so, it’s 2am and i just finished watching the karate kid. i’ll admit, it’s one of my all-time favorite movies. i’ve got a lot of childhood memories wrapped up in that movie. it taught me a lot of things. it taught me to strike fast, strike hard with no mercy (sir). it taught me that fear does not exist in the dojo (nor does pain, defeat and one other thing that i can’t remember). but above all, it taught me that a little kid from jersey with a can-do attitude and a propensity for washing and waxing cars as well as some other basic home maintenance, can beat any member of the cobra kai with a little hard work, determination and help from an old asian man (whom identifies himself from the country of okinawa. there’s some trivia for you). so, yeah, i think it’s safe to say that the karate kid has influenced my life for the positive. though i’m sure the trail of broken bodies that i’ve left in my wake would disagree. it’s been many moons since i last watched karate kid and my skills have gotten quite rusty so when the chance came to watch it tonight, i knew i had to make the time. the movie was just as awesome as i remember. though i must have been watching some sort of alternate, unreleased version because the dialogue in this new version seemed a lot cheesier than the original. no matter, the movie still rocked my world.
it wasn’t until the last scene, the final match between johnny and daniel-san in the all-valley karate championship, came that a question was raised to which i still have no answer. now, i’ll admit to you right now that i participate more in the no-rules, winner take all, street karate seen in such movie as bloodsport and lionheart and as such, am unaware of the rules of many of the organized karate tournaments similar to the one seen in the karate kid. so if anyone out there is versed in the subject, i implore your help. as i’m sure you recall, the first to get to 3 points is the winner of the match. daniel laruso, or as the cobra kai call him, ‘our little friend danielle’ (you see, danielle is the female pronunciation of daniel. they were essentially trying to emasculate daniel. quite sharp.) gains the first two points right off the bat in the final match against “put-him-in-a-body-bag” johnny. right away we think that daniel is going to win the tournament. not so. “cream puff” johnny has a few tricks up his ghi and takes the next two points. in one of the finals rounds, he punches daniel in the side of the face/neck but is not awarded a point due to “illegal contact to the head”. fair enough. in my world there are no “points”, just the sweet sting of blood in your eye, but in the world of organized martial arts i can see why they wouldn’t award him a point for such reckless behavior. the score is now 2-2. the next point takes the match. daniel slowly raises both of his arms and lifts one leg off the ground. both the referee and johnny look slightly confused. what form of martial arts is this? that’s right, it’s the crane technique. we already know where this is headed. the referee starts the round. johnny rushes in only to meet daniel’s foot with his face in the center of the ring. johnny comes crashing to the ground, writhing in pain as we see ali (with an “i”) rush in to congratulate daniel along with the hundreds of other people in the audience (who knew that karate was so popular in southern california?). daniel (with an “l”) is awarded the last point and is given the trophy by a congratulatory johnny lawrence. the end. or is it?
Read more…
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so, i’m sure you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for a post of some sort since the big move. it’s been so crazy around here that i’ve hardly had any time to do anything. i’m working at my companies’ bellevue office, typically putting in 60 hour weeks. i’m really glad i took the position but it’s really taking a lot of my time right now. jana is as busy as ever with the kids as they’re making the transition to a new home (it takes us at least a year to get fully unpacked and then it’s time for us to move again). as much as we miss spokane, it’s nice to be back in the emerald city. there’s a lot of really cool stuff to do here. why, just last weekend we… well, i guess we haven’t had much time to do that really cool stuff. but when we do get some free time… i don’t have a lot more to report right now. i think i might throw up a couple of songs that caught my ear recently, just for something to do.
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i upgraded our wordpress installation and now something isn’t jiving with our tarsiki theme. so, i’ve had to use the standard wordpress theme while i figure out what the problem is. couple this with the fact that we’re packing to move in the next few days and that makes for a fun time. be patient while i sort this out.
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so, it’s currently 1:53am and i’m sitting in bed typing this on my iPhone because i can’t sleep (this thing is STILL amazing). we found out today that we are going to be moving back to seattle in a couple of weeks. i’ve been asked to manage my company’s seattle office starting the beginning of february. i’m pretty nervous about it, but we’re excited about the opportunity. more details to come…
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okay, i’m going to go on the record right now as to say that most of you won’t get this and you will probably think i wasted your time even submitting this for you to read. i was going through some email from work and found this email thread between someone i work with and myself. the messages were being sent out to all of the managers in our division (whom i think don’t got the humor either). to me, this is one of the funnier email threads that i’ve been involved in. maybe it’s just because i know the other party involved, i’m not sure, but it makes me laugh and maybe one day someone in my posterity will get it also.the setup: last august we had a managers retreat down in san diego and one evening we went out to eat at a really nice restaurant and i had the mahi mahi. the person sitting next to me (the one with whom i had the email thread) informed me that mahi mahi was actually a type of dolphin. this sounded kind of fishy to me (pun intended. and yes, i know that dolphins are mammals) so i did some research. and here we go… Read more…
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so, we were fortunate enough to have our friend kristin come over who, as i’ve said before, takes the most amazing pictures of our kids of all time. these are the ones she took of the kids a couple weeks ago. but first, a little halloween story. you can see lily’s dress is all meshy and layery. well, we decided to go to the mall again for our halloween festivities (i know, it’s kind of a cop out but hey, it’s convenient, close and warm. good enough for me) and just as we were pulling into the parking spot, i hear an odd noise and look back just in time to see lily tossing all down the front of her dress. i climbed back to try and clean her up, but puke doesn’t like to come out of layered mesh so easily. needless to say, we turned around and had a very short, very quiet halloween at home. they were very disappointed. anyway, on to the pictures…
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jack was walking around with a little toy brush wanting me to brush his hair today. i’m not much of a stylist and there’s not a lot that you can do with his hair so i thought i’d see what i could acomplish with so little to work with (talent and hair). i finally settled on a glen danzig (during the misfits years) quaff. i’m not sure if he can pull it off just now, but give him a few years and a few hundred reps of the bench press and it might be a different story. you be the judge.
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plus we might have to get him out of that osh kosh shirt.
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i know that our posts aren’t as frequent as you (or we) would like. so we’ve added the ability to subscribe to the site and be notified when any new stories have posted. click on the “Subscribe!” link at the top of the page and enter in your email address. you will be sent an email asking you to confirm your subscription. click on the link to confirm. now, whenever a new story is posted to the site, you will receive an immediate email notifying you. now you won’t have to check the site everyday asking yourselves, “when can i get my next heller fix?”
you’re welcome.
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so, here’s a picture of my very cluttered workspace. i just recently added a new item to it. any guess what it is?
let’s take a closer look.
that’s right, i’m one of those guys. the guy who couldn’t stop talking about the new apple product that was supposed to change the world. the revolutionary new phone that was also a widescreen ipod, internet portal and breakthrough communications device and was rumored to have the ability to cure minor illnesses. that was me. and i finally got it a couple of days ago. now, i won’t give you any sort of in depth review as there’s a million places you can go for that. but i will say this: it is the coolest thing i’ve ever owned. “but it’s so expensive! i’ll wait for 6 months when it will be half the price.” yeah, go ahead. give me a call when that happens. “there’s no physical keyboard. i would hate that!” i can type just as fast on the iPhone as i can on a regular keyboard (i’m not sure if that says more about how fast i can type on the iPhone or how slow i type on a standard keyboard).
if you have any questions about how awesome this thing is, just give me a call. please (i love to use this thing). or send me an email. i’ll get it on the iPhone. or a text message. i get those too.
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