If you hate….

***I found this in my drafts and I’m posting it as-is. I must’ve been having a bad day at my old job with Verizon when I wrote this. It’s rather amusing today***

If you hate your wireless carrier… then leave!

Same goes for your occupation…

Your relationship…

your family…

your friends…

your bank.

Most likely these things are providing some benefit to you that you apparently cannot live without, so take the time to figure out how to make it work for all parties involved before you blow off steam like a jackass and alienate everyone.

Wireless Carrier: The guy on the other end doesn’t care how many times or how many people you have spoken to before. Just give him/her the facts and trust them to do their job. Cussing and yelling and bitching will get you nowhere. Asking to speak to a supervisor will get you to another rep in the same department that is hell bent on giving you the same answer since you decided to bitch about something unreasonable.

Relationships: You should know this already. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Before you leave this or that person, consider whether or not you are really unhappy or if you are just being unreasonable in your demands. If they asked the same of you, would you give what they are asking? Are you allowing the other person to be the other person, and not some shell of their former self by having them bend to your every whim? Should you be with this person?

If you don’t just get up and leave it’s because you haven’t figured out something better yet. If that is the case, please don’t call your wireless carrier and threaten to leave… call them and proactively try to work out a solution. The person on the other end doesn’t want to take on your garbage(mouth) just as much as you don’t want them to give you any lip about the service (or lack thereof) that you are getting.

Sometimes I just want the hold music…

What is it with telephone customer service these days? Correction: what is it with automated telephone customer service? Must they program it to drone on and on about every single product that the company offers? Including the one that I’m calling to inform them is not working as it should?

I have better things to do than sit on hold, so I attempt to multitask, but being solicited in the most “pleasantly annoying” voice I could imagine impairs my ability to even hear myself think.

Whatever happened to the good ol’ days of being placed on hold to the soothing sounds of Kenny G.?

How I long for those days.

One tough mudder.

I've decided to ramp up my training for Tough Mudder Nor-Cal 2012. The next 54 days will be challenging. Some days will focus on cardio, the others strength training. I'd definitely got to improve my upper body strength if I'm going to take this on (http://toughmudder.com/video) come September 22nd and 23rd.

I feel good about the shape I'm currently in, but I'd like it to show. I'll post my diet and workout routine shortly. I just want to chronicle the last big push leading up to the deadline.

If you'd like to support me please follow the link below to contribute to Wounded Warrior Project on my behalf. My goal is $150. Thank you!

http://www.raceit.com/fundraising/donate.aspx?event=9424&fundraiser=r2910087

EDIT: LOL I did a great job of updating during my training. *rolleyes*

Real men don’t smile.

Yesterday, I received an email informing me that my yahoo! and twitter accounts may have been compromised. Apparently, this was news at the beginning of the month and I glanced it over and disregarded it. There’s no way my account was one of the only 450,000 or so to be hacked. There are millions of users on these networks. What are the odds, really? Apparently, quite favorable.

After reading the message carefully and doing due diligence in validating the email’s source, I realized that my entire online presence could now be in the hands of someone other than myself. No es bueno. So I handled the business of changing my passwords and securing (as best I could) every online account that I thought might be affected. Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr…the list goes on. I don’t want someone else determining how I present myself online to the world.

Which brings me to the title of this post: Why am I not smiling in the majority of my profile pictures? Is it bad to be happy? I see women with far more pictures than the 10 -15 I have up of myself, and yet they have far less incidences of them not smiling than I do (a lot more duck-face though). Searching through friends profiles I find the same patterns. After some careful reflection I came to the conclusion that somewhere along the way in life, I formed the opinion or was led to believe that smiling or indicating happiness in a picture is somehow a sign of weakness or in the eyes of peers, “gay”. What gives?

Where does this come from? Is it such a blow to the straight male ego to look approachable in a picture? Do we think that people will think we are homosexual because we look happy and satisfied with our lives? Since when did happy mean gay? Why is smiling in pictures a decidedly non-hetero male trait? It makes no sense. Maybe just something leftover from adolescence…

In any case, it’s immature and stupid. I don’t need to project an image of toughness to my friends and family. They know my resolve. I don’t need to hide the fact that I enjoy a good time… it’s part of who I am. So today, I’m putting away childish insecurity and updating my online profile picture with a smile. If this somehow makes me less of a man or makes you think less of me, I guess you’ll just have to grin and bear it.