I should point out that I just recently turned 30.  A nice round number, that doesn't feel any different than the 20's. Well, except for the extra $60 that is now going out of my paycheck due to birthday insurance premium increases--apparently I'm now noticeably more at risk of dropping dead, so I've got that going for me, I guess.

Let's compare this birthday to previous ones...
I got a Nintendo game for my birthday, which pleases me--I have a lovely & understanding wife. When I was 20 & 10, it's very likely that I got video games as well--so I've got some consistency there.

When I turned 30, I was hard at work at a career, not just a job. When I turned 20, I was in the middle of summer vacation possibly half heartedly looking for a job. When I turned 10, a job was the last thing on my mind and rightfully so. I suppose in some respects the 30th birthday was a little worse simply because I'd rather be "not working" than "working" at any given time. But money's handy to have too, which I certainly didn't have then so it's a wash.

When I turned 30, Facebook & Twitter were popular. When I turned 20, ICQ & Aol Instant Messenger were popular. When I turned 10 I hadn't yet heard of the internet (which was true of most people). Technology-wise, this birthday was way better than the others--but that's kind of a given, the older you get, the cooler stuff will be. 40th birthday--hoverboards and jetbacks? Here's hoping.

If I had to go back and give advice to my 20 or 10 year old self....I wouldn't. They've done all right for themselves, I think so I'd best not interfere. I'm not Ashton Kutcher & I sure don't need any butterfly effects. I can also infer that 30 year old me will turn out all right for himself as well, because so far I haven't hand any 40-50-60 year old Neil's stopping by ordering me to tell Griff "I'm out" in 2015. So I've got that going for me too.

All in all, it is a bit weird to not be able to say "I'm in my 20's", and sadly my opinion on TV shows and advertising trends is becoming less and less relevant by the day, but other than those 2 things I think I've adjusted well. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a cherry red Corvette to buy to celebrate my fleeting youth.

Ok, so apparently the Big 12 is staying intact. Well, sort of. 10 of the Big 12 are staying anyway. The cynical part of  me thinks that this was all just a big ploy by Texas to get even more money. The cynical part of me wrote a one act play about how this probably went down.

Enjoy.

TX: Pssst, hey, did you guys hear--MU is going to the Big 10!
NU: No way! We should totally be in the big 10 over Missouri!
TX: Oh yeah, you should--you deserve to get some respect!
CO: Hey guys, what are you talking about? Are you leaving us, Nebraska?
NU: Heck yes I'm leaving. MU started it though.
MU: Hey, what, started what? I'm going somewhere?
OU: Hey guys! MU just said they're going somewhere! We better start looking for
someplace to go, the conference is falling apart!
Ok St: Yeah Yeah! Falling apart!
TX: Well, now, let's not get hasty Oklahoma, we want to try to save the
conference *snicker* - but just in case, let's see what the PAC 10 has to offer.
Tx Tech, Tx A&M: Yeah Texas, we're with you!
TX: All right, I talked to the Pac 10, and if MU & Nebraska leave, destroying
the conference for their own selfish reasons, I can go to the Pac 10 and bring 5
friends with me. A&M, Tech, the two Okies & Colorado, I choose you!
Baylor: Can I come?
Everyone: NO!
Baylor: Please?
Everyone: NO!
Baylor: Aww shucks. Well I'm sticking with Kansas, KState & Iowa State then. Hey
guys, can I hang out with you?
KU: Huh? What's going on?
Baylor: Everyone's leaving. It's just you, me, K-State & Iowa State. Best buds
for life, right? Right?
KU: Huh? Leaving? Nobody said anything to me about leaving.
K-State: Yeah, nobody told me either.
KU: *muttering* Big surprise.
MU: Um, guys--we're not going anywhere. Right NU, Colorado?
Colorado: Actually we just signed, we're out of here suckers. Enjoy your time
zone.
Nebraska: Hey! Hey! Nobody leaves without me saying so first, no fair! You guys
don't play fair, I can't trust you. I'm out of here.
Texas: Well guys, it's been a nice run. I'm so terribly sorry, but we've got to
go. Let's roll out boys.
OK: Whatever you say, boss!
Ok St: Yeah, yeah, boss!
A&M: Wait, actually I might want to go to the SE-
Texas: Oh no you don't, you bail on me and I'll have to bring Baylor-
Baylor: Yippee!!!
Texas: which I'm sure as heck not gonna do. If you leave, A&M, I'll never play
with you again.
A&M: Oh, all right, I guess the gulf coast is pretty messed up right now anyway.
I'm in.
Baylor: Awwww...
Texas: Ok guys, we're leaving. Right now. We're gone.
MU: Well, all right, I guess the rest of us 4.
Baylor: Five!
MU: *sigh* All right, us 5 will just have to manage.
Texas: Seriously, I'm leaving--right now. You can't change my mind, not even for
20 million dollars.
Iowa State: I cannot even comprehend that number.
Texas: Wait, you guys said you'd pay us 25 million dollars, and let us keep
winning everything?
KU: Whaa...no, nobody said th--
Texas: Ok, you twisted my arm. For the good of the league and my dear, dear
friends to the north, I will stay. Out of the goodness of my heart. Oh, Texas is
spelled T E X A S...be sure and get it right, the bank gets confused easily.
K-State: Guys, What just happened?
Texas: I saved the Big 12, that's what just happened. And after MU started it
all, the nerve--shun them!
MU: What?
KU: That's easy, I've been shunning them for 150 years.
Everyone: SHUN!
MU: Wait...what? Hey...bah, I hate you guys.

-FIN-

When we last left our tour, I was going in depth about the hog lots where I spent a lot of time growing up. That sounds ridiculous, but perhaps I can explain why, with a detailed description of each lot.

The first lot was the red barn lot (The lots were actually numbered, for record-keeping's sake, but I almost always referred to them by nickname). I called this one the red barn lot because...well, it had an old red barn at the opposite corner from the start of the creek. This barn was, as far as I can recall, one of the older buildings on the farm and has probably housed every kind of animal ever. It had ancient hay bales up in the loft that had enough dust to easily show the raccoon tracks, and the lower part was in a constant battle against gravity and the hogs that perpetually rubbed up against the support posts. The rest of the lot consisted of the newly born creek along one side (semi wooded along the creek bank) with a large open area between the creek & the barn. Because this lot was at the start of the creek, and along the bottom of the hill below the fields, erosion was rampant. There were a couple large gulleys, and even some natural springs coming out of the ground. This was a good lot to explore, simply because of the low hanging trees and ditches. But it was nothing compare to Lot 42...

Lot 42. The only lot I never nicknamed, simply because at first glance it doesn't have any distinguishing features--a fairly square lot with a creek running smack down the middle & a few trees. But glances can be deceiving. I spent more hours in this hog lot than probably anywhere else. Why? Mud. Pure and simple. At this point you may think I was spending too much time with the hogs, but before you judge me remember this--I had mud...and a creek. Don't see it yet? Let me spell it out a bit clearer. Dams. Big ones (big for a 10 year old, anyway). Between the mud churning action of pigs, and the fairly level layout, and the right amount of water (not too much, not too little), this place gathered the perfect mud along the creek--soft enough to work with, but with enough clay to make it sturdy. I would build dam after dam--stopping the creek up for hours. Building cities below the dam only for there to be a horrible accident, flooding the town until I could stop it up again. I would quite literally build dams a foot high and 6 feet long, out of nothing but mud. Add in some pieces of pipe, or various other junk from the junk pile and you'd have bridges and who knows what else. It was glorious for an engineering minded kid, which I was. Lot 42 had more than mud going for it, it actually had a second creek that joined the first one just before it left the lot--and the layout of the land, fences & creeks left an all but impenetrable "island" cut off from the rest of the lot, and protected on the other sides by fence. The perfect fortification. But in this land of plenty, there was one better....the penninsula. Due to the vagaries of hydrology & geology, in the very center of the lot, the main creek made an oxbow shape with narrow path leading to a wooded penninsula cut into a tall cliff (8-10 feet high) of dirt. This was the place to leave treasures you wanted protected. This was where Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn would have stayed had they been navigating my creek instead of the Mississippi. And Lot 42 still isn't done--I haven't even mentioned the old horseshoes that you could dig up, or the mysterious rock, or the brush fort...simply put, Lot 42, besides having an auspicious number, was the little boy equivalent of Barbie's Dreamhouse.

Because I don't want to bore anyone further by waxing poetic about dirt lots, I will summarize the remaining 2 lots in this area. I mentioned that Lot 42 had another small creek enter & join the main one--before it got here, this small creek traveled through another lot, whose name escapes me at the moment. This one was unique in that it had numerous rock formations where the creek traveled through large cracks in the rocks, steep hills, and such. After Lot 42, the creek went through the last of the hog lots I will mention, called the Carryover Lot. This lot was very bland--except for the fact that it was wide open, with almost no trees & flat. Because of this, it tended to be very swampy in one corner, which was unique--and because it was so open, the pigs tended to travel in very well defined paths-the perfect interstate highway system if one were so inclined to use it as such.

In our next installment, our creek will be passing the nerve center...or homebase if you will.

Every good story needs a setting. My story began on a farm in rural Missouri.

It was fairly typical by area standards, growing crops, raising cattle, raising pigs, a few assorted cats and or dogs roaming the area, a handful of chickens, and maybe a few other odds and ends depending on the moods of our pet-owning family members. It's a good sized farm, about 1000 acres. Not huge, but big enough (that's ~1.5 square miles for my non-acre speaking friends, ~400 hectares for my metric friends, and 1.4 million square Smoots for my MIT graduating friends). My house and my grandparents house were located next door on the southern edge, near the main barns, machine sheds, etc. Various uncles and/or cousins were located at other ends of the farm and all take part in keeping the show going.

Growing up, I pretty much gauged the location of everything based on the creek that started at one corner of the farm and crossed it to the other side, so we'll follow the same path as I give you the grand mental tour.

The creek started near the far south-west corner of the farm. That corner was mostly fields which stretched north and east from there...we'll say for about a third of the farm from that point (not as one big field, but 3-4 smaller ones, depending on what was being grown). The fields were used to grow field corn (my favorite type of field, even though you couldn't eat it), wheat (boring but necessary), and soy beans for the most part. The creek itself actually started under/around the field--from natural springs that were drained into a pipe to keep the field itself from getting too marshy. This pipe had water flowing all the time, except for maybe during the worst droughts. Sometimes it was just a trickle, but it was always something.

From this pipe the creek goes almost immediately into the hog lots. hog lots were large fenced in areas that held the pigs, except for when they were very young or for the first ~3 weeks after they'd had a litter (during those times they were in a the very literally named "Farrowing House"--this was where my dad worked the most, and by extension the rest of my immediate family.) The outdoor lots were divided up into groups which were for the most part based on how far along they were in their pregnancy. Keep in mind that on a practical level a pig that isn't making babies is going to be making bacon--the hard way, so these lots were in a almost weekly rotation.

I'm actually going to go into the hog lots in some detail, because they entertained me for hours & hours growing up and hopefully you'll see why. But I'll save that for the next post. This one is getting long...

You want farm boy stories? We've got farm boy stories.

I've been meaning to do this for a long time, and hopefully I'm finally working myself up. What is 'this'? Tales from my past. They're probably only going to be interesting to me--I don't make any promises that this will be a magical read to anyone other than myself, but I have my reasons.

Reason #1: I enjoy nostalgia and thinking back to things I did as a kid growing up on a farm. I enjoy it.
Reason #2: I enjoyed hearing my Dad's stories about growing up on the farm, and now I have a son who may enjoy something similar. More to the point, I have a son who won't, for any forseeable reason, have the experience of growing up on a farm, or a childhood experience anything like mine. So maybe someday he'll read these. If so, Hi Will! Do your homework. Make sure I'm in a good old folks home. Call your mother, she worries about you.
Reason #3: Ok, I lied, I am hoping there's a small chance someone else out there will enjoy these stories.
Reason #4: I don't need a reason #4, Reason #1 was enough by itself, #2 put it way over the top, and Reason #3 is just meringue on the lemon pie.

Consider this an introduction. My next posts, should I choose to do any, will fall in this category unless otherwise noted.

Well, I've been meaning to make a post of some sort...so let's just fill out the names survey.

GM Cutting Jobs, and Worse--Cutting Pontiac

That's right, Netcraft confirms it, Pontiac is dying.

What's more disturbing, personally is my track record:

In 1999, I bought my first car: An Oldsmobile Achieva.
In 2000, GM Announced plans to kill the Oldsmobile brand.

In 2005, I bought my second car: A Pontiac G6
In 2009, GM Announced plans to kill the Pontiac brand.

So what's this tell us?
2 for 2: I am become Neil, the Destroyer of Auto Brands.

So what's this mean?
For one, I will never buy a Chevy. I can't risk being the one responsible for killing off the 'Vette.
For Two, if you guys have any favored brands of cars, I can't buy them. Let me know now so I can plan for the eventuality that I will have to buy my third car. I'm sorry Travis, I didn't mean to kill off the TransAm maker, honest, I didn't.
For Three: My next car will be a Ford.

Timeshare salespeople, doubly so.

The office I work in has a lot of extra space, so my company has decided to rent out half of the building to a timeshare sales center. Pardon me, "Vacation Club"--timeshare has a negative connotation. My new office is right next to their breakroom (actually, our breakroom, but apparently the salespeople have found it and commandeered it as well), so I get to hear their conversations. The conversations have proven to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that salespeople, especially these salespeople, are a completely different breed of person--I simply cannot comprehend them.

Why? First is their training--many of the people have not sold timeshares, so the "old dogs" are teaching the tricks of the trade. First rule of salespersoning is, basically, get to know the customer as a human being as fast as possible--then be sure and treat them as anything but human if they dare to question your fantastic sales opportunity. The advice consists of such bits as laying on the guilt (not sure I'll make my rent if I don't get a sale soon) to all but outright lying just to get them to sign the contract. This probably isn't a surprise to anyone, but still, it's kind of surprising to hear them talking about it so openly, at least among each other.

Another thing...gossip. I've heard gossip out the wazoo by every single one of them. Little old church ladies whispering in the pew would turn to these people and say, "Ok, now really, maybe you talk about other people a bit too much!". And more impressive is the range of targets--they'll gossip about people they know, friends, enemies, potential customers, actual customers, former customers, former coworkers, current coworkers, people they see walking down the street. Mind-boggling, and I suspect I'll know half the dirty laundry in Branson just by overhearing their conversations for a week.

And finally, their personality as a whole. I'm just a guy in the next office, they know they're not ever going to sell me a thing in my life, and yet, somehow, talking to them in the hallway with just a casual "Hello" I get the feeling they're trying to sell me something. Perhaps it's just me, but I think there's something to it...some way of seeming to be the friendliest person in the world, all the while not quite listening to you 100%, responding to you just a bit too quickly as if they didn't really bother to process what you said, etc.

All I know is that it takes a certain kind of person to be an effective salesperson. And there are probably some superb people out there that do it brilliantly and are also great people in general.

But I don't think I've met one recently.

Am I the only one who sees the bit of irony in those who use an old fashioned hand operated lawn mower because they want to save the environment?

MU is in the Elite 8. Let that sink in for a bit, I know I need to.

Wow...what a game. I think I was about as worn out as some of the Memphis players were by the time that thing was done. What to say...

25 Minutes of near picture perfect basketball to start it off. I'm sure it wasn't as perfect as it seemed at the time, but man, MU could do no wrong. Everything went their way. Ref's gonna call your toe on the line for a 3 pointer? Fine, we'll just shoot it from half court, while defended. Kind of removes the luster from Memphis' dunk that we all expected would be the end of the half.

Of course, then the wheels fell off for about 10 minutes. MU stopped playing MU style and tried to play "hold on to the lead", and Memphis suddenly realized that they were on the wrong end of a very large freight train. Luckily it was too little, too late, and MU remembered who they were just in time.

So what's this mean for Saturday? Well, MU's probably gonna be a little more tired than UConn, but then, that's just the way MU plays. UConn probably won't be overconfident coming in, but maybe, just maybe they'll hope we have a letdown. Memphis clearly showed our weaknesses and our strengths...but if we can get just one or two charges on defense instead of letting guys run straight to the middle, I think we have a great shot at this.

Like last game, we've already overachieved. Might as well keep it rolling...nothing to lose, a lot to gain. All I know is that even when they
lose, I love watching this team play.

(and as a postscript, thanks to this win my True Tiger Membership Card needs to be revoked, as I want both Oklahoma, and...*shudder* Kansas to win tomorrow. I want 3 Big 12 teams in the Elite 8 just to show that...hey, we know a little about basketball too.)

Folie de mars mon amour,
Go Tigers.