Those of you that follow me on Facebook or Twitter know that I have been talking about a second job.

Well, its true, I have taken a second job and the wait is over. I can finally say that I am the new Part Time Director of Youth & Young Adult Ministry for All Saints Lutheran Church here in Albuquerque, NM. Now I took this job for a reason, but not for the reason you think. Its not that I need the money that bad (but the extra money will be nice). I took it because I was asked to fill the position.

After the person who held this job before me resigned in August to pursue other things, the senior pastor came to me & asked me if I would be willing to take over since I had been around the youth at this church for a long time (I've been volunteering with the youth program at All Saints for many years now). I said I would and my first Sunday is this coming Sunday the 20th.

It should prove to be an inserting job and will probably take what little free time I have between my 9to5 job & school, but oh well, I enjoy it. I really do enjoy working in Youth & Young Adult Ministry as I get to help shape the youth of today into the adults of tomorrow (they grow up fast). There is nothing more rewarding then a youth telling you how you've impacted them for the better.

So to all my friends (well, at least I think I have friends), if you do not see me for awhile, but only read my updates on Twitter or Facebook, I am sorry! I will try and make time for all you all even with my crazy-busy schedule.

I leave tomorrow afternoon for Denver and Northern Colorado. I have a meeting in Denver on Friday. My meeting is at the Rocky Mt. Synod and is for the Congregational Ministry Board (CMB), of which I sit on. It does happen to be my first meeting of the CMB and I am very excited about it. The meeting is most of the day (around 8:30am to 3:30pm). As sick and weird as it sounds, I enjoy full day meetings. It might be that I rarely get to partake in them, and when I do its a treat.

Then on Friday afternoon, after my most of the day meeting is over, I am heading up to Eaton, CO (which is East of Ft. Collins & north of Greeley) to spend the weekend with my former pastor and his family. I must say its a nice little break away from my normal crap of school & work and is going to have to pass for my spring break, seeing as I do not get one at CNM.

Only downside to the trip is my rental car. I am less then 6 months away from turning 25 year old (when the hell did that happen?). Anyway, as such, I am still required to pay the 15 dollar a day under 25 fee that Enterprise Car Rental charges. While this is much cheaper then any of the other car rental company's, its still accounts for about 50 dollars on my car rental bill, which just sucks. What would have been a 135 dollar car rental for the week turned into a 185 dollar car rental with the fee tacked on. I have called around & there seems to be no way to get rid of the fee, which sucks more. But its life, and soon I will be 25 and not have to worry anymore.

Well, I think that is about the only new thing in my life. Ya, I know, I lead an exciting life. lol. School is going good & so is work. I still love my job for the most part, which is a blessing considering I just had my 4 year anniversary with the company back on the 16^th of Feb. Next year, which will be 5 years, I get another week of vacation, and I am very much looking forward to that. Granted, I am still not sure what to do with 2 weeks of vacation and I am not sure I will know what to do with 3 weeks. Oh well, maybe I will take some time off for once...

So it’s been about 10 days since I have updated this (and even then that was not a true update), and I feel its about damn time for an update. Life has been so crazy busy that I have really only had time to look at LJ but not really update. Plus, there has not been too much "earth shattering" news in my life, just much of the same old stuff that I am sure would just bore you all to tears if I posted about it everyday. LOL. So anyway, with that said here we go:

This past weekend, I helped out at a youth lock-in / yard-sale at my church and all I can say is what in the hell were we thinking? I mean really? A lock-in and a yard-sale all in the same weekend. So ya, must have been a laps in mental judgment if you ask me.

Last Friday was our monthly company breakfast we do at work, which is good and all, but still sucks to get up at 5am, when normally my alarm does not go off until sometime between 6:30 and 7am. So the breakfast was good and having a chance to hang out with co-workers that I do not often get to see since they are in the field a lot is nice too. Anyway, Also on Friday I drove down to CNM on my lunch break to get my CNM ID (ya, I never got around to it until last week) and to take a test for my networking class since I will be out Tuesday at some continuing ed stuff for work. I finally got out of the office between 5:30 and 6pm and drove up to Holy Cross with a stop at Starbucks along the way.

Walked into the church building to find a lot more crap then I was expecting. For the yard-sale, we had members of the church drop off stuff they wanted to get rid of and then we would sort, price, and sell it with all the money going to the Storehouse (a local non-profit that helps very poor and homeless people). We took the divide and conquer approach and start to work our way through all the stuff that litterly filled the whole church up.

( Click the link if you want the 'blow-by-blow' of the lockin )

The actual sale it self was great, but very busy the whole time, even when we thought it would slow down around 10:30 / 11am. It was busy all the way from 7am, right up until we decided to close up shop around 1pm. We made something large, like 1,200.00 dollars or something, which was really above and beyond anything we thought we would get. Cleanup took about an hour and at 2pm'ish we were out the door.

Property Taxes:
So I found out that my property taxes are going up around 300.00 this year due to a really stupid state law, which means my property taxes will go from 800.00 a year to about 1,000.00 a year. The way this works, is that by state law, the county can only increase your taxes 3% a year, so a lot property is under valued. The only way they can play catch-up is when someone buys a house, they get to hit them for all its work and value the property at the current market value. So that’s some fun...

School:
So we are in the last two weeks of school and I am ball-to-the-wall right now. We are in our last round of normal tests this week and next week is finals. I am still on track for good grades so long as I do not screw the pooch on something (which I am not planning on doing). I must say that it’s really weird to be done with school before May, but at the same time it will be very nice to be done with school for the term. To answer your questions, no I am not taking summer term classes, as I need some time to regain my mental sanity.

I think that is all for now...

Sorry, could not stop my self from using this icon. Its way too fitting for today, and I really don’t get to use it enough. :)

So this coming week I have tests again in all 3 classes. To make things easy for everyone, I will post my scores once I know all of them. I am not going to post for each test cus that is a little silly.

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So reading the Albuquerque Journal website this evening, I saw a story about our school district here in Albuquerque, Albuquerque Public Schools, which I am a product of. Anyway, in the story they were talking about some of the schools that a new area being developed will feed into when I remember how bad our schools are here.

About 60 percent of the ninth-graders at Albuquerque High aren't proficient in reading and 65 percent aren't proficient in math, according to the state Public Education Department. The figures are worse for sixth-graders at Washington Middle— where 82 percent aren't proficient in reading and 93 percent aren't proficient in math. At Lowell Elementary, 61 percent of third-graders aren't proficient in reading and 78 percent aren't in math.

Um, ya, I think that speaks for its self. I know the schools that I went to (Corrales Elem School, Taylor Middle School, and Cibola High School) are better then those schools, but still that is pretty representative of the district as a whole.

I also love how APS is trying to down play the fact that they did not build any new high schools in the city for about 20 years. In that same 20 years Albuquerque grew by over 200,000 people. Now they are having to play catch up, something that APS is trying to down play in the story. My family (including me) has always been very critical of this school district and I think rightly so, it sucks.

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In other news, Easter was good. I made it to church for once in a long time and it was ok. Better then it has been in a long time, but still not the good old days that I long for. I still do not know what I am going to do, but so far have I have not found another church here in town that I would want to be at (At least not that I am willing to make up my mind). So it’s still much of the same, and I really don’t have any motivation to figure it all out right now.

After church, we went down to the Embassy Suites where we had a great Easter brunch. It was mom, dad, my grandma, and I. The food was great, and even now I am still not really that hungry. lol. I think I also gained 5 pounds just from the brunch. lol

Anyway, I think that is all that is new in my life for now. I hope everyone had a good Easter.

I was checking my friends page yesterday and saw kingofwingo who lives up in Indiana posted about going to "eat at the new Mexican place in town", and had to ask him if it was a new place in town, or a place that served New Mexican food. So he reply back that no, it was a new place in town and that he did not even know that there was such a thing called New Mexican food.

I replied back and told him a little about New Mexican food, and then decided out of fun to google "New Mexican Food" and one of the returned results was from Wikipedia. For you people who are out of the loop or just dont know, Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia on the internet that anyone can edit and add information too. So I was a little surprised to see a entry on Wikipedia about New Mexican Food, but never the less it was there so I included that into my reply to him. So that was a fun little discovery this morning.

In other news, I leave in about 2 hours to head upto Colorado Springs for the RMS Middle School Youth Gathering. This year I am a chaperone (Do not ask me why I said yes), instead of being a Guardian Angle (read as security). This means I will prob sleep more, but I think I also might pull my hair out because I am reasonable for people, and just making sure that people in general are behaving and doing what they need to do. So this will be different for me.

I will be up there all weekend; as such I will prob not post to my journal. I might make a few phone posts & picture posts from my phone, but I would not expect any real posts until late Sunday night, or Monday morning. I will have my cell phone on and with me, so if anyone needs to get a hold of me, call my cell phone.

So that is all for now. I need to leave in 15 min to go to class, and then after that its time to hit the open road!

Tonight I had a pre-gathering for the RMS Middle School Youth Gathering at St. Luke's Lutheran Church here in the Northeast Heights.

The meeting was great, and we got everything done that we set out to do. The banners the youth created were better then I could have even thought, and if I had been thinking with half my brain, I should have taken photos. Maybe at the gathering I will track down our banners and photo them, but anyway, I get off track easy.

Tonight as we finished cleaning up and were all leave I walking out side to see one of the parents there with what I can only describe as a very confused but also very shocked look on her face. She was holding some keys and talking about her car.

At first I thought that she got locked out of her car, or that her car would not start, or something. But then I came to realize very fast that her car had gotten STOLEN. Now, its not like her car was parked on the street or any place that someone would not think that she was in this church, but it was stolen from the church parking lot.

Now this really pisses me off for any number of reasons, but stealing a car from a church parking lot, that’s really got to piss the big guy off, right? I mean, out of all the cars in the whole NE Heights area, why her car in the church parking lot. I mean, its not like she was even driving a good car. It was an old Jeep Grand Cherokee with issues. I mean, as if not stealing this woman’s only car was bad enough, the topping to all of this was about 2 months back, someone broke into her car, and stole her stereo! Well, yesterday she got around to replacing it. I mean, is that some shit or what!

The few of us that were left waited with her until the cop's came to take her statement, and until her father could come pick her up and her daughter up. I feel so sorry for them, I mean, that could have very easily been my car (well, my fathers car since that is what I am driving right now) as she was parked right next to me. I mean to think he could have tried any one of our cars, only to have luck with hers. I mean just that makes me feel violated, let alone what she must be feeling right now.

When we were waiting the cops to show up, we were all joking with each other, cus well, it was better then dealing with what had just happened. During this time, she told us about replacing the stereo and how she now wishes she had not sold her other car. Also, she told us how she thought about car pooling from Cross of Hope, but since they lived so close to St. Luke, she just drove and how she now wishes she had just car pooled.

When the cop pulled up (and I must say this was record time for APD for a non-emergency) he got out his car and said to the whole group "There sure are a lot of smiling people considering someone's car just got stolen", to which we all laughed and I think we all said something to the fact of "Well, its better then crying and hell, we did that already" LOL.

Now this begs the questions, Why does bad things happen to good people?. I have asked my self this question over and over again tonight. Not only because of this, but other stuff too. I mean, people who deal with so much in life, why is it that these people have to deal with this. I mean really if some rich guys BMW gets stolen is it really that bad for him? He probably has other cars, and even still his insurance will buy another car just like it for him. It’s just a car. But for this woman, this car is now she gets around in life. Let’s face it, Albuquerque does not have the best mass-transit system, and it’s not anything anyone can really use to get around with for the most part. Also, this was there only car, and it was not the worse car in the world, but surely not the best! So, why must a single mother get her only car stolen, when some rich guy still has his car?

I am not saying that rich people are the only ones that should have there cars stolen. In a perfect world, no ones cars or other items would get stolen, but yet, we do not live in a perfect world. We live in a world that is laced with crime and other problems. Just this afternoon I was joking with Pastor Erik about my prediction for the future, which was "I give society 10 more years before it just implodes on its self", and some days I think I just might be right.

I know this should not surprise me, or shock me, but for some reason it does. Maybe it’s all the time I spend at churches, with nothing like this happening, or maybe I just thought people had more respect for churches. But I am not only surprised & shocked, but appalled at the person who did this. So, now a really great and wonderful evening as been turned into a pile of dog shit by one stupid person!

So, today has just been a really long day, and it's not even over yet. I really think there is beer in my future, trust me, I really do! I got to sneak a few more in before I turn legal. Anyway, now that I am off topic, time to get back on topic.

Anyway, today started around 6am, which my leg muscle spazzing. It hurt like shit, and the only was I could get it to stop, was to try and stand up. At which point, I fell over cus the leg was soo screwed. Lucky for me, my bed was next to me, so I fell onto that. After I tried to put a little pressure on it, it stopped spazzing up, and finally relaxed. This has not happened in a while, but if it happens again, I will make an appointment with my DR. It does scare me a little when it does it, cus the pain is so intense, but I do not think / know if it is something to worry about.

So, I would have stayed away at that point, but that took so much out of me, that I had to lay back down (and do not call me lazy, cus it sucks). Anyway, finally got up around 7:15 / 7:30. I booted up the computer, and VPN'ed to work, and started to test / restore the backup from home, which is something I am trying to do often. Then, when all that fun stuff was running, I hopped in the shower. Did all that fun stuff, and got dressed in my new suit and a new dress shirt I have. I really looked good today, or so I think anyway. lol.

Was out the door by 8:15ish, and stopped at Starbucks on my way into the office. I have found a new much fun reason to go to Starbucks, but I will talk about that at a later time! So, got into the office around 8:30am. Worked for about an hour or there abouts, and then left at 9:45 to go to the Funeral at Holy Cross. The funeral was good; Erik does such great funeral, something I think he perfected at his first call, (which is another story). There was a small (since it was Lutheran READ: Large) lunch after the service complete with Jello. Come-on, we are good Lutherans. I stayed for that, and there was great company. I chit chatted with Suzan (See: Church God!) & Erik (See: Bad Pastor) for a bit, then took off. I headed over to the west side and took care of everything over at Richards, then came back to the east and headed for Costco. I had to go inside Costco cus my stupid card was all screwed up, and I have known this for the past 100 times I have gone, but have done nothing about it. So, today I took care of it, and got a new card. So, then I went and park my ass in the really long line for gas at Costco.

BTW: I love the Bud-Light, Real Men of Genius ad searies they did, and I love the Mr. Company Computer Guy. LOL. It's really too funny.

I waited so long in that line, looking at the "Costco Gasoline" sign that I realized that all the word "Gasoline" really is, is "GAS O LINE", which is really funny, cus that is totally what Costco Gas is. Anyway, so after waiting like 10 min, I got gas, and got the heck out of there.

Got back to the office at 2pm, did some small things, like checking work e-mail and such. Then at 2:30, I had to leave for the East Mt. to go to Bob's house again. He did his Ethernet card in, so I had to find a part for him, and fix it. It's really funny; cus fixing it only took about 5 min. But the drive out there way 40 min, we talked for about 45 min, and the drive back was almost an hour due to traffic. So, I spent a hell of a lot more time driving / in traffic then I even did fixing the problem.

Got back to the office at 4:45 pm. Got in the front door, and Terri told me that Scott Day’s phone, took a crap dive today. So, I took it, and came up stairs. Jerry Depoy got to me before I could get back to my office. Told me that his PDA was taking a crap dive. He had the HP h1910, which is old (also what I used to use). So, I checked a few things and told him I would pick him up a new one on Thursday from CompUSA.

I then called good old Verizon support, and told them that I needed to do an ESN change to a new piece of equipment. He needed the order number and location number which is in the packet of crap. So, I gave that to which, did beat having to do the whole rip off the cover and find the ESN. So, he then told me to do the *228 send to activate the phone. It failed. He had me do it again, and it failed again. So, then we had to do manual programming, which really sucked. It was entering a lot of crap, and was just more time. If I have to do that to each phone, then its really going to suck hard. So, I finished that up, did the paperwork on my end, then took the phone back down stairs. By that time, Terri had left for the day, so I left the phone box on her desk, with a note saying that I need Scotts old wall charger back, and that if he does not want the holster, then to give that back to me.

And now here I am, just getting ready to go home (what’s that?), Brains going away dinner. Then after that, I am going to my parent’s house tonight. Since my dad is not back from OK yet, and my mom has a 4am distro, or some ungodly hour, I am sleeping over at their house. I am doing that so I can feed the dog and cats in the morning. So, I should be in the office early (or not) we shall see.

BTW: I love the Bud-Light, "Real Men of Genius" ad campaign they did, and I really love the "Mr. Company Computer Guy" one. That one is too funny. I have a bunch on my computer here at work, and I love them all.

Well, I was going to call this post, "it's alive, alive.", but then I remembered that I used that a few months back when I got the server back up and working at work. This time it's DSL, and it's at Holy Cross. So, if you are reading this, it means two things. First your internet connection is working just fine, and second so is the DSL at my church. So, I am happy.

My est time to have this project done was 2.5 hours, which the first time I hit right on the dot. I was moving the copier back to where it belongs right at 4pm, which was 2.5 hours after I started. So, then I checked the link status, and got shit for connection between the DSL modem and the router.

So, I was like "SHIT!", cus that mean I have to pull everything back out and fix it again! Well, the first time I did it, I just used a screwdriver to punch down the wires, (which I know is not the best way to do it, but it has worked fine in the past for me) since I forgot my punch down tool at home, and the one I brought from work only had the blade for phone board punch down.

So, I gave in, and ran back to my place and grabbed my punch down tool, and came back. I decided to start at the first jack installed today. So, I moved the really huge ass copier again, and start to pull everything back out of the wall again. I just decided to rip the wires out of the punch down, and redo it, and not try to baby it. So, that is what I did, and I used the correct tool to punch this crap down. So, I plugged it all back in, and guess what.

IT WORKED! It only took me 15 to 25 mins to fix it, so that was not bad at all.

So, that makes me happy cus that means I do not have to go pull my other box off the wall right now, as that can wait until / if it gives us any more problems.

So, that is what I have been up to almost all afternoon. Now I have go to my office, and do the weekend backups, well change the tapes and start the backup on one server. Then after that it will be shower time for Kevin cus I stink like crap right now from being up in the ceiling and all that fun stuff.

Then it's off to the Westside, to go check on my former boss's house, then dinner with my Mommy.

Peace,
Kevin

Ok, so not really. The DSL has not killed anyone yet, but I am about ready to kill it. Or at least I am ready to throw the DSL modem out in to Traffic on Wyoming. HEHE.

Anyway, so tonight I spent basically 5.5 hours at church working on the DSL problem. After I trouble shot the problem from here to Texas and back, I tried to call Earthlink support. The first time I called them, I went thru the whole cluster-fuck that they call a menu system, then got put on hold for about 2 min, then got disconnected, and got a busy signal. So I tried again, and again, and again. No luck. So finally, I bit the bullet, and tried the Live Chat, hoping the DSL does not drop out.

So, finally someone comes on, and ask what my problem is, to which I reply:
We get disconnected from our DSL at random. The time of day at which it does this is random, and the amount of time in which the DSL is down is random also. We have checked all wiring, we have tried resetting our DSL modem, and we have tried moving our DSL modem with no luck. We have had the phone company come out and check our line integrity; we replaced all of our DSL line filters, but still no luck. I am hoping that we do not get disconnected now & I could not reach anyone when I tried calling the 1-800 number. I went thru all the menu options, and just get a busy signal. Can you help us fix our problem?

So he asks me a bunch of questions, and bascily tells me that before we can go any further, he needs to basically turn off my computer, turn off the DSL modem. Then turn on the DSL modem, then turn on the computer. So, I told Dumb-Dumb @ Earthlink that we did that, and it has never helped. Also, I do not think he really read my message to him, cus if he had, he would have seen what I have done. So, then he told me that he needed me to test a few things, and then to get back to support with the answers to the questions. So, bascily left me in the same shit place I was before I talked with support.

So, one of the things that he needed me to test, was to see if I could get "sync" at the demark. Well, in the course of this, I found out that we have the old as hell four post demark, so there is no test plug on this to test this. So, using a few fun things, I give it a shot, and am able to get the DSL modem to "sync", which is good and all, but my problem is that our problem is random. So, I figured out a simi-perm way that is still temporary to keep the DSL hooked up to the demark and still have all the phones come off the demark.

(for all you non technical / non phone people, the demark is where the wires that come into your house from the phone company get hooked up to, and then the wiring become your deal after the demark and not the phone company)

So since our demark is at the front of the church in a closet and I had to run to the office's which are towards the back of the church, I got two network cables and grabbed a connecter from work, and combined the two cables, and ran it from the closet to the office on the floor, and taped it down. Hooked that into the router on one end, and the DSL modem on the other end. So, it all works (for now), and I will have Suzan (Church God, I mean Secretary) keep a eye on it, and see if it all works. She will be the first to let me know if it does not. That will then tell me what I need to know, but this way, I am not spending the 50+ dollars on network cable & parts that I would have if I did this the way I was first thinking I was going to have to do it.

Then I also created two signs to go on the inside and outside of the closet door that has the network and phone system stuff.

Here is what both signs said (these are designed to take up a full 8.5x11 sheet of paper each):

Please do not Touch / Move / Disrupt the network or phone systems in this closet, unless you have been instructed to by: Kevin M, Suzan B, or Erik K. Doing so will not only cause the Internet and Phones to not work, it will also enrage office personal who need these things to work. Thank you for your understanding. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Kevin Murray.

When using or moving items in or around the closet, please be very careful of the Network and Phone Systems and the wires that connect these systems. These items are very sensitive, and the smallest tap or bump could cause them to break and stop working. Thank you for your understanding. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Kevin Murray.

So I think they are a little harsh, but it is also what need to be said, cus people are not very careful when they get crap out of that closet. They also just pile shit in there, and stuff hits the demark and the phone system and all the wires that go with it. Part of that is why I think we are having the problem we got right now with the DSL. I think the phone wire that runs to the back is so fuck-up cus it has been hit whacked and other crap so much, it has damaged the wire.

I did a few other things before I left, like cleaning up my mess, and writing Suzan a letter and a few notes about what I did and all that fun stuff. I then left around 11:45pm or there abouts. So, I hope this fixes the problem, or at least solves some of it, so I can be done with all this crap and soon!

Well its late, and I really need to get some sleep!

Peace,
Kevin

PS: My icon fits me tonight, cus I really did that tonight! LOL!