Moved to Oakbox.com

There's a reason that there are no fresh posts on this blog for almost 3 years. I moved my blogging personality to http://www.oakbox.com.

I also exist in:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oakbox
LinkedIn: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/richardstill

I say all of this because I just tried to find 'Richard Still' in Google and came up with a bunch of OTHER Richards. I even tried searching with the combination of "Richard Still Poetry Slam", the only other non-technical thing I am strongly associated with, and came up blank. It was frustrating. But, I DID see myself, or a link to this page, under Images. So, this is an effort to tie Richard Still to Oakbox, because they are both me.

Paranoia will not destroy ya

I just watched Alex Jone's film on Google Video. I've gone back and forth on this a few times.

Option 1 "9/11 was just what we were all told it was"
Option 2 "It was an inside job"

What is nice about Option 1 is that there are bad guys 'out there' that have to be fought against. The bad guys in Option 2 are already inside the house with us. "We've traced the phone call. . . it is coming from inside your house."

We get to find out the truth in the next 6 months.

I take it as given that you have looked at conspiracy theories, there are so many to choose from. Not Michael Moore's silly movie, I'm talking about all of the other stuff; false flag operations, "who benefits?" logic, the history of state sponsored terrorism (the USA sponsored sort), etc. If you haven't, a good starting point is the link at the start of this post.

I spent some time looking for opposing view points. Most of what I found was of the sort: "It's not even wrong". Okay. But that needs to be explained, in detail, by people I trust.

Visual Joke

If you get this joke, please leave a comment or write to me. You are just the kind of nerdy, out-of-the-box thinker that I want to hang with:

y e
t o r p
n

Ha Ha! That cracks me up.

If you just don't get it, here is a clue.

Passport

When applying by mail, pay the application fee (as well as the expedite and overnight delivery return fee, if applicable) to the "U.S. Department of State". There is no execution fee when applying by mail.

For Passport Application Fee:
Personal checks, money orders, and bank drafts at all locations.

- from the passport renewal page of the USA

There are a three problems with this if you are living in the Netherlands.

1. There is no such thing as a personal check here. I send a letter to my bank and my bank sends your bank the money. I need to know your account number for this to happen.
2. There is no such thing as a bank draft.
3. Money orders cannot be obtained here in the Netherlands. I actually got laughed at when I asked about this at the post office.

So, in the end, I had to go to Amsterdam to renew my passport in person. 2.5 hour train trip to Amsterdam (23.45 euro). But the train was slow so I missed my tram in Amsterdam, that made me late for my scheduled time. So I took at taxi (15 euro). I was dreading the embassy itself, expecting some sort of ultimate DMV. My last visit was to attain a visa for my fiance to go to America. That was 10 years ago and not a happy experience.

Nothing! No Problems at All! I was able to walk right up to my window, the whole transaction took 5 minutes, and because the Euro is so strong it felt like I got a 30% discount on the fee. It was great.

The US Embassy in Amsterdam is awesome. (when renewing a passport. The people applying for visas were stacked up 10 deep.)

Anyway, this means that I will have my documentation in time for the trip home in October. We will arrive on the 11th and will be hanging around with my folks until the 17th.

Derek's 8th Birthday

When it is your child's birthday, there are three things you must do here in Holland.

1. Make a snack and/or small gift for everyone in the class and something nice for the teacher. This is called a 'tractatie'.
2. Arrange a birthday party for your child and several of his friends.
3. Arrange a birthday party for your child where adults can come and congratulate the family.

We didn't actually make it to step 3 this year, because step 2 just about killed us. My son, who is a sweet and friendly boy, invited fifteen (15) FIFTEEN boys ranging from 7 to 9 years old to his birthday. So, from 12:00 until 17:30 on Saturday August the 30th of this year, I really really wanted to have some earplugs.

Putting the cake on the table was easy enough. Keeping the boys from daring each other to jump out of our 7th story window was a bit more complex. And walking the kids to a bowling alley that is only a few blocks away was harrowing and nightmarish. We had arranged to have two other parents come to help us with herding duties, but one begged off because a problem at work.

15 boys, against 3 adults.

I say that as if you might know what the hell that MEANS. And if you do know, then you have my sympathy.

After the bowling alley, we walked them back to the house and watched them play soccer in a field until it was time for their parents to pick them up. It ended up okay. No one was hurt, all the kids seemed to have a good time. I have to count it as a success, but next year, "No more than 7 kids, Derek. No more than 7."

My History outline part II

When I stopped the last post, I had just arrived in the Netherlands, ready to start a whole new job in a new land with a new new new . . . . new everything.

2002:
The first thing was trying to get my visa, my permission to be here, straightened out. After the nightmare of dealing with the INS for Sylvia's green card, I expected the worst. Years of waiting and thousands of dollars. It took about 20 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon. That's it. 20 minutes. They mailed my visa to me the next week.
Everywhere here is full of people. That was the first big jump from NC/TN thinking, lot's of people. Everywhere. You have to cultivate a feeling of isolation/privacy internally.
It took about 2 months before the feeling of alien-ness left me. My job working for the father-in-law was not enough to pay all of the bills, so I took a job in Rotterdam as a programmer.
3 months later, the work for the father-in-law (we'll call him 'Bert' from now on) WAS enough to keep me busy full time. Which meant that for a few weeks I was working two full time jobs!
2002 was busy. Language lessons "Ik kan Nederlands goede spreken!". Work. Adjusting to the Netherlands. Just busy.
I met my good friend Jason Lawrenson. An Englishman that shared the same language classes as me. Nice guy. He is listed on my friends in facebook.

2003:
Lot's of things happened in 2003. Personal things that really don't belong here on this page. Sylvia and I were this close ][ to getting a divorce. I actually did move out of the house with Derek for about 6 months. In the end, we got back together, so the whole experience had the ultimate result of making me realise that to much work-work-work could lead to a serious depletion of family-family-family.

2004:
The business starts hitting its stride. Online Talent Manager has a wide range of tests, the code I wrote in the depths of 2003 depression just happened to be totally fucking awesome. We were on our way.
http://www.onlinetalentmanager.com or http://www.talent8.nl to read some more. But actually, all of those pages were written by other people, the magic under the hood is my domain.

2005 through now:
I cannot think of much that really stands out for a big swath of time there. Lot's of things HAPPENED. Visiting Paris. Trips back to the states. Jumps in the business. More babies being born in the family. Derek growing up, seemingly, faster and faster. I think I just need to work on parsing these years out a little more thoroughly :)
Maybe in a future post.

Facebook

A friend of mine posted a video to his Facebook account and I thought, "What the hell, I'll try it out." I set up my profile and within a couple of hours I had reconnected with a bunch of friends from my college days and also from my time in Winston-Salem. Great stuff.
It also made me realize that I haven't exactly been keeping people that I still care about up to date about what has been happening in my life.

So, a brief recap:

1994:

• Started working in the Prodigy section at SPSS in Gray. The job was okay, the people I worked with were great, the management structure of SPSS was a nightmarish hell-hole bent on sucking out our very soul for little or no recompense.
• Get involved in the Poetry Slam stuff. At first just local, but we quickly jumped up to regional and national competitions. It was tons of fun, I got to meet some incredible (and not so credible) people, and being able to get a room full of people engaged in what I was saying was a hoot.
• In the summer of 1994, during the national slam competition in Asheville, I met Elvis. This was one of the cornerstone events of my life. Just amazing.

1995:

• Finally got that Electronic Engineering Degree.
• Continue to slave away at SPSS. I move up.
• Continue to do poetry competitions, but find out I have a real knack for being the MC. The poetry is still present, but the MC activities come to the fore, I even get invited to several other venues and regional competitions to guest host.

1996:

• I'm still moving up at SPSS, more responsibilities, get put in charge of a big project which is successful. They give me a 23 cent raise. I am seriously despondent.
• Which means better poetry.
• I get asked to guest host a regional competition in Knoxville, which is a hoot. One of the competitors from Winston-Salem approaches me after the finals and offers me a job at Wachovia bank, "But you will need to get a haircut." It is basically a doubling of my salary, so I wait about 10 minutes before saying "YES".
• August move to Winston-Salem. Work at Wachovia and fit in. The poetry community in Winston welcomes me in and I get to join an incredibly vibrant creative environment.
• Winston had great coffee, great people, art, music, personalities, and great coffee. Just fantastic.

1997:

• I am putting silly things in art shows, appearing in cable access television shows, and just enjoying everything.
  
• I join a music group (Urilliasekt) for a single performance. I developed an infrasound generator for a live performance and they invited me to participate in the actual show. That show alone is worth a few thousand words, but suffice it to say it was AWESOME.
• Move up at the bank, they really like me.
• During the summer, my future wife comes from Holland to visit with her childhood friend, one of my roommates. I think she's hot, she likes me well enough, but mostly it's all just friendly.
• I start dabbling in web programming for an artist gallery web site. I find that I'm pretty good at it.

1998:

• Sylvia comes back to America for 6 months to be an au pair for a couple in Greensboro. We get together in April.
• Still doing poetry here, a national competition in Middletown Connecticut and a regional in Greeneville South Carolina.
• Sylvia and I get really serious and decide to marry. Because her visitor visa runs out, she goes back to the Netherlands for 4 months while we wait for INS to get their story together. I visit Holland in October to visit the new soon-to-be inlaws and look around.
• She comes back, we get married on December 31, 1998

1999:

• Married life, good stuff. I knew how to live with a roommate, but I had to learn how to cook WELL. Not just good enough for me.
• Wachovia job is going okay, but is getting a bit boring. Jungle drums are sounding, 'If we make it through the Y2K successfully, we will be targeted for takeover'.
• On a visit to Mark Painter in Atlanta, I look at CareerBuilder.com for shits and giggles. There is a job posting for a web master at Journalistic, Inc. I say, 'What the hell.' and apply. I get the job and we move to Chapel Hill in August/September.
• Wachovia (22,000 employees) to Journalistic (12 employees) was a BIG jump. But I really like the job and the people.
• Sylvia finds out she is pregnant just a few days before our anniversary.

2000:

• Growing as a programmer.
• Finding out why 'Father of the Bride, Part II' was not funny at all. Sylvia had some complications and spent the last 3 months of her pregnancy on enforced bed rest.
• End of August; a Son!!!
• Father-in-law comes for a visit. He is a psychologist and he has developed a new test instrument with a colleague. He just has to figure out how to distribute and market it. "What about the internet?" Do I know anyone who can program a web site? You know I do.
• Attempt to turn in my resignation, but Webb (the owner of Journalistic) offers me a bonus if I will just stick around for another 10 months or so. I say yes.

2001:

• Work work work.
• Baby baby baby.
• Move to the Netherlands on November 7.

I'm going to stop the dialog there. I will talk about what I've been DOING here in the Netherlands later.