Yep, it’s over, it’s all over….

………..

………..

………..

for this link.

New link.

See you over there.

*turns off the lights*

(Tuesday night…as imagined in a wrestling ring…)

JR: King, Obama and McCain are battling it out for the President-Elect title!

It is a fierce race…

King: Obama just won Ohio! My god, McCain is down. Cover, two, kickout! It’s not over yet.

JR: McCain coming back with lefts and rights! Mostly rights, he’s a conservative! Sometimes! TEXAS TO McCain!

King: McCain with the MCSTUNNER! We have a new champion…2, kickout.

JR: Obama gathering steam….OBAMA WON CALIFORNIA! McCain is in bigtime trouble.

(Obama executes the Rock Bottom.)

JR and KING: BARACK BOTTOM!

JR: With GAAAWD AS MY WITNESS, MCCAIN MAY BE BROKEN IN HALF! Cover, two, THREE~! UnBELIEVABLE, KING~!

(DING DING DING DING).

Announcer: HERE IS YOUR WINNER….AND THE NEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW PRESIDENT ELECT OF AMERICA, BAAAAAAAAARACK OBAMA!

JR: This is historic, King! The first black man to ever, ever hold the title of President!

King: I can’t believe my eyes, JR! What a moment! Who would thought two years ago he would be standing tall as the President of these United States?

(Barack poses on the top rope with the Presidental-Elect title as the crowd goes wild.).

JR: Our congratulations to Barack Obama, but McCain gave him one hell of a fight.

King: Indeed, JR, no shame in losing this fight.

Heh…the crazy areas my mind will go to. Congrats to Obama. Time to see if he’s up to the promises he made to us….

Hey yo! My dad is okay…out of the hospital. Will need chemo then surgery, though. Bleh to that.

You may have noticed that there’s an election tomorrow. Just possibly. In spite of my infrequent humorous shots at our current president, no one (rightfully) attaches “political pundit” to my name. But it’s a pretty important election, especially after the shitball that has been the last few years.

The first woman VP or the first (half) black president in history. Either way we go, a first is to be had. That historic ticket will shape the path of the Iraq war and it’s 10 billion/month price tag. The path out of the current economic crisis. The path to dealing with our energy dependence.

There’s a lot of weight resting on the shoulders of whoever emerges out of tomorrow the “winner”. I don’t envy Obama or McCain that responsibility. And it’s a whole world’s worth.

Does Obama’s message of hope and change work risking putting one of the least experienced (executive-experience wise) ever in the White House? Is McCain’s age (and the risk of having the equally neophyte Palin a McCain health issue away from running the country) a risk?

I don’t pretend to know the answers to all those questions, and this space has never been a forum for genius. (Except in the area of battle rapping. Muhahaah!). Here’s what I can tell you:

The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Maybe Obama’s got the answers…maybe he’s an inexperienced hack that will screw things up in new and interesting ways, or maybe (most likely) he’ll fall somewhere in-between - solve some issues, mess up others, but in general at least get the ball rolling in a positive direction.

With McCain…we know what we’re getting. A career politician that has broken ranks a few times but is mostly loyal to the base and GOP party. Unlikely to rock many boats once he’s in the big chair. In fact, he’s already stated that he plans to continue several of Bush’s current economic “trickledown” policies.

And that’s not gonna get it done. At least not in this humble scribe’s opinion.

Whether you agree or disagree, get out there and vote! See ya next time!

Well, this was gonna be another trip into the usual blog insanity, but as usual, real life intrudes.

My dad was diagnosed with colon cancer this past week. It is not looking terribly good at the moment. More on that as updates come in.

Ryan was in a wreck (but is okay.).

Work this week was a chaotic fizuck.

On the good side, I did finally pick up a new phone and I’m trying out our new Airave.

More on that later….

I live my life like there’s no tomorrow
And all I’ve got I had to steal
Least I don’t need to beg or borrow
Yes, I’m livin’ at a pace that kills

“My god, King….THAT’S …THAT’S ROB T’S MUSIC~! We’ve haven’t seen him since he shut down his blog! And he is marching to the blog and BY GOD, he’s got a microphone!”

Don’t call it a comeback…this IS THE REEEEEEEEEEEEEEMIX~!

A lot has happened since you last saw lights in the Safe House.

Obama prevailed over Hillary. Sarah Palin. GTA IV. The Dark Knight. Banks crashing like old Windows machines and Wall Street going to hell in a handbasket. Rosser renamed to B. Hussein Rosser. And most of all, there’s a little thing called FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTBALL! These are desperate times. So I am officially suspending my suspension of the Safe House. That is right…the rarely tried…DOUBLE SUSPENSION. (I’d like to thank Stephen Colbert for this joke and being so awesome.)

So…what changed between now and April 1st…when I shut down, due to lack of time, and passion for blogging, among other things?

Well, not a whole heck of a lot, really. Sometimes you don’t know how much you miss something until you stop doing it. I’d drop Brett Favre’s name here, but at least I didn’t cry during my retirement speech. Also, I’d like to flash back to THIS CLASSIC SAFE HOUSE MOMENT! So if you’ll turn your attention to the WayBack Machine…

March 20, 2004:

***************This Has Been A Joke****************

This time, my blog was away much longer, and the effects are even being felt on Wall Street. Clearly, my blog is important to the fabric of our very space time continuum, kids. My unretirement is for the good…of America. Fuck yeah! America! The Greatest Nation on Earth! Also because Ori said I should unretire. So there…..

Alright, enough clowning, let’s get this party (re-)started…

FINALLY….

THE ROB…

HAS COME BACK…TO THE LAND OF BLOGGERY~!

I am doing well. Still training, have finished several classes and I’m pretty proud of how I am doing so far. It has been interesting. I am pretty good at the training side of the job…as it turns out, there is also some “management” portions to this platter. Those I’m still learning. Anyone who knows me (and chances are, if you’re reading this space, especially after my extended absence, you know me pretty well) knows I’m not exactly what you’d call …well, tactful. It turns out honesty is not always the best policy. Telling people the methods they’ve used for years are broken and crappy, even when it’s the truth, doesn’t go over too well when those people have six zeros in their paychecks.

We’ll see. Personally, I’d rather leave the politicking to Obama, McCain, and Palin and just speak my mind. But I also like keeping my job, so I’ll learn to play nice. We can hope, anyway.

Speaking of our presidential candidates…well, Letterman on McCain. Ahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. “Hey, John, I got a question. NEED A RIDE TO THE AIRPORT????!”

Obama 08: YES WE CAN. Is there a chance he’ll be like any other politician? Sure. But at least for the first time in a while, there is hope. Hopefully, not of the false variety. And all of the whinging on his abortion stance, remember, it’s not the President that makes abortion policy.

Palin: She’s cute. Credibility still a bit of a question…this TrooperGate thing is, too. On the bright side - if she becomes VP, never has there been a tailormade impersonator better than Tina Fey.

Gone but not forgotten since my last blog: Bernie Mac~! Paul Newman. And mostdef GEORGE CARLIN. To put it in the words of Jon Stewart, “People who make the world a better place need to stop dying.” Indeed. Godspeed.

The Dark Knight: What, you didn’t think I’d let THE movie of the summer go by without a review? Not even. The latest in the roving series of the Big Black Bat is the kinda-sequel to Batman Returns, in it’s own right a fairly underrated and well written piece of work. Heath Ledger was the Joker, just in case you’ve been under a rock for the last…ever, and he may just have earned himself a posthumous Oscar with this performance. Nothing wrong with Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhaal was used perfectly, and Aaron Eckhart would have stolen this movie himself as Two Face if not for Ledger’s final masterpiece. That being said….can’t call it the greatest movie ever. I mean, I won’t claim to be the worldest biggest comic geek or anything, but I’m pretty sure the Joker wasn’t blessed with super ESP, seeing as he managed to know pretty much where everyone was at all times and even things like which street out of 20 a truck would turn down so that it would run into an elaborate boobytrap. I loved the movie, but much like Die Hard, another series of enjoyable movies I love, plot holes you could drive a truck through. ****3/4 on the RVD scale.

Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr, millionaire playboy, Iron Man. He gets kidnapped, sees the impact of his weapons, grows a conscience, gets a (metallic) heart, cue conflict with Weapons Designing world. It was pretty good for what it was, which was a summer blockbuster action flick. Gwyneth Paltrow was pretty wooden as the love interest but (almost) redeems herself with a killer line near the start of the movie…outside of Downey Jr, can’t say there was anyone who really knocked it out of the park in this one. ****

GTAIV: Ten pounds of awesome in a five pound bag. Children, conservatives, and anyone not a fan of general mayhem need not apply. I’d give it six stars (which would be an appropriate rating!), but they TOOK OUT THE TANK. Which is well nigh unforgivable. How do you have a GTA game and not have the ability to roll around in a tank? That is horrible. And I’m not all that impressed with multiplayer mode, either, and in spite of both these glaring issues…..*****.

While I’m catching up to the backlog….RIP, Ingrid. My thoughts and prayers are with Deb and the extended family.

I’d talk about the Kiffin/Davis thing, but eh. What will happen will - hopefully whatever drama Davis comes up with doesn’t screw up the team, since they are improving vastly. Russell is getting better every week, McFadden is the real deal, and Fargas makes a good 1-2 punch when they are not hurt. It is too bad the one good receiver we got in the offseason (Drew Carter, who will be a star if he can stay healthy…mark my words) got smashed to the IR in preseason. We desperately need a good passblocker on the OL and a good receiver, if we can get those in the offseason, this team will contend. Oh, and let’s get rid of MeAngelo. I can tolerate Walker (grossly overpaid but at least has talent if he can work back to his ‘04 form), Wilson (serviceable), and even Tommy Kelly (good player - don’t get me wrong, they gave him about 60M too much, but a good player), but MeAngelo is a useless waste of space and air. We would be better off with Philip Buchanon (currently rotting in Houston) or even Chris Carr (stolen, brilliant pickup by the Titans).

And…it looks like the bailout bill just crashed and burned. Someone bail out the bailout bill! Seriously, can we pull Bush now? I mean, like in a blowout game when they bench the starting QB and let the second stringer finish the game…except in this case, that’d be Cheney, so I say we just swear whoever wins into office on November 15th.

Let’s review:

September 11th (after numerous intelligence briefings warning of an imminent Bin Laden attack in US)
Katrina
The “Mission Accomplished” speech in Iraq
The Iraq War in general
Wiretapping without warrants
Cheney shooting someone in the face
Wall Street falling apart like a cheap car
Oil companies making record profits while the foreclosure and jobless rates set record highs

Seriously…if this were a PPV match, Jim Ross would be screaming, “Will someone stop the damn Presidency? WITH GOD AS MY WITNESS, THE COUNTRY IS BROKEN IN HALF~!” But what do I know?

Until next time….this here Rob T!

Yesterday, Ric Flair retired from wrestling after 36 years. No worries - this is not yet another long sappy tribute to Flair. The tribute stuff has been done to death already, and personally, better than I would have ever written it anyway. And anyway, yesterday’s tribute at the end of RAW was about as well done as it could get.

Allow me to be the one zillionth person to say: Thank you, Ric.

With Ric moving on, and with me getting this new promotion, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the topic of moving on. I got another dose of that today. I won’t talk about it publicly but today opened my eyes in a lot of ways.

With that being said, this will mostly likely be the Safe House’s last update.

This was a long time coming - ever since I moved to Kansas, my life has changed dramatically. I just haven’t had the passion (or the time) for blogging like I used to. Honestly, the only reason I didn’t close it several months ago was for the simple fact that it was the only way some people kept up with me anymore.

I would rather turn out the lights now than just keep fading away. For better or worse, it was never my style online to go quietly. And with the retirement of probably the only untarnished wrestling hero I had left, the timing seems appropriate. I’m not going to 100% rule out a return. You know how retirements are in wrestling. But right now, I feel pretty confident that this is the end of the Safe House.

My time online has been marked by a lot of crazy things. Made a lot of good friends, made two best friends, made a fair share of enemies (both deserved and undeserved). Had a lot of fun, got into a fair bit of trouble, wrote a lot of (at least I think) cool efed stuff, and created 4 plus years of insanity right here in this space.

If I pissed you off, sorry. Really.

If I made you smile, good.

If I made you laugh, great.

I love you guys. It’s been really fun doing this.

-Rob

P.S. I’ll still be around on IM occasionally, and those who have the cell and/or email are still free to use those as needed.

I got the Training job. Promotion = awesome.

So, I’m going home to Ft. Worth next week, and then I will transition into the Trainer job after that.

For everyone encouraging me and supporting me: thank you! You guys rule.

Not much of a Friday update, I know, but besides the huge news, the week was pretty much the Chase For The Job. I might post pictures of me dressed up in my dress shirt and tie later, mayhaps. Very rare pics indeed.

Later!

I have a second interview for the trainer’s position tomorrow. Wish me luck!

The name is subject to change, but my hopefully weekly Friday update is on the air!

It’s a good week to launch this pilot, because it’s been one craaaaaaazay ass week. Let’s start on Monday, my return from vacation. When I got to work, I could already tell insanity was afoot, because almost everyone out on the floor was in Angry Grrr Smash mode. So I start working away at the tech email goodness, unaware of the fact that my week was about two hours from being turned upside down.

About 45 minutes later, I see Nicole (Our manager) entering a meeting with all of the new people that just came out of training….and one of the supervisors promptly being vocally ejected from the meeting about two seconds later, red-faced. At that point, I was starting to wonder if I came back from vacation a little too soon.

So fast forward to the end of that meeting. Nicole comes out of the room, and does the I’m Managerial, Important, and Angry powerwalk….right to my desk. “I need to talk to you.”

Rut-roh, as Scooby might say. Honestly, the first thought that ran through my head (as ludicrous as it was since I had been gone the past week and had never really interacted with the new people) was that I had done something horrible to one of the new people and they had called for my head, Roswell-style. So we meet…and the bombshell is dropped. The new trainees for tech are mad, frustrated, angry, struggling with the emails and all of that….will you train them on tech stuff?

Me: Mkay. Sure. Experience for the future, major brownie points for helping out the boss boss, all of that, it’s all good.

But - tech training is normally four weeks long…and I had a week to teach them. Really, 4 and a half days, considering Monday was almost to lunch before we even started.

So….uh…wow. What do I do?

Nicole at least gave me a start - she wanted me to discuss all the tools. So I drew up a plan. Go down the list of tools, one by one. Teach them what each one actually does and how it works. Get them into the tools and using them. Then throw piles of real email examples at them, make them think about it, and hope it stuck. It was a “Jay in Mallrats” style of plan considering I had 4 days to do what was normally 4 *weeks*, but you know, I didn’t make up the insane restrictions I was under. I came up with a plan on Monday night, and I thought I could get them to the point where at least they could understand most of the emails coming in by Friday.

The crazy thing?

It worked.

All of them are working at full speed, to glowing reports, and some of them are doing better work already than the established people on the floor. By all accounts, Rob’s Four Day Plan > the first 4 weeks they went through. I impressed Nicole so much that she pretty much told me on Tuesday to apply for the open trainer’s job, even though I hadn’t been in my position for a year and normally would not be eligible.

Which brings me to Tuesday. Fred and I both got her blessing to go after the job. Now, I mentioned this in the last posting, but Fred is the person who helped me get the job here in Lenexa. He worked in Fort Worth Tech with me for a year plus and he moved to Lenexa in March 2007. He’s been here almost a year…and he’s dying to do something new. And he’s pretty much as smart as I am, tech-wise, and pretty much just as qualified.

So far, this hasn’t been a huge issue. Good to know friendship still counts for something. It still is a little bittersweet that if I cash this one in, it will be at the expense of a lost opportunity for the person I owe for even being here, but the good thing about that is, his year in position is up April 1st, so he will be able to go after anything he wants soon enough.

And even if I don’t get it…the indication is that I will be involved with the training side of things even if I stay in E-Care to some extent.

My first interview for the trainer position was today. As those things go, I’ve never been a good interview, and it’d been almost three years (when I first applied at Sprint) since I’d been through a formal, dress-up, holy shit new job Batman type of interview. But I did well and I’m already hearing unofficially that I’m moving on to the second interview. So it’s been a very exciting week for me. This kind of job is right up my alley, and now I have two very big managers in my corner.

So that was my week. How was yours?

Greetings, good people of Blog Nation. It’s time for my bimonthly update. Actually, about that, I am going to start trying to do a regular Friday update with a weekly roundup type of thing. We’ll see if I can pull that one off.

Now then! The now ex-governor of New York got himself a pricey hooker, a boot in the ass, and guaranteed late night talk show references for at least the next few years. This one’s been talked to death, but the one question I want to see answered, admittedly one that the media probably can’t explore a whole lot due to those dastardly decency laws, is what in the unholy name of Heatman a woman can do in bed to merit 5 Gs or what not an hour, plus travel and expenses. Shoot, at that rate Butch’s LOTR-length features would cost him almost 20 large. (Probably plus the cost of the milkshake). Mine? Well, 10,000 +, at least. *smirk*

I’ll leave the rest of the Spitzer commentary to the always capable Lewis Black. Check out the Visa rant at the end….classic.

TRAINING: Well, as those “in the know” know, yours truly is the tech support type for A Certain Major Wireless Carrier. The latest tech support class for emails came out on the floor this week, and they got frustrated as they did not feel prepared to do the job. So guess who was asked to come in and run his very own training class with some refocused training? *points to self, RVD style*

I am very excited about this. I have two days under my belt so far, and reviews from the class itself of my training skills are very positive and our manager even personally encouraged me to apply for the open job on the tech support training side and waived the “you have to be in your position for one year” rule for me. This is a chance for a major promotion. Exciting times on the job front.

It is a little bittersweet because the guy who is responsible for me being in Lenexa in the first place (Fred) is basically the other main candidate for the job, so it will be at his expense (and he is qualified for the job as much as I am) if I do get the opportunity. Fred is a good guy and a longtime friend, and I don’t think it will be anything personal no matter who wins. No Obama-Hillary stuff here. (VOTE FOR ROB! YES, WE CAN!).

VACATION: I was off the past week on vacation. I remained here in Olathe, but Candice and Husband of Record voyaged here and stayed with me at my apartment.

She bought me shiny new stuff (a George Foreman grill) for my apartment, we did local BBQ restaurants, an essential in KC. We caught the new Spiderwick movie (review in a sec), played PS3, and made a fantastic mess cooking in my kitchen. There was bowling (I rolled 78, 80, and 84 - if only we’d played five more games, I’d probably broke a hundred!), there was Dave and Buster’s, there was an awesome hibachi restaurant and even caught some NCAA action via big screen TV at a local bar/pizza style of place.

On a sidenote….should I become a Jayhawks fan? I’m still musing that one over. While my professional sports loyalties are well known, never really was much for college. But there isn’t much avoiding the Jayhawks around here.

We also stumbled across an awesome outdoor mall style place. You should see the gaudy new purse Candice has - it’s blue, it’s (when it’s not like 70% off which it was for a final clearance sale) ricockolously expensive, and she is so proud of the thing and it’s matching purchase, a blue wallet. If I had a nickel for every time she showed off that purse while beaming like the Frenchie (it was at least a .9 Frenchie beam, for the three people that will get that joke), I could probably retire or buy an island.

PS3 was also played. I now want one, especially with Metal Gear Solid 4 and GTA 4 coming out.

Lots of fun was had by all.

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES: Another in the fantasy/semi-sci-fi kids Narnia-movie realm, this one being goblins and ogres and other such fun creatures discovered by a old man named Arthur Spiderwick, who gathers a lot of important data about all of these supernatural creatures in a Field Guide type book, but apparently if this book falls into one particular ogre’s hands It Would Be A Very Bad Thing, mkay? Good. Not really a Harry Potter style movie, despite the press it’s undeservedly getting, although it is based on a very popular series of children’s books like good ol Harry is, which is why the pundits are tending to compare the two. For those that care about how closely the book matches the movie, it’s a decently close adaptation. David Strathairn turns in a pretty good performance as Arthur Spiderwick, Freddie Highmore dual-roles as the twin boys the story revolves around and is passable enough, and Nick Nolte, bless his insane soul, is probably the highlight of this movie as the ogre. Can’t say it’s as good as Narnia, iffy on whether it’s worth eight theater bucks…most definitely worth a DVD/Blueray rental or purchase when the time comes. ***1/2

See you Friday!