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I took this screenshot of two headlines from mywesttexas.com. The first story is about how the City of Midland is choosing to reward the Sports & Entertainment Association of Midland for burning through their $135,000 budget in eight months by giving them even more money to burn. The second story highlights the state having an $18 billion deficit. While not necessarily directly related, it’s poor financial decisions like these that have helped lead us into our current state of financial difficulty.

Links to original stories:

http://mywesttexas.com/articles/2010/05/12/news/top_stories/council.txt

http://mywesttexas.com/articles/2010/05/12/news/top_stories/texas_18_billion_budget_shortfall.txt

Here is the first post:

FREE HAIRCUTS!!! (Midland, Texas)
Date: 2010-03-14, 11:51AM CDT

Supercuts Education Department is offering complementary haircuts to men , women, and children. Any style of your choice. All services are performed by licensed stylists demonstrating Supercuts exclusive haircutting technique. This exciting event takes place on Thursday, March 18 from 9:00am to 4:00pm and Friday, March 19 from 9:00am to 3:00pm. Services are rendered on a “first come/first served” basis. Due to the demand of this valuable service we are unable to schedule appointments. We are located at 2215 n Midland Dr. Midland, Texas. 79707. Upon arrival, please ask for Kristee or mention this add. for further information please call 432-689-9927. We look forward to seeing you there.

Then this one was posted a couple days later. I couldn’t help but laugh.

I fix free haircuts
Date: 2010-03-17, 11:51PM CDT

Martinez Barbershop
2107 W Texas Ave

Tuesday – Friday 9am-6pm
Saturday 10am-2pm

$12 haircuts, no need to look further for a good haircut!

The week at work was spent primarily focusing on creating a logo/branding scheme for a newly renamed curriculum for an organization we’re working with. I’ll try and remember to post details on the new logo after the design gets fully finalized. The design isn’t complex, but it was difficult to create an idea for how to make it look good. It was certainly frustrating at times, but I was very relieved to get an idea finally approved on Friday.

Friday night was my first night out officially as a Citizens On Patrol volunteer. I went on patrol with a fellow COPS member and we patrolled Midland from 10pm-4am. We didn’t see anything too exciting happen. My partner drove, so I was the radio operator. I got some good experience on that based on a couple incidents we reported, but for the most part it was a quiet night.

Saturday night, I went out again with a different COPS member, but this time I drove. We went to briefing with the officers at 7pm (when their shift starts) and then headed out until 3am. In that 8hrs, we drove 142 miles around Midland. We did spot one driver who was driving a little weird. He was wandering around in the lane more than most drivers, so we thought he might be intoxicated. We called it in, but before a Midland PD officer could get to where we were, we left the city limits, so our info got relayed to the local sheriff deputies. A deputy caught up with us and pulled the vehicle over. The driver was clean, and to explain his driving, he claimed his truck had steering problems. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t have a drivers license, so he received a citation and had to have somebody come pick him up from the scene and drive him home. Around 2am, we followed a car from a bar. The driver appeared to be heavily intoxicated, so we reported it, but unfortunately for us (fortunate for the driver), she lived not far from the bar and was able to pull into her residence before the officer could get there.

After getting home from patrol around 4am, I was exhausted. I ended up accidentally sleeping through my alarm and totally missed church. I finally woke up around 1pm. Went over to Steven’s apartment to drop off a PS3 game for him to borrow, and then came back home. I then went to a private residence this past, to attend a weekly Hope for Relationships seminar that’s being taught by a guy from Midland Bible Church. Although I’ve been through the material 2+ times already, there is always more to get out of it, and I haven’t heard this guy teach it, so I’m interested in his teaching style. Unfortunately, he had a board meeting that went into overtime, so he wasn’t able to make it. The above mentioned friends were in attendance, so we decided to head back over to the Dunn’s (they were out of the house) to watch a movie. We ate some food, played with their new puppy, “Coach”, and then watched 500 Days of Summer. It’s an interesting movie. It’s kind of like the TV show, How I Met Your Mother–just in movie form.

Coming home, I saw an ambulance head out on the Loop from Midland Drive. I followed it and discovered it was heading to an accident on Hwy 191 where it goes under the Loop. There was a single vehicle on its side–and a lot of emergency vehicles around. I have no idea what the condition of the driver was.

After getting home, I watched the latest episode of Southland. I just started watching this show a couple of weeks ago, but it is definitely my current favorite show (dare I say, even more so than The Big Bang Theory). You should definitely check it out, if you can.

Here’s a picture I took on Friday with my new 50mm f1.8 lens:

Now it’s 1:00am. I’m not really tired, but I should try and see if I can sleep. Ugh. Sometimes it really sucks to be a night owl stuck in a morning owl world.

The beginning of it involved being at my alma mater, Emmaus Bible College. I don’t remember much of that. The part that I do remember is being outside in the parking lot–except that the parking lot was at my old church (Berean Baptist in Glencoe, MN). My mom and I were getting into a car when all of a sudden I heard gunshots. I looked out and there was a guy shooting somebody in a car. He saw me and fired a couple shots at me. I yelled at my mom to get down in the car. The assailant then began to shoot at other people in the parking lot. I pulled out my Ranger (it’s from the game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) and looked out the side of the car from the backseat. The assailant saw me and fired two shots at me before he ran out of ammo. I remember the “clicking” sound his gun made as he pulled the trigger to no avail. I stepped out of the car with the gun pointed at him. I remember his face became really fearful and then I pulled the trigger. Twice. Both shots hit him in the chest and he fell back and died. I don’t know if I actually woke up or not, but I remember my heart pounding in my chest and beating at an extremely high rate of speed. I’ve never experienced so much adrenaline running through my system.

A couple minutes later, I was back in some building with a hockey rink. No idea where I was. The shooting was a thing of the past.

It honestly kinda creeped me out because of how real it felt.

The End.

This past Wednesday, I discovered my right rear brake pads were shot. My method for finding this out was the grinding noise it started to make when I would stop. I recognized from the noise what the problem was. I was going to try and make it till Saturday before changing the pads and rotors, but I decided to just try and get it done Friday evening. My friend, Charles, and I got it knocked out pretty quick (and it would’ve been a lot faster if we had realized the parking brake was on when trying to remove the rotors).

Tomorrow (actually I guess it will be today), I have to change the oil on Bruno in the morning. Then, I have a flag football game at 1:30pm. If we win that game, we play in the semi-finals at 4pm. If we win the semi-finals, we play in the championship at 8pm. If we end up playing all three games, I will be exhausted–but it will be so much fun.

Now I’m off to finish enjoying my heat pad, and watch an episode or two of 24 (season before falling asleep.

Currently, I’m on Southwest Airlines flight #8 from Midland, TX to Albuquerque, NM (“with continued service to Phoenix, San Diego, and Oakland”). I’ve got all 3 seats on my side of my aisle to myself–it’s pretty awesome. I’ll arrive in San Diego this afternoon, and then hang out with my brother Aaron and his family till Tuesday. I love seeing my Aaron and his wife Gretchen, but I’m most excited about seeing my nephew, Ethan, and niece, Peyton (whom I haven’t even met yet!).

Wednesday night, I hung out at Starbucks with my friend Mac Tyler. He is an awesome web designer, and we spent most of the evening talking about design, work, life and lots of other geeky topics. I also met one of Mac’s local friends, Mark Tower. He’s a graduate of MCA, so he and I know a bunch of the same people. He’s a very creative and artistic guy. He also does some crazy awesome artwork with duct tape. If you check out his Twitter feed, he’s got links to pictures of some of the stuff he’s currently working on. We’ll see how things go, but I hope we can see each other more. I enjoy hanging out with local geeks who share a lot of the same mindset as I do, and can challenge me in my designs.

What’s happening in Haiti is pretty awful. I honestly wish I could go down there to help, but I don’t see that working out. So far, this is the most impactful article I’ve found (based on images and video contained inside it).

This month I got seven free lunches, and seventeen free suppers. This gives me a total of twenty four meals for the month.

• 1999 Ford Explorer Sport
• 2 door
• 2 wheel drive
• 5spd manual transmission
• V6 4.0L OHV Engine
• 101,000 miles