Handle With Care

What X-Man Am I

If this gives any indication on my day at work, this is my second post of the day.

How Army Literate Are You?

Here's another test that I recently took.

The Army Brat / Veteran

You scored 95 points on Knowledge out of 110! Very Good!

You were nearly there. You got most of the answers correct, there were only a few you didn't know. This makes me think you either grew up around the army (and followed your family from one duty station to another) or that you used to be in the military and you're just a little out of touch with the newer military vocabulary. You've proved that you're very familiar with most of the army lingo though. Well done.

Take The 'How Army Literate Are You?' Test at HelloQuizzy

Since I've never been in the military, and nobody in my immediate family has served (with the exception of my brother-in-law, Scott) I would have to say that growing up by Hill AFB influenced me more than I thought.

Query Running

I run several queries at work to make sure my team is doing what they're supposed to. Most of these queries take several minutes to run, during which time I can't use Clarify (Citrix app) to do any other work. During these times, I like to get online and take funky tests. My most recent was the Nerd Test.

Check out my score.




So, I'm a nerd. I'll post more when I find something funny or interesting.

Quick Update

People have asked why I live in Preston and work in Ogden, a round-trip of 160 miles. I love being able to look out our front window and see pastures and fields. It also helps me control my road rage to share the road with less people. Living in Preston is therapeutic for me.

I served an LDS mission in Poland and lived in Warsaw for 18 months. I loved big city life, always having entertainment and good food within walking distance, and awesome public transportation. After coming home, I realized that that kind of a life only appealed to me before I had kids. Now that I'm married and have young sons, I feel much safer living in a small community, even though people drive down our road faster than the posted speed limit.

Finally, I love living in Napoleon Dynamite land. FREAKING AWESOME!

A couple of days ago, when I had returned home from work, I went out to water our front lawn in the early evening. When I looked over at my wife's candle lilies, I saw what I thought was the world's biggest wasp. When I got my camera and zoomed in on it, it turned out to be a small humming bird. I thought it was pretty cool, as we don't see many of those in Preston.

Work Work Work

People are shocked when they find out I live in Preston, Idaho and I drive 80 miles to work in Ogden, Utah. They tend to be more shocked to find out I work at Convergys.
First off, I work on the Juniper Networks project at Convergys, doing primary technical support for Juniper's WX and DX framework. To me, this is interesting work, but it tends to put other people to sleep when I start explaining what these devices do and how they work. I also work with an awesome team, which makes work a lot more enjoyable. And my team has been very successful for the past 10 months. Our team lead has received honors for six of the last ten months running.
Second, the drive to Ogden from Preston may seem long, but the speed limits are high almost the whole way, so it goes a lot quicker than you would think. The traffic between the two cities is also not that bad. I usually get off I-15 before traffic starts picking up just south of Ogden.
Third, I drive a Compressed Natural Gas hybrid car, so I spend less money driving 500 miles a week than my friends who drive 50 miles a week. CNG has got to be the best alternative fuel out there, but I'll blog about that some other time.

Have you ever had one of those days?

Football RPG!!

I can't say how much I love video games, even ones with no graphics. A friend of mine recently turned my attention to a football MMORPG, called goallineblitz.com. So far, it's been interesting to set up a player, have him get offers from different teams, and have him grow into a decent player.

If this sounds interesting to you, I recommend you check it out. Plus, it wouldn't hurt to use me as a referral by using the link below. If the link isn't active in my post, just copy it and paste it in your browser.

http://goallineblitz.com/game/signup.pl?ref=19026241

Good times! I hope to see you there.

What's in a name?

For those of you who may stumble upon my humble blog, you may ask yourself why I picked Johnny Thumbs as the name for my blog. It's actually a two part story.

First, I have extraordinary thumbs, sometimes referred to as spoon thumbs or hitch-hiker thumbs. I feel that they were genetically created to participate in my favorite pass-time, video games. Back in the day I could actually push all six buttons at the same time on the SNES, which my friends thought was pretty cool.

Second, while I was contemplating creating this blog, I asked one of my friends from work, Tony Chard, what I could name this blog. He recommended several things, such as John John the Leprechaun, the 14 year-old adult, and Doogie Howser's Evil Twin. None of those struck a chord with me. I wanted a cool nickname to go with it. Tony was given a somewhat cool nickname by our site coordinator at work. She calls him Tony Bag-o-doughnuts, kind of giving him the gangster feel. That's when Tony recommended Johnny Thumbs, which I thought was really cool.
So, there you go. And as proof, I've got a nice picture below.

Greetings!!

After seeing my wife and her blog, I've decided to start one of my own. I'm sure this will be a feeble attempt, but I'm going to give it a try anyway. I'm also sure that I'll be posting more often as time goes by. Stay tuned for more info.