leave this job I just started. It's really evident to me that we need to start "living providently." We're going to make double payments on debt and take care of our family, while preparing for the future with savings, gardening, food storage, etc. I just need to get my bodies clock adjusted. Slacking off and blogging for the half the shift helps me stay awake ... you think the boss will agree? o_O

That's us!! Well, mostly me. Jay has a lot of things to post about as well, but she has to wait about a week-ish before she blogs so we can be sure you don't miss this one.

Happy Easter!

So today is Easter. What better time than now to finally update the blog?

But before I get into Easter stuff, I wanted to brag a bit. We had our first parent teacher conference at Hyrum's school this past week. He is doing well, although he still has a ways to go. We met with 3 different teachers since he has a regular teacher, a speech pathologist, and an occupational therapist that work with him in class. They all commented on how much he loves to sing. That's my boy! Wonder where he gets it from? Currently, his favorite song is "A Child's Prayer," which he insists on singing at least 40 times a day.

They also all mentioned how quiet and obedient he is in class. They say that compared to the other kids, he's much quieter and behaved. In fact, his speech pathologist was thrilled to tell us that he actually shoved a kid off of him for getting in his personal space and being obnoxious. While she said that she would prefer him to communicate it another way, she was cheering him on for finally standing up for himself. The other two teachers agreed that they were amazed and encouraged by the act.

Talking with them also answered quite a few mysteries. One day, he came home from school and started pointing out all the things on the ceiling. He'd point to the doorbell, the fire alarms, the lights, anything that was up high that he hadn't noticed before. He was particularly intrigued by the doorbell. When we went to the conference, he started chanting "doorbell" as we neared the school, and we couldn't figure out why. As we entered the front door, he immediately pointed to the fire alarm next to the door. We decided that he must have thought it was the same thing as the box that houses the door chime at our home. Then the teacher told us a story of how they had a fire drill and Hyrum flipped out. She was afraid she was going to have to have him go home early or sit in the nurse's office until school was over because he wouldn't calm down. Now every time he goes to school, he has to check for the fire alarm. Even when we go to stores, he has to check it out and know where all the alarms are. It's a sort of paranoia for him now.

Emily is doing well. She's trying more and more to walk. She loves to stand, but when it comes to moving around, she'll drop back down to her knees and crawl. Oh well. I'm sure it'll come in time. She's also jabbering a lot, and loves to sing with Hyrum. She's getting more teeth, and her hair is starting to get longer and curlier. She sure is a cutie!

Mom came to visit yesterday. Hyrum was thrilled to see her! It took Emily a little while to warm up to her, but a little food helped Mom to make friends with her. We went out to Julie's house. She made us a nice lunch. Afterwards, on the way home, we decided to stop for ice cream. We had seen a shop on the way in that advertised ice cream, so we went back to find it. It turned out to be the shop where Julie works as a chocolate dipper. I think Julie would be happy to know we got to see her workplace. She loves her job there!

After sacrament meeting today, Mike had gone ahead to set up for our primary class. He had left Emily's diaper bag in the coat room, and we needed some toys from it to keep her happy while we taught. So I headed up to the coat room and nearly ran right into a woman coming out. A quick double take, and I realized it was a high school friend of mine and Jacob's! I knew that she was living in Nampa, but hadn't actually been to see her, although we had exchanged a few emails. She has been fighting a rare form of breast cancer, but things are going very well now. Last I had heard, she had a clean bill of health. She was always a very positive, upbeat person. That was something I had always admired about her when we were in school. It seems that hasn't changed one bit. What an inspiration! She's just as cute and cheerful as always! I was sure thrilled to see her!

So, on to Easter stuff! The Easter Bunny crashed last night and didn't wake up again until the kids were awake. So he came to visit after church during nap time. Emily got a stuffed bunny, a bunny bath mitt, bunny shaped soap, socks, and shoes.



Hyrum got a duck bath mitt, duck shaped soap, a duck shaped bath fizzy, a Buzz Lightyear kite, and a bike.



The soaps are entirely too adorable to actually use. Hyrum loved the bath mitt, and played with it like a puppet, making it quack. Nearly all was forgotten at the realization that the bike was his, although candy still reigned supreme. once he finished off his candy bracelet, we couldn't get him off the bike. He drove it in the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, the hallway.. that's not really saying much though since our apartment is roughly the size of a shoebox. It took some convincing to get him to put it away in the garage. But when we told him he could "park" it next to the car, he thought that was super neat. Sure we may have splurged a little on the bike. But it actually wasn't very expensive at all, and I'm sure he'll get a lot of enjoyment from it. Since Hyrum has this week off for spring break, I think I'll take him to the park to ride his bike and fly his kite. The weather has been so nice lately!





Hyrum also enjoyed hunting eggs again this year. I think he remembered doing it last year, because it only took a little prodding to get him to put down the candy and search for them. Maybe next year Emily will be able to help.





Sadly, Emily wouldn't cooperate for pictures today. I'll try to post some of her later. Sundays are always hard with Emily. It really messes up her schedule. She likes her new shoes a lot, so we'll have to see if she'll let me take pictures of her wearing them.

That's all the news from around here. Yep... exciting, I know. But I DID give you pictures this week, so no complaining!

Oh, and Hyrum just pulled his bike from the garage, insisting he sleep with it in his room tonight...

Ooo, it sparkles and it's so beautiful.

Well, our last entry brought up the topic of Robotech, one of our favorite anime series of all time. I grew up watching the series with Dan and Dave and yes, we probably all had crushes on Lisa, except for Dave who I knew only to have a crush on himself. The cartoon played in the middle 80's and was the highlight of our early morning cartoon experience. It wasn't until over a decade later that I really understood why I was attracted to this series as a child and even more so as an adult today.

After introducing the series to Jay, she also understood that it, indeed, was a great series. We became very active in the Robotech community for some time and eventually depicted ourselves as characters in the series. Here are those dipictions:


This picture worked perfectly! The original picture was that of my heart-throb Lisa Hayes, so this picture is extremely close to my heart. I have it framed on my office desk.


We tried to make this one an animated gif, but at the time, the tools we used made it extremely complicated.

Btw, I don't have the picture of "Jaylisa" on my office desk. I'm not that much of a geek...

How to blog without punching your computer.

I know I'm not alone when I say that I get extremely annoyed when Blogger won't format my posts the way I want them to. It also never inserts my pictures where I want them to but rather posts them at the top. It seems that I have to go edit the blogger code after every post to have it post the way I want it to be. Luckily I have some coding background; although not much, but enough to do some decent damage (ask anyone at ils.cefutenmai.com).

I have this thing inside me that all my call center experiences has plagued me with: it's called "being efficient." Although I'm typically the last guy to be efficient, I've still been brainwashed enough to have it constantly bouncing around in my head.

Anyway, enough prefacing.. here's my tips on how you can live a long, sane life of blogging on blogger.com.

1- Spellcheck. Get a real-time spellchecker!! I'm putting this first because it requires work outside of your blog. I use ie7 despite all the security holes. I know Mozilla Firefox is more secure, but it bugs me for some reason. If you use ie7 as well, please download ie7pro. It's simple, it's lightweight, the find feature is very non-intrusive and the spellcheck will check as you type (p.s. "spellcheck" is not a word, apparently.. doesn't matter because I just added it to my dictionary!!). You really can skip this step, but I haven't been able to get blogger.com's spellcheck feature working in months... I dunno why.

2- Beginning. Before you write your blog, clear your mind of how you want it to look. Forget font style, size, color, line-spacing, pictures... everything. Now that that's done, start writting your blog using the Edit Html tab. Ignore the Compose button.. this will hurt you in so many emotional ways. It's so very much easier to finish your blog content, then go back and make everything look fine and fancy and -- most important of all -- consistent!!

So, now we're typing in Edit Html mode .. well, I am, actually. You're just reading at the moment... should I have told you to envision these steps or follow along at the beginning of this entry?

So, now I'm typing in Edit Html mode, you're envisioning or following along in another window, or just reading because you don't care to do that. You do have a few options to use for on the fly formatting: bold, italics, links, quotes, pics and videos. You should obviously use these as you create you entry so you don't have to go back and find where you wanted to bold or add a link. You can even add pictures as you go, but don't worry about positioning yet (they'll be at the top again.. more on adding pictures later).

3- Apparently, later is now: Pictures. Blogger hates putting pictures where you want them. Instead, it will always post them at the beginning of your blog while also making it difficult for you to place them where they need positioned. While I can't confirm this, I also believe it is the leading cause of changing your line spacing from nice, evenly spaced lines to having them run right on top of each other... "Not, very, pretty." (What Disney movie was that from?)

I've found the easiest way to place pictures where you want them to be is to type placeholder text where you want the picture to be placed. ie. I usually type something like PIC_armedbox or some cryptic word where I can search for it later. If I have only one picture to post, I upload it right away, however if I have several, I just leave the uploading for when I'm finished with my text. When I do this, I can just ctrl+F (find) and search for "PIC_" if I need to remember what pictures I had planned to upload and place.

Now, you have your pictures uploaded, scroll to the top of your blog. You'll find code such as this:

{a href="http:blahblahblah"}{img style="blah" src="http:blah" /}{/a} with carets instead of brackets.

Highlight all of the code from the beginning "<" to the ending "/a>", cut (ctrl-x), search for your placeholder text (ie. "PIC_"), then paste (ctrl+v)!

Vundubar Results!

4- Finish. Ok, so you've finished your picture placement as well as typing your blog. NOW you get you use the Compose tab and make everything look pretty (well, mine will look pretty, yours will look the way you want it to look). In Compose view, make sure your cursor is flashing in the body of your text, perform a Select All (ctrl+A), and use the formatting toolbar to choose your font type, size, alignment... go add pretty bullets if you want to.

Viola! Pretty blog, less headaches. I may have described the process more complex than it really is, but once you have a good foundation of starting as simple as possible, you can finish without the hour or two editing your blog to look the way you want it to.

Edit: Also, the quote feature will ruin your spacing as well.. don't use it if you can.