Steven Neil

I’ve been having some fun watching stories come and go in Digg, voting on them and the like. I guess what I don’t understand is why some people vote for the stories they do. Most seem stupid and some even seem like spam, like they somehow used tricks to put themselves at the top. I think things will just gone downhill the more this happens.

Anyway, I’ve been pretty addicted to it recently. Maybe someday I’ll post something that will make it big on Digg. That would be fun.

I haven’t had huge amounts of time because of a project at work but I think it will be done later this month. I’ve been carving through several old archives and getting some ideas for updated press releases. I’ll hopefully be blogging a bit more once I get this project done.

Perhaps the toughest part of my job is having to please multiple people in the company. What makes it worse is when they’re at odds with each other and take it out on you. Have you ever had this happen to you?

Folgers Chocolate Silk coffee was one of my favorite flavored coffees. It is only available at WalMart though so I only get a can of it when I’m forced to go there.  The last can I bought was just horrible though. It had this awful, peppery taste when brewed although the aroma in the can was the same as before. I would wager that they had some problems with the flavoring they use and how it reacts to heat.

I was just amazed that it tasted so terrible. I hope they correct this problem because I really liked the way this coffee tasted originally. Sadly, the way it is not there is no natural coffee flavor but a horrible chemical pepper taste. Yuck!

Well, I’m going to call the Folgers company and complain about it. I bet this is some sort of cost cutting move. Incredible, isn’t it?

Yes, I know it’s been ages since my last post. I’ve had a lot going on recently and it hasn’t been that easy. I went on a ski vacation a couple weeks ago and broke my ankle. That sucked because I was out of work for almost a week. With the way things are there right now if you’re out of the loop where the boss doesn’t see you regularly, you’re likely to be put on the chopping block for the next round of cuts.

Oh, and get this. The bank put a freeze on my account on Saturday of all days and I couldn’t get any money out of the ATM. I thought I was screwed but my friend Ed loaned me a few bucks which saved the day. I had to go up there and get things straighten out. They said that it had been frozen due to ‘questionable transactions’. What they had a problem with it was that I had made several withdrawals while I was on vacation from an ATM that somebody had put a skimmer on. I was lucky and as best they can tell my card wasn’t duped but since I broke my ankle I was in the area long enough for them to think that it might have been. You know, it would have been nice if they had just called me rather than turning my account off. Anyway, I’ve got a new debit card on the way.

Well, I hope things will get better for me soon and maybe I’ll have some good things to blog about then.

Today was a rough day at work. First of all, we had a staff meeting right at 9:00 AM which meant I had to fight traffic to get there right on time. Corporate honchos bored us with their new mission statement for a couple of hours. Sometimes I wonder if these guys, who run a multi-million dollar corporation, know anything about marketing, especially to their own employees.

Then, one of the urinals in the main men’s room began spewing out water. They had to shut down water to the whole floor for several hours while the plumber came and fixed whatever was wrong with. Luckily it was lunch time for me so I went over to the BK, where, of course, they screwed up my order. What a surprise.

After lunch, I had a vendor call and they were being a real butthead. I don’t want to go into details but it was over something trivial.

Now that I’m home I’m going to have a couple of beers and relax.

I love to get out into the great outdoors. I enjoy going on hikes and camping out under the stars, even when it’s cold out like it was last weekend. I’ve been camping since I was a kid in Boy Scouts and it’s one of my favorite things to do when I want to get away from it all.

Like I said, it was cold. We were expect it to only dip into the 40’s overnight but it got down to about 27 at the elevation we were at. Oh, this was in the Great Smokey Mountain Park in North Carolina. We hiked the Abrams Falls Trail and camped out at the main campground. It was a lot of fun except there were a lot of skunks around for some reason. Luckily, we didn’t get sprayed.

I love to come home from a rough day at work and then sit down in front of my PC and get into killing some Horde. The Horde are the enemies in World of Warcraft, my favorite Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game aka MMORPG. I enjoy spending hours doing quests and raids or just competing on a battle grounds. I guess it is kind of geeky but it’s a lot of fun.

That’s probably a big reason why I haven’t blogged here so much, I’ve been playing WoW. Maybe I’ll get back to posting here at some point but for now I’m having too much fun with World of Warcraft.

In life, just remember that there’s balance you must find. In my case this was signing up for a charity football game at work. This is a recipe for one crazy football game. Why should I go through this effort? Because helping out others makes for the best football game ever. It’s definitely worth it. The most important aspect to consider is this: This wasn’t a meaningless exercise because it helped people with the money we raised.

On the other hand, such a football game proved to be a lot of fun too. We usually avoid a full-length football game and kind of joke around. I would have recommended that you guys join in if you were there.

Another fun thing is that this game of football includes most of the amenities found in charity events. Yes, I drank too much free beer. I know this has happened to you as well so don’t even try to deny it.

I really am quite in awe of this charity football game actually. We were able to raise several thousand dollars. This is how I like to do things if I have the time. A charity football game like this is a winner all the way around.

One of my favorite things on the Internet are forums. They’re one of the major factors that got me online in 1999. I discovered that I could find people with the same likes and dislikes from around the world and get information and knowledge from them. The information you find on a forum is usually more accurate and timely than other sources, except maybe blogs.

Forums are a great place for you to visit on a daily basis to get news, tips and advice. You have to not only reading what other people are saying but you need to contribute and interact yourself.

There are forums about everything so look around and find ones that fit your interest and join in. I like the forums at Harmony Central to discuss music. I’ll post a few others I like later on.