OK, so others may call it football. Whatever you might call it I played it today, but unfortunately I had a good time. After church we went to the park (ironically called Bible Park, named after James A. Bible) and played with several families. We had a blast and Abby enjoyed the swings and what not. Jessica enjoyed the company of the other gals, but I had the most fun playing foot-cer.

At one point in time I took a ball to the face as I was trying to head-butt the ball. It went lower than I expected and so now on top of my red (sunburned) skin I’ve got a bruise on my face that makes me look like my wife beats me.

I can’t wait to do it all again. This was a blast and I loved the exercise. I was pretty well winded the first half of the first game, but I started to catch my stride by the second half. In the end we won the first game we were playing (4-on-4) and I scored a couple goals. The second game however was quite different, we got spanked but had fun doing so. Everyone should play soccer, with the exception of people without feet.

If you’re like my wife, you’re married to me. In which case I’m either Mormon or a patriarch. Or, if you’re like my wife in other ways you like Alias, the show about a female CIA agent who was secretly tricked several seasons ago into thinking that she worked for the agency under a top-secret part of the agency that was not really the agency. If you can’t quite follow that I’d restate it this way: the show’s about treachery, computer technology that could not possibly work, and off-screen romance. It’s like a soap opera without the return of actors from the dead. Oh, wait, there are returning actors from the dead in Alias, too. Oh, and they punch, kick and perform unwanted dental work on one another.

Anyway, Alias is having its last episode tonight and Brian and Jillia are getting together with Jessica to watch the last episode. Don’t even think about calling around 8:00 PM or later tonight unless its an emergency or you’re the executives from ABC calling to say that you’re not moving Alias to start in January 2005. Actually, I thank you for this since I’ll get my wife back on Sunday nights 😉

Ella was born last night at 8:45 PM and is a gorgeous little girl. Baby boys, there are going to be a lot of cute little girls to flirt with, but I must ask that the girls keep the standards high. The higher your standards are the higher the guys will work to meet them.

Also, I’m going to try to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress soon (it’s supposed to be a quick upgarde), but if I screw it up then the site could go down for a bit. I’m going to back everything up beforehand (boy have I done some fun things without backing up, shame on me).

I’ve updated the look for the Digital Research & Development site using my new logo. The Style is called Montan. Because the new logo has a mountain on it I decided to go with a name that matched. Montan is our friends, the Black’s, son’s name. I suppose that I’ll have to create a theme for their other two boys now, too.

Let me know if you have any problems with it. It’s got a few CSS hacks that I hope to clean up, but what can you do? I’ll probably convert this blog to look just like it for consistency’s sake.

To make our move here more annoying our ‘friends’ at Qwest took my DSL connection less than serious and it took me two weeks to get connected and have a modem. With that in mind I had installed AOL 9.0 (you know, the one that is an action star in the commercials?) on my laptop to have some sort of connectivity during my wait.

This morning I called AOL and told them to cancel the account here’s a brief run down of the ‘conversation’:

Donald: Thank you for calling America Online today. How can I help you have a better online experience?

Me: Actually, I called to have you cancel my account.
[details of confirming I’m who I say I am and so he can pull up my account]

Donald: Sir did you know that AOL has [spiel read from screen about the many wonderful things AOL offers]?

Me: No, I just want to cancel my account.

Donald: Sir, I’m going to give you two more free months and you won’t be billed until August second.

Me: No, I just want to close my account, AOL has nothing I want. I’ve got a broadband connection.

Donald: Sir, did you know that AOL for Broadband can enhance your connection speed by seven times?

Me: No it can’t, please just unsubscribe me.

Donald: Sir, with the AOL for Broadband package you get enhanced [blah, blah, blah] with a special keyboard for AOL for Broadband users. [Note, I just purchased a $99.00 ergonomic wireless keyboard and mouse, I don’t want a cheap AOL keyboard]

Me: How many more steps does AOL want you to go through before I can just cancel my account because I’d like to just close the account. If there’s one more step I’m going to ask to speak to your manager.

Donald: Sir, our managers are in a meeting right now.

Me: Then I’d just ask for one of them to call me back unless you can cancel my account.j

Donald: OK sir, I’ll just need to confirm the following things…
[conversation continued in the direction I had hoped for, the account is now supposedly closed]

Why does it take so much work to get unsubscribed from their service that promises it doesn’t require a credit card (which I had to provide just to use the trial period)? Why do they behave like the freaking MOB? I hate using automated systems when I call but AOL should switch to one so I don’t have to argue with a guy who’s job is to make my life miserable. AOL, if anyone there reads this: please change your policies here so that people don’t hate you more than they already do!

I know you’ve got a business but the attitude of your employee on the phone made me so mad I’m writing about it here. Consider better business practices as a good thing… the world will thank you for it.

Sorry for the poor state of this blog’s layout as I have been distracting myself with other projects for the last week (actual client work, I know, I know – who’s more important blog readers or clients?). Last night I stayed up until Midnight and imported all of the old blog’s content into this blog (It was SO easy because WordPress has an RSS file importer, and it didn’t care if my RSS was well formed, which was good because that saved me a lot of time). If you look back into the archives you’ll see that they go back quite some time. You can also comment on the old blog entries. Oh, and if you find anything that’s not quite done it may have imported some entries that weren’t quite done.

Tonight we had the Matthew’s over and really enjoyed the time with them. Their two daughters were great fun and Abby enjoyed their company. Darby played and played with Abby and Hadley wasn’t sure what to do with such a crazy girl as our little princess. Abigail’s rambunctious and Hadley is more reserved so I think it took a while for them to get comfortable with one another.

Abby scraped her knee for the first time (to my knowledge) while playing outside, but this was OK until bedtime when she whined and whimpered as Jessica cleaned up the ‘wound’ and put a (Sponge Bob) band-aid on it.

Josiah and I had a good time chatting and then Brian White happened to be walking the dog and so he stopped in and we had fun all of us together. Jillia is having regular contractions now and so they may have a little bundle of Joy (although it is possible that it could be a bundle of Dawn as well) shortly.

No, I’m not talking about Iraq, I’m not even talking about gangsta rap. I’m even ignoring issues like cartoon violence [which is surely the reason that I chased my brother with a hatchet as a 10 year old, it wasn’t my fault]. I’m talking about Allergy Relief. My allergies have been almost completely missing since I wen to Adam Tomasetti, an applied kenesiologist. However, Singulair does something that goes directly against the Prime Directive. It blocks Leukotrienes.

What the heck? Do you sit around cursing Latrines? I don’t. And when John and Jane Doe are at home dealing with their generic allergies are they cursing Lukeskywalker? I think not.

Merk needs a new marketing strategy.