Bizarre - A New Tradition - A New Ride

Today, was another tough work day, and that concludes a tough week. It was a little better than last week, but not by much. The one guy at the office that really knows our department and our software was in my office today, helping me with an issue, and we had a bizarre thing happen to us. Well, we had two or three bizarre things happen, but a couple of them won't make sense to anyone who doesn't understand what we do. That is usually most people. One night after I'd been down here about 3 months, I was hanging around with the girls from the school, they were talking about their students and their jobs, and I was just sitting patiently listening and observing. One of them realized that I was just not participating and said to the others, "Hey, we're really not including Tyler, here so let's talk about something he'd actually have an interest in. So, Tyler, umm, what is it that you do again?" That pretty much sums it up for 95% of people I talk to outside of work. They'd known me for 3 months, and realized they didn't get it. There isn't a real easy way to explain it to anyone either. So, that eliminates two of the odd issues today, but the third one, was just weird. There are three of us working out of the Mitchell office, and one of the others, Carl, is out visiting a client this week, so he wasn't around, so his office is just dark. Well today, the other guy in our office, Jeff, is talking to me, and we hear the phone in Carl's office start working, "Carl, I, I can't hear you." We both looked at each other very puzzled wondering if Carl had come back into the office and we hadn't seen him come in. So, we walked over to his office, and it's dark, and his phone shows that it had started a call. Well, that is certainly odd, since Carl wasn't around to push the answer button. We just aren't sure how that all worked, or why we heard the phone, but it sure did happen. We both just left the office, laughing about it. Mysterious voices, and phones that work on their own. Not sure that was what I signed up for when I started at Martin Group.

Well, the past couple of weekends, I have a chance to start a new "tradition". When I rolled my SUV, I was on my way back to Huron, for a haircut, dinner with my Grandparents, and the 281 Conference Tournament. Well, I only ended up with one of those things happening. So, the past couple of weekends I've been back in Huron to take care of business, and I've been having lunch there with them. It's a mini tradition, but it's been fun. I'll do that again tomorrow when I make it back again to Huron again to pick up my car. Gonna be a good time. I have to stop, because my Grandpa, who I appreciate lots anyway, went to pick up my insurance papers for me today so I could have them tomorrow. Yay for Grandpa!

So, the new ride is coming home with me tomorrow. If you missed it, I've got a 2004 Pontiac Grand Prix, dark gray, and it's nice. I'm looking forward to that. I'd originally planned to just leave it in Huron to have the remote start put in, but when I called to set up an appointment for that, I was told that I would basically have to have a new starter put in because the start system in the 2004 Pontiac's is different from basically all other GM starters. So, that's an extra charge, plus the install charge, and I'm thinking that I'll be starting my car manually until later. It's unfortunate, but going to have to happen for now. I'll get over it though, eventually. The other issue is all the extra things I have to buy to get my after market CD player to work with the Grand Prix, and this is turning more expensive by the day. My recommendation: don't get into an accident, it will be a lot easier on you in the long run, and a lot easier on the bank accounts.

I Knew It!

The past two days leaving work, I did something I figured I'd end up doing at some point. One of my co-workers drives an SUV just like mine used to look. He is gone on a trip this week, and he was picked up from work by one of the other co-workers who went on this same trip. So, the past two days in a row, I've left the building at about 6pm, and have walked toward the blazer to leave. The first day I made it all the way to the back of the blazer before realizing that: A.) I didn't have one anymore, and B.) Even if I did have one, that one wasn't mine. Today, I only made it a few steps before realizing my mistake. At lunch it's not a problem, I go right for the Buick. After work, I still feel like I need to get into the Trailblazer and go home. When I went to see it Saturday and make sure everything was indeed out of it, I was sad that it was going to be gone. But, not long after, I picked out a nice automobile anyway.


This will be my transportation for the next several years (God willing). I had contemplated not getting a vehicle for a while, but I think I went over that before. But here she is, a 2004 Grand Prix GT. Took it for a nice drive, and it's going to be mine this weekend. First order of business - reinstall the auto start! I'll let it stay in Huron for a bit longer if that means not having to go out in the cold again this winter!

Parents in Mexico...I wish I were old enough to Party like that...

First off, I cannot believe these things even float. I'm not good at science, but I think it has to do with displacement or something. I guess the one my parents are on has 3 pools in it. How do you make that float? I wonder how deep of water they have to have before they run aground. I did figure out they cruise at about 20-24 mph. It sounds like my parents made it to somewhere off the coast of Mexico. If you didn't know, they decided to take a cruise for their 30th Wedding Anniversary that we celebrated last May. This was the perfect time for them to get away and do it. I was a little unsure, since dad has a hard time making it to the Black Hills without getting car sick. But, they decided to go anyway. Today, I got an email from my Aunt Roxy, and she said I needed to contact my brother right away. Here was the conversation between me and Trent.

Me: Hey, Aunt Roxy told me to call and check to see if you got the email she sent last night.
Trent: No, I've not had a chance to check it, I'm still in North Dakota.
Me: Well, it looks like we're on our own, mom and dad got booted off the boat.
Trent: Oh? (with no emotion or concern)
Me: Yep, something about taking too many samples from the tequila factory, and causing a scene.
Trent: Oh? (with even less emotion or concern)
Me: Yeah, I guess there in some jail now in some little town in Mexico. We may not see them again.
Trent: Mmm, tough break.
Me: Yeah, anyhow, what kind of auto starter did we have in our vehicles?
Trent: Ultra-start.
Me: That's right! Ok thanks. Have a good one.
Trent: You too.

That's just like my brother. But, I hope mom and dad come home again some day. Looks like it may be more of a permanent vacation, but at least its warm. Before they left, I told them about one of my co-workers who told the story of some friends of hers that took a cruise, and their ship sank. Just up, and sank. They didn't appreciate the timing of that story too much.

"The Buick" - the Tan Beast

As a result of the rollover last weekend, I picked "The Buick" to drive in the absence of my vehicle. We're talking a sweeeeeet 1991 Buick LeSabre with only 299,000 miles. The thing runs amazingly well for a car with this many miles. It's got the GM 3800 engine in it, thus why it's barely broken in, and still running strong. I believe that on our farm, we have close to 650,000 miles on 3 different cars that have that same 3800 engine. It's probably the best, and worst thing GM did in engine design. Great because of reliability, but not good, because the people that drive those cars for that many miles aren't buying new ones. Well, "The Buick", while it's running strong, does concern a driver in winter, because if it's -20. I don't know that I want to be stuck somewhere with no engine power. Therefore, I have gotten a new vehicle (also with a 3800 series III engine) to replace the Tan Beast, and give everyone in my family more piece of mind. More on this coming up later.

So Long to my Trailblazer...

Well, it's officially been sold. Not quite in the way that I'd have liked to have seen it go, but it is no longer mine. This weekend I'll go back to Huron and remove all my personal belongings from her, and send her on her way. If you're wondering, the new owner is my insurance company. With how news travels, I doubt very many of you don't know that I rolled the blazer over on Saturday morning. I was on my way to Huron, and found some black ice, and rolled it in the ditch. I walked away with a sore knee and a fat lip. I'm very, very fortunate. So now, she has been totaled and I'll say my goodbyes this weekend. I do have to say though, my insurance company, Vic Gross Insurance in the Dakotaland Federal Credit Union building, second floor, has been amazingly helpful. I've learned that a poor economy doesn't help you though when you total a vehicle, because part of the process is determining market value for you vehicle. Well, that's not very good right now, but I'm still getting a pretty decent settlement. From what I'm told, it's just good to walk away, the car can be replaced. I have to say that I'd agree.

After most accidents, I've heard (from my brother mainly) that you get quite sore afterwards. I never really did. My knee ached a bit, but I was still called upon Monday evening to play basketball for our squad. They graciously allowed me to come off the bench, but after scoring 6 points in the 4 minutes I played of the first quarter, seeing "limited action" which I'd requested didn't happen. Sore knee and all, I played through it with the help of Advil, and still scored 16 points. It's sad if you can't keep up with a guy with a bum wheel from an accident two days ago, but three people tried, and three people failed. Just making my case for MVP. I wonder if I could collect advertising dollars from this post....

The Results of last Weekend

I'm a bit behind on this one, but I did think that I didn't report on the last weekend of doing my retirement job. First of all, I got there a bit on the late side. It didn't seem to matter much, we got to the court well ahead of game time, but getting to the gym, I had something happen to me that I'd never ever had happen before in my 26 years of living. As I was leaving my aunt's house on the south side of town, and heading north down Main Street, I hit every stoplight possible red. I hit 21st, 18th, 14th, 9th, 5th, 3rd, Market Rd., and Highway 14 all red. The only two I missed were 4th and 2nd, only because they are synced with 5th and 3rd, so if one doesn't get you, the other one probably will. I've never had that happen before, so there went an extra 5 minutes off my arrival time, but I still made it.

The first quarter had me questioning my decision. I was doing fine, calling the game fine, but felt winded and tired already, and still had 7 quarters to go. I spoke with Mr. P, who referees volleyball in his spare time. We are both in agreement that he picked the right sport to referee. He moves a total of 6 feet, all game long. I do sports where we run 80 feet (or 80 yards in soccer) at a time. I told him during a timeout when he walked by how much smarter he was. Anyhow, I did survive just fine, had one controversy that we just skipped over since it was a meaningless JV game, and made the games run quickly. The deal that we would have had to deal with I would have handled properly if we'd have dealt with it, but it would have involved two technical fouls and massive confusion, so we just said it was a wash, no penalty and away we went. I would have dealt with it if it would have been a varsity contest, but it wasn't so we went on with the show.

After the game, I had my customary Valley Burger. It was well worth the work. I also got to see a great game for the boys side. It was quite exciting all the way. After we were done with the evening, I had a few people ask the same question, "You're really giving refereeing up?" It's true, I'm still giving it up on a varsity level. I'll help out again sometime, but I'm still going out. I will, however, keep soccer. While on the floor, I did think to myself how much I missed it. I'm not going to make that mistake with doing soccer games, those will stay.

I'm excited to make my return to the gym again tomorrow, this time in the broadcast booth. I've got the program and am studying up the names already to return to the play by play. 3 games, on 1210 KOKK and online at KOKK.com. We'll see you there!

It may be time to abandon ship....

Well, I'm actually writing in pain. I can no longer feel the tips of my fingers. The desk thermometer tells me it is 50 degrees now, and that's inside the house. My little space heater is plugging away at the impossible task of trying to keep me warm. It's just running on high now, but not making much headway at all. I noticed it this morning when the same little heater ran all night long trying to keep it 70 here in my room. Generally, I can tell when it comes back on after being off for a little while, but last night, it ran pretty much the entire night. I stepped out to use the bathroom at 7am, and felt like I had opened the door to a meat locker. Now I'm on lunch break, wondering if that thermometer might drop below 50 before I head back to work.

We had a call today from a client in Texas, and one of my coworkers asked him what the temp was down there. He said, "It's cold here, it's 25." And our response was, "Really, well, it could be worse, it's 50 degrees colder here..." We could hear him kind of thinking and mumbling, well, that would make it -25. He then came back with a thundering, "AWESOME!" Not quite the word I would have used to describe it.

Well, it's going to have to be it for now. I'm losing feeling closer to my wrists now. It's not a good situation here....we are indeed going down....but not in flames, that would be far to convenient....and far to warm....

CANCELED: Way too far ahead

Nothing gets me a little wound up like when people start canceling things way to prematurely, and screw up an entire evening. Well, I guess my evening wasn't screwed up, I got to spend time with friends and play some games, but I'm used to hitting the hardwood, and they canceled our games tonight by 11am. I wasn't happy when at 2:30, you could see for miles. We don't start until 6:30 at the earliest, so why in the world just jump the gun. Its not like a team had to make a 4 hour trip to play in our league tonight. Didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I did get a good trick in though. Our office sends notices out to other companies when we have bad weather, to tell them we have limited staff in the office to support the software, but we'll handle their problems as quickly as possible. It's a courtesy notice that if we're appearing slow, it's because we aren't staffed fully due to weather. Anyhow, this is due to the fact that I think about 90% of the support people for our software live in Mitchell. Anyhow, our department it not all in Mitchell, our "Team Leader" (Eric and Jess, that's for you!) is out in the Black Hills, and the rest of our group is in Montana. So, there was a notice sent out today that our Mitchell office was expirience very bad weather and was dismissing some of our employees. Our supervisor sent a note to us wondering if we had to leave. He didn't know we all three lived here in town, so travel wasn't an options, but two of us had fun with it anyway. Here are the contents of these emails (paraphrased because all our company email is confidential or something like that)

Dear "Team Leader," we are not wusses, we will all stay. - Carl

Dear "Team Leader," Speak for yourself Carl! I'm really concerned, and the weather here is bad. I'm going to have to go home to make sure my snowblower starts - Jeff

Dear "Team Leader," the reports here in Mitchell are bad on the west side of town (where our office is). The word is that they are going to suspend all snow removal on the east side of main street, where my house is, because the roads keep filling up with snow. They are going to stop travel at noon today on the east part, so I need to leave. - Tyler

Needless to say, Carl was not popular. After I sent mine, our "Team Leader" called me to make sure I wasn't serious. It was kind of funny, but I guess our "Team Leader" was looking out for us and doing his job, which does make us appreciative. (Eric and Jess, my "Team Leader" count was 7! I'll try to do better next time.)

Do Retired People Always Stay Retired?

Is anyone else completely annoyed by people who end up retiring from something (Brett Favre) only to come back because they just couldn't retire? I hate that. If you're going to quit, then retire. If you're not, then don't. Seem pretty simple. Then again, simple things don't always come out that simple. I guess some people would say that I've fallen into that category, after I agreed to referee a lower level game this weekend. Well, I'm going to put everyone's mind at ease. I'm still retired for "being a licensed basketball official," but I do believe in my post about retiring that I did mention doing some lower level games here and there. I'm not sure if you enjoy something, you can ever quit doing it for good. Alot of people have done a job they loved for several decades, and retired, but kept doing a part of that job, or doing it part time. I feel that's more what I'm taking up with the basketball refereeing here. So those that have accused me of not really retiring, there is the justification. Good, I was able to save myself from being in the same category as Brett Favre. I hear he's going to take weeks to decide if he's going to "retire" again. Some people just always need to have the spotlight it seems. Speaking of which, come see me back on the court, this Saturday in Huron.....

Most Interesting Phone Call Yet

I have one on most of the other guys at work now. I got two calls in the past two days that were quite random, after not having any random ones my first 3 months on the job. The first one was a call from a man in Florida, who was looking for support for a website. Well, we have support, and we have some website components, so after his first line, I thought he meant to be calling.

"Yeah, this is _______ from ABC Data, and I'm having trouble logging into your DHCF website. It says I have an invalid user name and password, could I get some help here, because I'm not quite sure where I'm entering the wrong data here."

Now, I admit, there are several parts to some of the calls I take that are quite complex that I don't quite understand everything yet since I'm still quite new. I usually pick up key words thought about what they are saying, like Facility, or Circuit, Phone line, cable or words like that. This one, I didn't understand one word. it sounded more like this to me, "jalkj f slttf lsladk fljs lbnredf lkjsdf lfdskjf flksjf lffdies rusie xmvor sk folis."

So, now I have to try to make it sound like, since this guy is one of our clients, like I'm going to be able to help him. "Ok sir, well, ummm, let me see here, lets start this again. Where did you say you were from the starting point?" He could tell at this point that I sounded somewhat confused, almost like I had no clue what I was talking about, because I didn't! So he said again he was trying to log into the DHCF website, and then asked if this was the support line for that website. So I told him, "No, you have a support line, but we support Martin Group's Oasis Facilities Management Software." He was apologetic, and the call ended with me telling him I hoped he could find the company he was looking for. One of my co-workers was laughing in the next office, and he said, "Yeah, I didn't understand a word he said from the beginning of that either. You would think though, that when the automated voice picked up that says 'Welcome to Martin Group's Oasis FM Support' that it would trigger something that says I might have dialed the wrong number." That reminds me of that little Pizza Hut mishap a few years back, with the lady calling the Huron Pizza Hut from Mitchell (not knowing she had the Huron Pizza Hut, other then the fact that we answered the phone, "Huron Pizza Hut, can we help you?") and ordering $105 worth of pizza that was then undeliverable, since she was 50 miles away. Hey, if I ever need a good prank.....

Things I miss alot....

This was a topic that came up at a get together I was at last night. Somehow, the topic of soccer came up, and took me all the way back to August and September. I went back to look at some things related to the soccer season.


This one was a flashback to the long road trip to the Huron game; one team that a big rivalry has stemmed from, as you would naturally think since we shared the same town. One other one that I loved getting more into was the Mitchell Christian game. It was a big rivalry when I played, and I do kind of hope it returns to that now that they've revived the soccer program down here. Several people have already asked if I was going to take up coaching down here, with a rival?? I love that question. The answer now is, "I'm not telling." There is something appealing, from a coaching standpoint, to going to a 1-12 team to help them rebuild.

Seeing the season results, and the photos have made me really wish that I could coach again as early as spring. I'm not sure that it's going to happen, but you never know where I might show up as an assistant, or even a head coach. Originally I had hoped that I could referee while I could keep up with the game, and then go to coaching after that. I'm actually now hoping that I can return to the sideline as a coach sooner then that. I've given up on refereeing basketball to focus on soccer, now I'm deciding if I want to give up refereeing to try to focus on coaching. I'm not sure I want to take that step yet, but I do want to return to that sideline soon!

The Store for me

About a week ago, I went to Menards. As I grow older, stores that like that become way more cool. Get some tools, and some things that the house needs, and I actually find it fun. I was picking some things up for the bathroom in our little house here that make life easier. We had a towel bar in the bathroom at one time, but by the time my roommate and I moved in here, it had fallen off the wall. So, that needs to be put up along with a toilet paper roll holder, and a hand towel ring. I picked up these items at my trip to Menards and kept the separate receipt for it so I could get reimbursed form the land lord. Well, I didn't know that they'd already bought these things for us. I still had them packaged, so decided to return them today. I get to Menards thinking the receipt was still in the bag. I walked up the the good looking girl at the customer service counter (stop getting excited here mom, she was too old for me) and asked to return items, then realizing that I didn't have the receipt. I asked if there was a way I could still return them, and she said yes if I'd used a credit card. We took my card over to this machine, ran it though, and it told me all the purchased I'd made at Menards in the past 30 months. I picked which day I visited, and boom, it printed a new receipt. With that, I was able to put the items back on my card, and got all my money back. So those like me who lose receipts constantly, shop at Menards, it makes the losing the receipt and still being able to return items very easy.

Ringing in the New Year....Mennonite Style

We stuck to many of the standard Mennonite traditions in celebrating New Years this year. The only thing we missed, was playing some moon. That was the only thing more Mennonite that we could have done. We sat around, and literally visited for 5+ hours. I can't speak for everyone else, but I felt the group we had meshed so well, we spent a majority of those hours laughing quite hard. I cried twice from laughing during the evening. The stories that we could tell, and they just got better and better as we went along. And for the record, I did stop some people at the door and make them show invitations. And yes, we did make it to the New Year. I told you, it's an exclusive group that is invited to this party. The food of course was excellent. Since most of you are not invited to this party, you don't know what your missing from Rodney's Ribs here. This food is recognized though by many as the cream of the New Years Crop. We've already had requests to go to much larger parties to prepare the ribs. This invite included a party with, more than likely, hundreds of people, a live band, and lots of extras. We appreciate the recognition this gives Rodney's Ribs, but we will keep it to a smaller, private party (at least for now).