Why is it that growing up involves pushing aside the very things that made you who you are? Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was my absolute favorite show growing up! I remember waking up extra early every Saturday morning just to watch the newest episode. Everyday after school I’d immediately turn to Fox Kids to watch my brightly colored heroes save the world yet again.

Getting together with the other neighborhood kids and playing Power Rangers was always a real treat, we’d fight invisible enemies using our individual pseudo-martial arts, and when things got really rough, we knew what we had to do. “Its morphin time! Dragonzord! Mastodon! Pterodactyl! Triceratops! Sabertooth tiger! Tyrannosaurus!” Invisible evil space aliens everywhere feared our legendary morphing abilities! My front yard being the main stage, I of course, was always the Green Ranger. Thus my favorite color was selected and remains to be changed, even a decade later.

At some point, I “grew up” and stopped watching the series. Over the years, the show matured, cast members were changed, and even spandex outfit designs changed, but no matter who or what the rangers looked like, I always had a deep level of respect for them.

Power Rangers was the reason I became interested in martial arts to begin with, not for self defense purposes, but in preparation of me becoming a ranger one day and saving the world from “evil space aliens.” To this day, I’m still heavily involved in martial arts, and for what? Self defense? Sure, I may need to defend myself one day, but deep down inside I still feel that one day I may just have the opportunity to make a difference in someone’s life using martial arts. Weather it be by teaching a kid discipline, restraint and integrity, or by standing up for whats right with the self confidence instilled by years of training. In the end, thats what Power Rangers was really about. A team of self-sacrificing heroes fighting for whats right against unbelievable odds.

So again I ask, why push aside the very thing that made me who I am today? In a society where stealing, killing, and taking advantage of other people is admirable, Power Ranger morals and values are needed more than ever! While I may not have the brightly colored outfit, I am a ranger at heart, and I hope to inspire the kids in my class to walk a virtuous path. If that makes me “childish”, then so be it!

Technorati Tags: Integrity, Martial Arts, Power Rangers

I’ve come to realize that in this day and age, your qualifications don’t mean much, especially if you know people in all the right places. In fact, after working for several years in a “professional” environment, I’ve come to realize that job requirements are usually in place to keep people out of a job.

I’ve witnessed first hand how a government position is created and filled. I find it extremely inappropriate that the supervisor usually recommends certain job “requirements” be placed on that new position. Requirements that are specifically tailored to the person he/she already has the intent of hiring. This way, HR is practically baited into hiring that person. When its all said and done, I’m sure the supervisor’s new employee is just the right person for the job, why wouldn’t he be? I mean, he matched the criteria perfectly!

Sometimes, neither the employer or HR is to blame for hiring completely incompetent people. Some job prospectors find it easier to pad their resume full of “white lies” and throw in all the right buzz words in all the right places. A padded resume combined with an HR employee knowing nothing about the specifics of the work the new employee is being hired to do makes for some fine hirings!

There are other times where a prospector meets the job requirements perfectly without someone tailoring them before hand. A prospector fresh out of college holding his shiny new bachelor’s degree, rejoice! Surely, having a four year degree must mean something? Not always…

While I’m not one to discourage higher education, I for one do criticize our education system. The mere fact that someone holds a degree from any institution doesn’t necessarily prove that this person is actually worth their weight in salt in the work environment.

This brings me to my main point behind this rant…incompetence of a college graduate.
The company I work for is required by the Air Force to maintain two people at my location to maintain the systems. My coworker holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Management Information Systems, and has been at his job for over seven years. Seven years! More than a quarter of my time on this earth!

Two years ago, a young teenage guy fresh out of high school scores a great job as a DoD Contractor simply by running into the right people at the right time, and proving his vast knowledge of computer systems. Hired! This teenager was met with animosity and crude comments of his skills, experience, and competence by the seven year veteran of the company.

During these past two years, several upgrades, updates, and new systems have come online falling under our responsibility. Our college graduate isn’t keeping up with the changes and is merely a glorified seat warmer. Speaking with several former staff members of his time revealed that all he has ever been is a waste of space. People from other organizations, other companies, and other military bases have all heard of his grand incompetence and lack of understanding of the system hes worked with for seven years!

My biggest question is, how does such a waste of space get away with merely “existing” for seven years? Is a college degree merely an excuse to become lazy and ignorant, or is it a combination of a college degree + knowing the right people?

Technorati Tags: College Graduate, Hiring Standards, Incompetence, Resumes

Former GameSpot editor Brad Shoemaker’s latest blog post gave me the pleasure of watching food from various nations re-enact several wars throughout history. I love food, and I love learning about past wars! This page is the video creator’s website detailing the nationalities of all the “foodstuffs”, just in case you need help figuring it all out.

Technorati Tags: food fight, food war, foodstuffs, history, wars

I found this image while browsing PSP Fanboy, all credit for this awesome piece of artwork goes to canecodesign over at DeviantArt. Great work!!

Technorati Tags: 300, 300 Patapons, Concept Art, Patapon, Spartans

One of my previous entires in this mediocre blog of mine was expressing my discontent having been pulled over going only four mph over the speed limit. Because of that incident, I sat through a six hour defensive driving course.

Having successfully completed the course about a month ago, I patiently waited for my certificate of completion to arrive. A few weeks later, and it still hadn’t shown up in my mailbox! The certificate was sent off from a town several hours away, there was no reason for it to take this long! I called up the company to express my concern with the tardiness of my certificate, and the quickly approaching deadline which I needed to file it.

After a short conversation, we figured out what happened. Apparently I misspelled the name of my home town, and the certificate was probably lost in the mail because of it. I found it somewhat odd that I had “misspelled” my home town address, especially since my bank’s card isn’t billed if something like my address is even slightly wrong. Oh well, whatever.

As the man on the other end of the phone arranged to have another certificate printed and shipped to me, he asked me to verify my name. After spelling it out to him he tells me “I” must have misspelled my name on the online form as well. Wow, not just one typo, but now two typos?

After finding this many mistakes in my record, we went over all the little bits of information…guess what? Another typo!!
Seems as if “I” misspelled the judge’s name, and even the county he presides in. I’m usually the first person to admit when I’m wrong, but this many typos and incorrect information just couldn’t have been my fault.

After all the information was verified, another certificate was made and shipped out over night, or so I thought. Apparently certificates can only be printed before 3pm, and our verification of the data had carried on well after 3pm. So now, my certificate would show up 1 day after the damn thing was due…lovely.

Having shipped all the paper work via express mail to the next town over one day late, I received a letter for the judge. The letter read somewhat like this,”Dear reader, the honorable judge demands his money!” So all this, was a was of my time and money. How I hate the court system in our country…had I a couple extra million dollars, I’m sure I could of found a way around this and never had to have worried about a stupid ticket in a small rural town.

This adds two things on my “Hate List”, the Texas Dept. of Transportation and the honorable judge of the next town over.

Technorati Tags: Defensive Driving, Honorable Judge, Speeding Ticket