25+ Random Things About Me (From Facebook)

1) I was born in Evansville, Indiana. I consider it a good place to be FROM. I joke that my parents found the hole in the fence when I was young enough to not have been tainted by being born there.

2) I have lived in Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Washington state, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and Wisconsin.

3) My accent is a strange mix of Wisconsin and Southern.

4) I have lived in St. Louis, Missouri 4 different times in my life, 78-84, 94, 96, and 2001-02. When people ask me where I am from I usually say St. Louis, though I have actually spent more time in Wisconsin than any other state.

5) Despite the harsh winters and short summers, Wisconsin is by far my favorite place to live. I will live the rest of my life, die, and be buried here. I cannot pinpoint exactly what I love about Wisconsin, it is likely a combination of friendly people, low crime, great schools, 4 seasons, and many other little things that just add up. I feel more at home here than anywhere else.

6) I have owned about 10 different motorcycles in my life, but probably rode them less than 5,000 miles total. My daughter Delaney says I only like motorcycles that are broken. There is a lot of truth to that. I enjoy working on them as much, maybe more, than actually riding them.

7) I have been a licensed pilot since 1988, and earned an instrument rating in 2006. I started flying aerobatics last summer.

8) I have started building 5 different airplanes, but sold them all before completing them.

9) I hate the prefixes "ex-" and "step-". I prefer to call Janelle my first wife, not ex-wife. Halle is my daughter, not my step-daughter. I firmly believe that once you are family you are always family. I encourage my family to continue their relationship with Janelle, and vice-versa. This has mostly worked out just fine.

10) My parents divorced after 37 years of marriage. They are both much happier now and we are all very happy for them.

11) I drink very little, usually only on New Years Eve. I probably don't drink a 6 pack the rest of the year combined.

12) When I was young I wanted to be a police officer. This lasted all through high school, I was in the Charlotte Police Explorers for many years. I still often think that I should have done that instead of getting into programming. Usually only during periods of unemployment :)

13) My Grandpa Bill was and always will be my hero. My dad is a very close second.

14) My dad and I are very close now, but we had a pretty rough relationship when I was a kid and teenager.

15) After high school I lived with a very rough group of friends. We (myself included) had some pretty nasty drug habits. Most of them are now dead or in prison. In the end, this experience somehow made me a better person.

16) I enjoy home remodeling, even though I often get very frustrated and cuss a lot when working on projects.

17) I only buy cars from GM, Ford or Chrysler. I will never buy a foreign car, even if they are made here. However, I have owned a couple of Porsche's just because I love them.

18) I prefer pickup trucks to just about everything else, except Mustangs and Corvettes.

19) I do not, and will not, shop at Walmart. I think they are an evil company and refuse to give them any of my business. My wife disagrees.

20) I am a recovering Republican. I voted for Obama this past year, the first time I ever voted for a democrat. I still think Reagan is the best president we ever had.

21) I am a perfectionist in almost everything I do. This often gets me into trouble. I just believe there is a right way and a wrong way to do something and cannot stand mediocrity.

22) I think Windows Vista is a steaming turd, but love the beta of Windows 7. Go figure.

23) I will not buy or use technology that uses DRM (Digital Rights Management). If a CD, game or music download has DRM, I skip it. If I buy something I expect it will always work and don't like to be bothered or harassed by my music player, DVD player, or computer.

24) I am agnostic, not an atheist. I simply do not know if God exists, and quite frankly, neither do you. But that is why they call it faith, right? So I am lacking faith, but not morals or scruples.

25) I am married to my very best friend in the whole world. I consider myself a very lucky man. I have a nice home, a lovely wife, and 3 great daughters. Everyone is healthy and happy. I consider it my greatest life goal to make sure I take care of them. A great man once said that life is not about what you take out of it, it is about what you leave behind.

BONUS

26) I am not rich, and have never been rich. But I have been poor. Trust me, being middle-class is just fine.

27) My favorite motorcycle is the Harley-Davidson Softail FX-STD, though I have never owned one. My favorite of the ones I have owned is the Suzuki VS1400 Intruder. I wish I had never sold it.

28) My all time favorite car is the Ferrari 308 GTSI. I of course have never owned one, nor driven one.

29) My granddad served under General Patton in World War 2 as a tank driver. He did not talk to anyone much about his experiences during the war until a few years before his death. He told me a lot one night while we were watching the move "Patton". Pretty horrible stuff. My dad remembers him waking up screaming in the night when he was a child. He told me that night that he had killed many German soldiers, but the only thing that haunted him all those years was having to shoot a young boy that was going to blow up his tank. He never shook that memory.

30) My Grandpa Bill was the finest man that I ever knew. He was the son of an alcoholic father and both of his parents died when he was very young. He was raised by friends of the family. Despite this beginning, he grew up to be a man that did not drink or smoke, worked very hard for very little money, and raised 2 kids and supported my grandma when she went through some tough mental issues. He never faltered or failed and was always smiling and happy, at least on the outside. He taught me how to drive, play poker, cuss, and shoot a gun. He loaned me money for my first car and my pilot training, and would not allow me to pay him back even though I tried. He was the best grandpa a bunch of us kids could ask for and we all miss him dearly.

31) My dad is also a hell of a good man. I did not understand it when I was a kid why he worked so hard and so long. It seemed like he wasn't around that much, but in reality he was. He had to work very hard to provide the kind of life he wanted for his family, and I had a very good life growing up. I can see this now, though I did not see it then. I understand now what I didn't back then.

32) I think King Kong is the best movie "monster" ever created, but Godzilla is a very close second.

33) My favorite author is Dan Brown, and favorite book is "Angels and Demons". I cannot wait for the movie, May 15th at a theater near you!

34) Other than computer programming books, I read very little, and almost never for pure enjoyment.

35) I think True Blood is the best TV show ever made. Californication is also good, and I love "My Name is Earl".

36) I wish Hollywood would make more G-rated movies. I also wish Missy and I had more time to see R rated ones.

37) I have never seen Star Wars beginning to end, and have never watched a complete episode of Star Trek, much to the dismay of my computer programming friends.

38) I am a master of C, C++ and C#. I also know PHP, Perl, and x86 assembly language. I can program in Visual Basic too, but usually don't admit to it. I consider it a beginners language, and have little (professional) respect for people who making a living out of it. At some point you have to take off the training wheels, even if you fall flat on your face a few times.

39) I hate creating web sites/pages. I can do it, and can do it well, but I hate it, truly despise it.

40) I write too much, like 40+ answers to 25 Random Things About Me :-)

Bye Bye Charter

On Friday I noticed the headline of the local Madison newspaper said that Charter Communications (our cable, Internet and telephone provider) is almost $7 billion in debt and may be filing for bankruptcy. The primary investor, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, may also be looking to sell the company. I could not help but crack a little smile. I feel bad for the people that work there, but I would not miss Charter at all, they are near the top of my list of companies that I truly hate. They do literally nothing right, or not well enough. They are a television company that has no clue about HD, provide Internet access to the entire city using a single DNS server that often goes down, and generally have way overpriced services because they are a virtual monopoly here.

The DVR (Digital Video Recorder) they offer is pathetic, full of ads while you are trying to find a show to watch or record, service that is flaky (especially during football games for some reason), and has a very small 160GB hard drive. The machine is always complaining that it is full and telling me to delete some shows. This in a day when 2TB (terabyte) drives can be had for less than $100. There is just no excuse for this level of incompetence. When your business is TV, you had damn sure better do it very well. So with half-baked TV, they branched out into Internet service and telephone, which is only marginally better than their TV service.

The icing on the cake came when I opened the latest bill from them on Friday, $255. It used to be $197, which is a lot but included TV, Telephone and Broadband Internet, so it was sort-of worth it. When I called their customer service I was told that my 6 month promotional pricing had expired and this was the new price. The guy offered to put together another similar package for me, but the price was still much more than we previously paid. The bill also included 2 DVR's, though we only have one. Last month I returned an old SD receiver for a HD receiver, which is supposed to be $5/month. The person there much have entered it as a HD DVR, because they charged me $30 for it. The "customer service" guy that I spoke to insisted that I must have 2 DVR's and could not correct the bill. To straighten this out I will have to go to the Charter office on the other side of Madison.

Well I will be visiting their office next week for sure, when I return all of this equipment and cancel my Charter services. I contacted TDS and have scheduled an installation of their telephone and DSL service, with DISH Network satellite TV. The DSL will be a little slower than Charter, but still fast enough. The TV service should be a LOT better than Charter and their DVR is also much more capable and modern. I locked into a 2-year agreement with them for about $130/month, roughly half of what Charter is now charging me.

Some companies are so poorly run that they deserve to go out of business. Circuit City was one of them, Charter is another. I hope they do fail because they priced themselves right out of the market and have been totally and completely beaten by their competition.

Kentucky Ice, Windows 7, and Remodeling

This has been a busy week around the Osborne house. Last weekend I installed the beta of Windows 7 on my Media Center (DVR) computer and it worked great. So well in fact, that I also installed it on my home development computer, which is also working great. After totally hating Windows Vista (other than Media Center), it is refreshing to see Microsoft making some great improvements as they work closer to the next version of Windows. Windows 7 is much faster than Vista, and quite possible even faster than Windows XP, so far so good.

My family in Western Kentucky and Southern Indiana got hit hard by the big ice storm and have been without power for 5 days now. Those in Indiana are okay now, but my dad in KY is still without power. After not being able to contact him for 2 days I almost drove down to KY myself on Friday, but they were able to call just before I was going to leave. I planned to take them a generator, gasoline and other stuff. Instead, Missy and I were able to locate a generator for them in Champaign, IL and bought it yesterday at a Menards in Madison. My dad is going to drive the 4 hours today to get it, and then 4 hours back home. They have heard that it may be up to 3-4 weeks before they have electricity.

On the house front, I finished painting the upstairs bathroom yesterday, reinstalled the wood trim, a new toilet, replaced the electrical outlets and switches, and installed a new sink drain. Today I need to install the new shower doors and the bathroom will be finished. There are many more little jobs to do as well, but the house is looking very nice now.