Love to all. Even you.

Something strange is happening to me.

It’s not the gray suddenly sprinkling through my beard.
It’s not the fact that my last few crushes have been on women 15-20 years older than me.
It’s not that I’m launching into yet another economically challenging adventure.

It’s that I no longer enjoy seething over perceived bad behavior of others.

I had a couple things happen this week: an employee was disrespectful and inappropriate, a client was/is seriously delinquent… a couple other things… all of which used to be the kind of thing that I would obsess over: Did I respond correctly? Did I get the last word? Did I WIN?

This isn’t to say that I don’t care about these things. I do. But I care less about the latter two then I ever have before. I even let the employee get the last word in, obnoxious as it was. And I didn’t pull out the Patent-Pending Rich@Championable Written and Verbal BeatDown Stick. I stated my point and that was it.

Bonus: None of these things kept me up at night, and none of ‘em are bugging me too much today.

This is kind of huge for me. My family LOVES to seethe. My father LIVES for it. He stays furious for days… even months at a time. And he can hold a grudge for decades. This is no exaggeration, and it’s sad. My father defines people in two categories: good and evil… and you can go from one to the other instantly and irrevocably.

The thing is: most people aren’t good or evil. It’s not that simple, and thank goodness for that. But what’s more important: I seriously doubt anybody out there obsesses over their little contacts with me… so what the hell am I obsessing over, anyway? My energies are better spent on work, family, and annoying the crap of those I actually love.

Love to all. Even you, the guy on the 5:30am train with the super-loud headphones.

I put my head down at 7:30pm last night… I wanted to make sure that if I got up super-early to give my youngest his asthma medicine, I wouldn’t be walking around looking like I just came off a 72-hour speed run. Smart Richie! Good boy!

Actually, I’ve never done speed of any kind. Back in my teens and twenties, I was about 379% more energetic than I am now… and I’m pretty damn peppy as it is. Also, I was radically unhealthy: my standing pulse rate at age 20 was 108. And my blood pressure was once measured at 170 over 120. You know the saying “speed kills?” Well, in my case, it would have… right away.

My friends used to give me bong hits for my birthday, just to calm me down.

Drugs I have tried: Mescaline, LSD, THC, Psylocibine (sp?) Mushrooms, Alcohol, Nicotine, Caffeine.

Drugs I have tried in the last 12 years: Alcohol, THC, Nicotine, Caffeine.

Drugs I have tried in the last few years: Caffeine.

Funny: I had no intention of spelling out my drug history in this post. But now you know. Hope we can still be friends.

Love to all. Even you, the folks who might need to give up some things they don’t want to give up. Yet.

Whenever my youngest has an upper respiratory problem it usually triggers his asthma. So last night, we had to use albuterol (via nebulizer) twice. He’s such a trooper, lying there half-awake and keeping the mouthpiece just so, hugging his Teddy Bear.

Poor little guy.

Now that he’s back to sleep, what to do? Play Madden 2006? Take the earlier train? Oh, the possibilities!

Love to all.

A little while ago, Maggie told me that I can’t come upstairs until she tells me it’s cool to do so… Something present-ish is going on. However, much time has passed, and I think she might have forgotten that I’m in the basement.

So this is a good opportunity for me to say “Merry Christmas” to my Christian pals, and “yo, yo, yo!” to everyone else. For me, this is a season of joyous capitalist splendor and some real thanks for the grace of my life.

Love to all.

I’ve had it.

DreamHost is made up of the nicest bunch of folks to ever run a fairly bad ISP. On the surface, their offerings are fabulous. Lots of disk space, unlimited domains, cheap pricing… but most importantly, they (for a little while) created a successful veneer of People Who Care.

Of course, if they were really that concerned with their users, they would have phone support. Or they would answer questions posted to their support site in a timely manner.

Or they would be able to keep email running for a whole month without major problems or outages.

Shit.

Here’s an excerpt of their tech responses: “We understand your dissatisfaction with email recently, and we’re really embarassed about it. We’re trying so hard to get these machines to work properly, but it seems every time we nail down one problem, another crops up.”

So I did some research, consulted some friends/experts, and HostGator came up.

As of today, all 20 of my domains are on HostGator. I’ll let you know how it goes. I can say though, that their equipment speed, tech support, and management tools blow the doors off of DreamHost.

I’ll keep you posted.

Love to all. Even you, Dreamhost.