Category Archives: Opinion

Holiday Blues

This time of year is supposed to be joyous and wonderful, but it isn’t for everyone. Not to be a complete downer, but it is difficult for a lot of people around you and me.

My father passed away during the holidays 9 years ago, and since then the season just has not been the same. I smile and go about my day with Christmas cheer, but inside I am aware that a big part of my celebration is missing.

Lots of people suffer loss around the holidays, and we all wish it wasn’t so. We are lol so busy and hectic this time of year that it is sometimes difficult to see past our current problems.

It takes slowing down and really listening to people to see where they are at. I’m out world of everything online, sometimes it is difficult to interact with real people in the real world.

Be sure to be mindful of those around you. Not all of them are happy. Not all of them are okay. Some of them are really struggling to just make it until January.

I’m glad that depression and mental illness has been brought to many more people’s attention recently. It’s important to know that it is a real problem and not just a “mood” or “bad attitude”.

Nobody has a perfect life. They are all messy in one way or another. Addictions, sadness, marriage trouble, family issues, there is always something.

Be sure to be mindful during this season to the people that you come in contact with. You can make a world of difference in someone’s life simply by listening to them.

The best way to forget about what you are struggling with is to help others. Be the good part of someone’s day. You never know the impact it may have.

The Difficulty of Change

Change is never easy. People get comfortable with where they are or what they are doing.

I started thinking about this today as Tom Brady decided he is now un-retired and back with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Stepping away from something you have been doing your entire life can’t be easy.

We seem to be built for consistency. I know that I have been in the same job going on 8 years now. It hasn’t always been easy or good, but sometimes it is easier than trying to find something else and inviting change.

But back to Brady. Professional athletes seem to have the most difficult time letting go.

I can understand it. The fame, the money, the competition, the drive that the good ones have.

No matter what you personal opinion of Tom Brady is, he is one of the best to ever play the game. Also, he will be 45 next season.

When I was 45 I couldn’t even get out of bed without grunting and groaning. Yet Brady is still playing football.

So why do we find it difficult to accept change? I know for me, I am an extreme creature of habit.

I get up around the same time everyday. I leave for work around the same time, eat the same things for breakfast, do the same routines all day at my job.

There is a comfort to routine. We like to be comfortable, feel like we are in the zone.

People have stayed in horrible situations before simply because they did not want to make a change. All of us have accepted we weren’t totally happy about for the sake of not changing.

Sometimes change is necessary. Often it is required. Usually, for me, change is something I fight longer than I should.

Only time will tell if Tom Brady is waiting too long to retire. So far it sure doesn’t look that way.

Do you like change? Let me know why or why not on Twitter, Facebook or in the comment section below.

Why is Everything Political?

No matter what is happening in the world, it always comes back to being political in America. The days of caring about people and ideas are long gone, now we live in the days of lining up with a party.

Here I sit, an American who loves his country and the people around me. I do not line up with either political party. I feel like I’m not alone in this problem.

“Regular” people are sick and tired of it. We want legislators that care about what’s best for us and our country, not what is politically expedient for their careers.

I believe there is no one left in politics in either party that gives a flying flip about their constituents. They use their base to get elected and then stop caring.

It reminds me of how teachers are State employees when it is convenient for politicians. The rest of the time we are expendable and useless.

Unless you are already rich, you can’t even run with a chance of winning. And try being honest? You’ll be laughed out of the arena.

There is a war going on in Europe, but all our leaders want to talk about is how everything is the fault of the former administration and not their fault.

They will smile and tell you how much better everything is, even as the World is falling apart right in front of us. There is no actual compassion for our fellow man.

The older I get, the more I realize what a joke all our politicians are. I hate to be the one to break this news to you, but none of them care about you. At all.

Even if you die, there is a chance they can still cast a vote for you. Being elected is much more important than compassion or decency or truth.

The cynic in me believes that this is never going to change. The realist in me knows that to be true. The hopeful side of me is long gone.

It is up to you and me to effect our world, not the clowns pretending to govern us. As more of us figure this out, the world might actually become a more civil place again.

I pray you still have some hope left. Get out there everyday and be the difference in someone’s life. WE can still change the world, in spite of the jokers in “charge” of the country.

Hate and Social Media

I try not to get too political on this site since I have friends and family members on all sides of the aisle. I like to leave politics to the professionals. But if you are on any kind of social media at all you have probably noticed the hate that gets thrown around like beads at Mardis Gras. It is completely unavoidable unless you block everyone you know.

I like to peruse social media for photos of friends and family, sports, inspiration and for funny videos or stories. No matter what I get on social media for, I am always inundated with stories, political or otherwise, that have hateful and divisive comments attached to them. It is commonplace now to see people berate the character of complete strangers and roll everyone on the opposite side of the aisle from them as this or that. Apparently everyone in America is either a Nazi or a socialist.

I try to be fair in my judgment of people, but if you begin a statement with “everyone who believes (insert opinion or politician here) is a (insert nazi or socialist or other insults), then I question a few things about you.

Do you even know what a nazi or a socialist stands for? My guess is you don’t.
Do you really believe that everyone in the country with a differing opinion than you is one of those things? If so you probably are too narrow minded to be in the conversation.
Would you be willing to go to everyone’s house on the thread and tell them in person what you think of them? No one in their right mind would do that.

I am absolutely certain about one thing. Every single person in America has a collection of life events that sways their opinions on everything. No two people will have the same opinion on every issue, so if you are living by the rule that everyone that believes different from you is pure evil, than everyone else on the planet except you is pure evil.

I will not comment on political posts on social media for a plethora of reasons, the main one being that I don’t want to. Another reason is that I get insulted enough in my job and my writing that I don’t need more complete strangers adding to it because I have an opinion on a certain subject. I have never voted straight party anything on a ballot. I vote for who I believe is the best candidate for the position, from president all the way down to local city council. I don’t care about their political affiliation. I care about what kind of person the candidate seems to be. Have I been fooled? Absolutely. Have I ever hated a political or sports figure so much that I would stop at nothing to see him or her ruined? Absolutely not.

The social medial hate is vile and it is part of our society now. It is not easy to deal with, and it is something we are going to have to deal with as long as social media is around. My hope is that our children are smart enough to know that only one thing happens when you wrestle with pigs. You get muddy, and the pigs enjoy it.

DPS and the Time it Takes Part 2

We continue or adventure a few months later. It was now January and we decided to take another stab at getting the child their permit so they could begin driving. The first attempt did not go as planned, all we could do was hope that the second attempt was more successful.

We arrived in the morning and again had to sit down and wait for the opportunity to be seen and hopefully permitted. Only one child came with me the second time, the other one wanted to be anywhere but at the DPS office. We had our number and we had noting but time to wait on our hands. I decided it would be a good time to get my phone out and play around on it, my child sat there nervously waiting to take the permit test.

Once again the time it took was around an hour and a half. A few minutes before our number was called, my child looked at the verification of enrollment they had gotten from their school for the first attempt, and noticed it had expired the day before. I told them not to worry about it, we were still going to try and get the permit.

They called our number, and once again they questioned the Texas birth certificate. Once again, we are trying to get a Texas permit with a Texas birth certificate. After some research on the clerk’s part, we decided that it was, if fact, a legitimate birth certificate. One hurdle jumped.

The clerk began going down the list and verifying all of the different things that needed to be verified (which is a lot, by the way) and then paused at, you guessed it, the verification of enrollment.

“Everything is in order and looks good, but this verification of enrollment expired yesterday” they informed me.

“You weren’t open yesterday” I said. “That is not thirty business days?” I asked, panic rising inside me.

“No sir, with it being a new semester in school, they are going to want to see that she is still enrolled in her school and has good grades.”

“School has not started back up again, and you have her report card right there” I said.

“They are going to want one that is from this semester” they told me. “I’m really sorry, but I cannot accept this one.”

The many thoughts that ran through my head were not good. I decided to keep them to myself, since the clerk had been kind and was very apologetic about the expired VOE. I thanked them for their time, and decided that today was not the day to get into a fight at the Texas Department of Public Services.

My child and I left the building, defeated, frustrated and visibility upset. The child decided at that moment that they didn’t want to drive anymore, but I told them to take some time to think on it.

We now had two attempts at getting a permit, and we were shot down both times. I was trying to consider why the State makes it so hard for a teen to get their permit, it’s not like I was asking them to make the child an adult or something. There was one thing that I knew leaving that day, and that was there would be a third trip to the DPS in our near future.

Is it Time for Jason Garrett To Go Away?

“Why would Jason Garrett call that play there? It seems stupid to try and run the ball at the best two defenders on the other team. Why does he keep doing things like that?”

“Why would you go for it there? It doesn’t make any sense at all!”

“What in the world made Garrett decide to run that play two times in a row when it didn’t work the first time?”

“I could coach this team better than this. The play calling is completely ridiculous.”

All of the above statements are things I have heard Cowboys fans say over the last eight plus years of the Jason Garrett ERA of the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys were just eliminated from the playoffs by the Los Angeles Rams. Under Jason Garrett, they have now won two playoff games and played in five.

Dallas Cowboys fans everywhere, at least the ones around my age and older, remember the “glory days” when the Boys were winning and winning a whole lot. A team that won three Super Bowls in four years. Also, they have had quite a dry spell going on since then. Garrett is 77-59 as a head coach.

We are always told it all comes back to the head coach, right? There were some really bad play calls in the Divisional Round game against the Los Angeles Rams. Would Jason Garrett or Scott Linehan be to blame? If it always comes back to the head man, then it would be Garrett who deserves the blame.

Finally, I am not sure where I actually stand on this. Jason Garrett seems like a good guy, someone I would like to hang out with. I am looking at this as an outsider, I am not a hardcore Dallas Cowboys fan. Ultimately it is the decision of Jerry and Stephen Jones. Whatever decision they make, some Cowboys fan somewhere will not be happy with the decision.

Blogging and Advertising

There are a million blogs out there about a million different topics. I should know. I personally have three of them. A lot of people, myself included, are interested in trying to make a little money while running and writing content for those blogs. There are many different ways to try and do this. There is Google AdSense. There is Infolinks. There is direct advertising. There is GoFundMe, Pateron and other sites like that where you can ask you readers to help support you.

I have always wondered where the line is. I don’t mind an ad here or there while reading free content, so where should a blogger draw the line. I have worked with companies who have paid me to talk about certain things in one of my blogs. I have had a widget to buy baseball tickets where I got paid when someone used my link to buy said tickets. I currently have a Pateron. Feel free to donate, by the way.

When does it get desperate and annoying? How much is too much. I don’t utilize advertising much because I don’t have a huge readership. I don’t want to drive away the people who do read my blogs. My Texas Rangers blog is a very specilazied blog. This one is brand new and doesn’t have a ton of followers yet. So does it annoying you when you visit a site and there are ads everywhere, or does it not bother you since you know the poor bloke is just trying to make a little money for his work. I’ve been writing for free online for over ten years. Sometimes I wish I could make some money. Other times I write just because I enjoy it. It is hard to draw the line between not enough and too much.

Personally, I am fine with ads on free sites. I don’t mind an author trying to make a little cash off me. I am just curious what you all think. Advertising is all around us all the time. I don’t think most of us are bothered by it. Just a random thought I was curious about. Let me know what you think in the comment section down below or on Facebook or Twitter.

Are Cellphones the Problem with America?

When I was growing up and in school, we didn’t have cell phones, We weren’t waiting for the latest Apple iPhone to come out on the market so we could have it. We weren’t hoping for our parents to get us an unlimited data plan for Christmas. We certainly didn’t snap chat and Instagram everything we did for the world to see. I hear a lot of things people say about what is wrong with America. Some of them may be right, some of them are definitely wrong. The real question is: is there one thing that is leading to the direction our society is headed?

From that last question, you can probably guess that I am going to state that there is more than one thing contributing to the problem. As an educator for a living, I get the privilege of talking to and interacting with the teenage population on a daily basis. And it sometimes surprises me what comes out of their mouths and minds. I have decided that in order to fix this generation, we need to first fix us. WE are one of the main problems in this current generation. I can tell you that I just finished up two weeks off of school where I had time to get a lot of things done I needed to get done. Can you guess how many things I got done? None if them.

I spent most of the time feeling like I deserved a break. My dad never took a break. Well, he did, but not like I do. He always had something going on that kept him busy. He would go see a movie or go to a Rangers game with me, but when he got home he would always be working. I am not like that. I guess I am the one to blame on that one. Cell phones are part of the problem, but we are a bigger part. How much time do we spend on our devices? I can tell you that I spend more time on it than I should. Most days I don’t even do anything productive on my phone or tablet. So how am I going to say it is ruining them when it is quite possibly ruining me as well?

While cell phones are a big problem in our society, we are the bigger problem. We need to get back to having dinner together at a dinner table, not around the television. We need to get back to talking about our days instead of talking about everyone else’s day on Facebook. We need to get back to being parents to our kids instead of being their friends. Am I wrong? Am I right? Let me know in the comment section down below or on Facebook or Twitter.

3D Printing on the Moon

As a high school engineering teacher, I have access to a lot of really cool stuff (at least I think it’s cool). One of those things I have access to is a 3D printer. If you don’t know what a 3D printer does, it builds things out of plastic by melting plastic filament and reforming it into whatever design the designer sends it from a computer. It is a pretty cool device and you can make some really impressive stuff with it. But can it be used to print in space?

As a user of a 3D printer and a fan of stories on space, when I saw an article asking that exact question I had to check it out. The argument is that 3D printing can be used to make buildings or spacecraft while actually out in space. The article goes on to say:

through regulation of the temperature of the melted metallic powder during deposition, AM can make the part less likely to crack during use over a long time. Machine learning and artificial intelligence, guided by data from sensors and cameras in large-scale 3D printers, are helping to perfect the process.

They are making all kind of things on earth with 3D printers including entire car frames and parts of buildings. Also according to the article, NASA has used these type of printers for a long time and say that it works well in a zero gravity environment.

I find this an interesting thing to think and talk about. Being a big fan of outer space and shows about outer space, documentaries and fantasy series. I am not sure that 3D printing in space will ever be a thing. I know that I certainly would not want to be the guy to go and set the system up on the moon. What do you guys think? Is it a good thing to try? Will it ever happen? Will we ever build warp drive and explore all of space? Let me know in the comment section down below or on Twitter or Facebook.

Manuscripts and Frustration

I began working on a manuscript in 2013. It is a young adult fantasy novel that I got the idea for a few months before I started the manuscript. I was able to fly through the first ten-thousand words in a day or so, then I was able to go further. Work got in the way, life got in the way, I had back surgery, and I was writing for a site that took a ton of my time. I left he manuscript on the shelf for a year or more.

When I picked it back up, I was pleased with the progress that I made. Life once again got in the way. This cycle continued up until the present. I have not finished the manuscript, but I am up to about fifty-thousand words. As a lot of writers do, I had other stories that I was mulling around in my head, and I started two more manuscripts. One is the story of a sheriff in Nevada, inspired by watching several police shows on television. I wanted to make a different kind of story. The other story is about a high school baseball coach in a made up town in Texas who has to take a defunct team and try to turn them around.

The frustrating part for me is that I barely have time to work on one manuscript, and now I have saddled myself with three different stories. I forgot to mention: two of the stories are going to be series. The fantasy story I have three books planned, more if I improve the story and become a better writer. The Nevada sheriff would an ongoing series that hopefully go on forever. (I know, wishful thinking).

Is this a problem that I alone face? Do you find yourself going back and rewriting parts of your book to try and improve the story? I know I need to finish the manuscripts and let an editor help me with making the book flow better, but when I find inconsistencies I feel the need to fix them right away.

I have set a goal for myself to have the fantasy manuscript done in the next month or so, which means a lot of new writing and not going back and editing. Do any of you that write find it hard to finish a project without deadlines? I am going to try and set deadlines for myself and see if I can get it done. I will feel very accomplished if I can finally get a manuscript done. I will update you all if I actually get it done by February. Feel free to leave your thoughts or ideas in the comment section down below and thanks for reading.