We emerge upon the world.

People, you’re now among a god!

the stang compound is disintegrating rapidly. mother said if dustin moves away we’re all kicked out, including this friendly author. so, i need a place to hang my hat. anyone out there need to adopt a 26 year old vagrant? I have no money, but i can cook and wash dishes.

i’m a quiet masturbater and i don’t take up much space. if you have a horse, goats, chickens or dogs i am well suited to handle/slaughter/bury them should the need arise.

also, should you need any plumbing, electric or carpentry work done i can do that for the low low price of a semi-comfortable couch.

you can reach me at home, or after that one of the wonderful kenosha county homeless shelters throughout the winter.

Bill and I decided that the most annoying cooking shows could be improved via T-Pain’s signature voice synthesizer, but it would be better if T-Pain had his own cooking show.

Each week T-Pain would host a show that would essentially be a 20 minute long music video. Complete with guest rappers and scantily clad women to dance around him as he cooked simple, delicious meals that you can feed to your family on a budget(not counting the amount of Champagne needed to pour on the dancers in the kitchen). T-Pain would do the cooking while providing the backing track while the featured rapper laid down the ingredient list and procedure that would not only give extra street cred to Arroz con Pollo, but would have his lady dancers something to do as they give him the necessary equipment and ingredients while he cooked up a tasty meal sure to please even the most finicky of eaters. Of course, the show would end with the credits rolling over a silent T-Pain as he enjoyed the food while the women did the dishes in string bikinis.

Since most tv cooks have lame catch phrases like yum-o and bam!; T-Pain’s shawty, shawty aaahhh-ooohhh-yeaahhhhh, would be a welcomed break from the pack. Also I hate Guy Fieri, Rachel Ray and Anthony Bourdain. Those guys are assholes.

The first day of basement cleaning Andy and I went to Wal-Mart for supplies. Since I was essentially broke we only got the essentials. It’s moldy down there so the facemasks were a must. Without garbage bags there’s really no point to cleaning. And without beer it would be pretty much impossible to lure unsuspecting friends down those rickity stairs. But that’s not what this post is about, it’s about meeting people. Andy and I made a new friend that day. In the last few minutes of our shopping adventure we were forced to wait in line for quite a while due to who knows what happening with the register. During that wait an older gentleman struck up a conversation with us. It started with “I’ll tell you what, NEVER get married. I was married twenty eight years before I got out and I’ve never been happier.”. He then proceeded to show us why he was so happy, using his cracked moto razr. There were many photos of his nude girlfriend and offers to have her jump out a cake ensued. We finally made it to the cashier and ran from the store like children fleeing a haunted house because we were afraid he’d see what car we were driving and follow us to hang out. The rest of the day cleaning basement didn’t come close to making us feel as dirty as that one small conversation.

Making basement progress. Andy, Al, Calvin and my brother Shawn came over to help clean the basement. You can see the before photos with the occasional progress photo in the Picasa Gallery. They accomplished so much it almost made my uncomfortable. I was hoping for mild slow progress in a small area and these maniacs went to town on it. I ended up with a patch of bare concrete that put all previous efforts to shame. There’s a video that shows time lapse progress of our work. That’s all I’ve got for now. Studying is going well enough but not as well as it could be. Hope everyone is having an excellent 2010 so far.

I have a new years resolution. Instead of resolving to avoid fast food or do ten pushups every day or whatever weird failed resolution I could have made, I decided to resolve not to be bored. There are a lot of things demanding my time. I quite often choose to attend to none of them. This results in me wasting massive quantities of time rewatching television shows or relaxing to a movie when I could be doing something productive. So far I’ve cleaned a bunch of random shit in the basement and finished a bunch of studying just by not wasting time doing nothing. I have an awesome photo of my sweet new door desk as promised. More posts to follow regarding my freakish productivity experiment. I’m also spending a lot of time on instructables.com. That site is the best. Lots of cool projects to read about. I’m thinking of building concrete countertops and a desk.

Door + Storage totes = desk

With our inner children. Or with goals. This is supposed to be the future or something. Whatever.
Like many posts I’ve written, this one was born primarily because sleepless night and overwhelming boredom got together and had a bastard blog post baby. Might as well get the words out of my head. Maybe then I can sleep.

So here it is, the 2010 Bill Ball update.

I stopped drinking energy drinks. Those of you that don’t work with me may not know that I have spent the last two years drinking an energy drink every day. Sometimes more than one, sometimes mixed with with other caffeinated drinks. I didn’t even feel energized but they did a damn fine job of keeping withdrawal headaches at bay. Unless it was a weekend where I may have been a few minutes late feeding the monkey. In any case I found some fantastic TEA that tastes good and comes in inexpensive gallon jugs. I would brew my own but for some reason our tap water turns every tea I brew into cloudy liquid shit. I like tea anyway, I’m really glad I was able to get off the stimulants before my heart seized and you all got to see a blog post about how I hopped myself up so thoroughly I died on the toilet while mumbling and shaking. Pomegranate Rock Star, I loved you and I’ll miss you, but I like being alive.

I’m losing weight.
Since starting with my current employer I have gone from 276 to 212. Primarily by abstaining from soda. It worked for other people we know and it works for me. It’s probably the weirdest thing I can think of, like anyone I backslide and there are weeks where I do end up eating out and getting soda to go with it. I have a weakness for coke with lemon. During these weeks I can see the weight gain. Not in a self conscious standing in front of a mirror kind of way. More in a “why don’t these fucking pants fit anymore” way. For women those bonbons might go straight to the hips, for me soda goes right to the belly. I had set a goal when I was hired of being 190. Upon reaching the goal I was going to buy myself a sweet motorcycle jacket as a reward. For now I think I’ll just be happy the sleep apnea and acid reflux have gone away.

I’m striving to be less of an idiot on several fronts.
I’ve started studying again. I haven’t really achieved anything certification wise in two years. I could have been soaking up training dollars and padding my resume but instead I chose to stew where I was and haven’t achieved anything. NO MORE! I’m done with that. I’ve spent quite of few of my unused hours working through some computer based training courses. In a few weeks I’ll be ready for a test that I took a class for a year and a half ago. Once that’s out of the way we’ll see what else comes up.
I’m also trying to learn more about personal finance. Some people are penny smart pound stupid. Others pound smart penny stupid. I’m just plain stupid with money. I end up wondering what the fuck I’m doing and what I should be doing and just feeling lost. Relief is only a payday away so this can go on for quite a while. In my case, my entire life so far. So I’ve started contributing to both my 401k and a flexible health spending account. These are biting into my usual money fix so it’s interesting learning to not end up broke. Mainly because it’s stupid and embarrassing to end up too broke to see a movie or eat lunch. Yes, those things have really happened to me in the last year, more than once.

The big point of this post is that all of my progress and goals can be augmented by simply using some of my available time to work toward furthering one or more goals. Insomnia is an excellent source of free time. So I’m going to try and use my time more effectively. My first real project for the year is a study/work space. So I’m going to clean a few square feet of basement and slap together a ramshackle desk. Photos will follow, mainly because I like building crap and I think it will be fun to build a desk. I have plans for a concrete slab desk but for now an old door laid across some junk will probably do the job. I would be studying but I called in today and I’m burned out on studying and just wish I could fall asleep.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I wish you all a productive 2010.

saw this and thought it was interesting….hope you enjoy it too

video 1 of 3

video 2 of 3

video 3 of 3