- AboutThis is me -Tony Hunt- …no, not the pro-football player. I am an artist…an author…and most importantly …*grin*…I am just another Franco-Italian. I read, I write, and was once known to both injure and get injured regularly by swinging swords at people in the SCA and Amtgard. I have a penchant for doing the right thing regardless of how much its gonna cost me in blood, sweat and tears. I spend my weekdays making sure a massive network of very expensive servers stays up and running, my nights wishing I had more time to spend, and my weekends making up for everything I missed and/or wanted to do in the past. When not doing any of the above, I can sometimes be found doing things like jumping out of airplanes, saving small third-world countries, and having coffee in Brazil, and occasionally I can be found helping Habitat for Humanity build houses here in Dallas. If you’re not helping some-one or some-thing out of sheer habit, then you aren’t helping enough. I am currently in the process of revising this part of the site since it’s pretty dated ;) I haven’t fought in Amtgard in a couple years, haven’t sparred with…
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- ContactIf you have the need, please feel free to contact me. I will try to contact you as soon as I am able. Be sure to put a full sentence in the body of the contact mail or the spam detection will think you’re not so friendly ;) -Tony
This is just another day in my life…
Picture a small suburbian corner store.Most of the people living in and around the area may not know each other, but we’ve seen each other before. We say hi or at least nod to each other in passing. It’s a pretty friendly day. I have an incredible addiction to TruMoo that draws me to the corner store almost daily.
As I approach the entrance, another patron approaches the same door and I open it for her. She seems surprised and looks at me like I just did something unheard of. I say, “After you.” I go and grab my Trumoo and as it happens end up in line behind that same woman.
As we’re in line we both seem to be cutting joke with the staff there (this is a regular thing) and the woman seems incredibly familiar, or maybe it’s the other voice yelling inside my head “GET HER NUMBER YOU MORON!” …there’s no doubt – she’s cute, outgoing and I place her at around 30(ish).
Still **something** stops me…it was totally subconscious. No rings, no ring marks, no indications that she’s an axe murderer…so why am I not engaging the conversation?!
She gets through with her purchases and the internal conflict in my subconscious is totally becoming audible to me.
I get through with my purchases just as she reaches the door and I am STILL not pulling the trigger. This simply isn’t me. I may not always make a move or engage someone that is interested, but it’s always a pretty conscious choice…yet still here I am and I can already tell. I’m not going to talk to her.
It turns into slow motion. She’s stopped at her car and is just leaning against it now smiling. I smile at her, she smiles back…
…and I get into my car and start driving away.
Yup. Not only did I not take advantage of the chance…I am getting the distinct impression I just totally choked…and THAT is not how it works in TonyTown. I may be a big dork, but striking up conversation isn’t usually a problem.
…I drive about ten feet forward. What the hell?! Am I turning into THAT guy?! The one that can’t approach someone on a dime? It’s not like I’m Don Juan or anything, but approaching and talking…lol…I’ve been doing that since I was born! She had a great personality and I am obviously interested…why not ask?!
At this point my brain does its thing and I manage to rummage through a gazillion years of memories to find the few that my subconscious had access to that apparently weren’t connecting with me.
That attractive and compelling woman and I had met before…and now I know why I was holding back. She was an ex of one of my oldest friends and undeniably one of the centerpoints of absolute psychotic behavior I and a number of my friends had ever encountered. She was the center of a number of trashed friendships and for a couple of those friends the crux of trashed relationships.
Now it was clear. Man…it’d been 10 maybe 15 years…I honestly don’t know if she’s still the same person. I just remember the windfall of crazy shit that happened to me at her hands.
I stopped the car for a sec and looked back her direction. Yup…there she was.
I move on and remember that my brain is incredibly functional and will sometimes look out for me even when I might be thinking about (or with) something else.
Yep. Just another day.
-Tony
- Sometimes I really love where I live…I mean geographically of course.
Okay I love it a LOT of the time.
I almost didn’t write about it because it wasn’t earth-shattering ranting news I usually gravitate to when writing.
I have been moving, and it’s been slow because I’ve been moving in multiple directions and maintaining the business at the same time has been a little chaotic.
Anyhow, while I was running errands yesterday, the car in front of me had turned their hazard lights on and the guy driving had jumped out to push his car because it was in a bad spot and would have caused a bit of a jam.
Now, I like top help people as a practice. Some people don’t, but I consider it almost a moral obligation to help where situations present themselves. I don’t really slant others for not feeling the same way, but my sense of priorities doesn’t tell me I cant help someone out because I might miss a hockey game or miss a meal. My hopes are that I can only lead by example and that someday everyone feels that same sense of obligation I do in cases like this.
I’m not mental about it, but I can hope, ya know?
So I pull into the parking lot nearby and run over to help the guy (who is now having a very hard time trying to push his truck up an incline to get it out of traffic. I ask if he minds if I help him out, and of course he’s appreciative. I am not really paying attention to anything except moving a truck up this incline because it’s not a small truck and it’s not a small incline…but the truck IS moving and we don’t have too far to go.
Within like 30 seconds, two more people park their cars next to mine, run over next to me and start helping push…at which point the truck is no longer very hard to push and we get it safely out into the parking lot. I don’t know why, but immediately afterward I asked if everyone there was from The Colony…sure enough, everyone was local. I kind of grin and state to no one in particular how much I love this area, check with the driver of the down truck to see if he needs a ride or more help and he declines but thanks me for offering (he had already called for a can of gas…he was out).
Now, I’ve done this sort of thing a lot, I mean so many times I couldn’t count. The reason this event stood out for me so much was that two other people pulled over to help! Honestly, that doesnt happen. People are honestly just too preoccupied with whatever they’re doing normally. But here, I wasn’t the only guy getting out to help push.
I just think thats one of the coolest things. I like it here.
Some things just absolutely tick me off.
So today an interesting string of articles came up on my radar: an initiative to abolish overtime pay for hourly laborers. I know a lot of you are like “WHAAAT?!”
Initially, I was even like “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!!!”
Why? Because that money I like to have when I’ve been working for over 40 hours a week.
That was my initial line of thinking because as an individual, overtime pay has helped me through a lot of rough spots. It allowed me to avoid having to get a second job more often than not. But now that I am running my own company, I see immediately where the government (de)regulation here will remove an absolutely HUGE burden on many many employers here in the U.S. and allow a LOT of staffing opportunities to occur.
This type of legislation will definitely rock the boat, but not necessarily in a bad way. At first I was skeptical because of the impact it has on workers that rely on overtime. Then I realized that this only applied to employees who actually get to work over 40 hours a week (with a few exceptions). Those hit the worst on this type of legislation are union workers, whose inflated salaries are a HUGE drain on employers. Followed up by contractors used to gouging on time over 40. After that…well…it’s not actually that bad.
Here’s the kicker though. This potentially saves employers a TON of money. The reason companies dont like overtime in their service process is because it literally throws profitability in the shitter. Work-related accidents happen more often to employees working over 40 hours per week than those that dont. This affects disability, and workmans comp insurance. Immediate affects are seen in shared tax and compensation responsibilities. Essentially, businesses that dont have to pay overtime are far more likely to be able to employ their staff more, or allow for more staffers based on this (de)regulation.
Dont get me wrong, I love overtime, but to be honest it causes more pain to employers that it’s worth to the employees getting the extra pay, and allows companies to staff better.
Are there arenas where this may be a catalyst to working overworked people even more? Absolutely, but this tactic is already used and a TON of companies already dodge the overtime bullet by deliberately misrepresenting positions as exempt job types when they are nothing of the sort.
Anyhow, I am really curious if this is just another smokescreen platform to get us riled up while something else is pushed through or if it’s like SOPA/CISPA.
Getting faked out by Google people who aren’t really Google.
Some things just absolutely tick me off.
So this really cool-sounding woman calls me and when introducing herself implies that she is with Google. I manage a large number of Google Profiles so this doesn’t really surprise me that they are calling as I get a couple from them a month regarding ad campaigns n such.
But she was talking about a new feature program that would place MY company in the top position in local searches for web design and small business IT solutions. Of course I was getting all puffed up because I was being led to believe my online profile was giving me a nice rep.
As it happens, they went so far as to ask if I was going to be able to handle the new influx of business beforehand so that I wouldn’t lose the ratings I get from my clients online. Again…ego gets even more inflated because I’m set up to accommodate any amount of business very quickly and this kind of trend could net me crazy income in just a short time.
I manage to finally chime in, I am surprised to hear about this program from Google, wouldn’t this come under severe scrutiny? She says, “no it’s always been a part of the system, the business benefiting from it never advertise that their getting the service because that would defeat the purpose.”
No I am just mystified. I actually do SEO and SEM. I know how page-ranking and back-linking works and the formulas necessary to get a top-rated searchable profile on the net…it normally takes years unless you spend a SERIOUS amount of cash monthly in content building and linking. So of course I am like, “Please sign me up I am all about this.”
She tells me to hold on as she’s going to get me over to one of the techs to get some details on the profile.
A moment later a guy gets on the phone and he’s like, “Umm. Mr. Hunt it shows here your a web designer.” I answer, “Well I do a ton more than that but yes.” He then asks me if I do SEO, and I answer Yes to that. Then he asks me why I’m interested in paying his company to to do SEO for my own company.
There it was. These guys weren’t Google, they fast-talked with a good voice so confidently that I was led to assume that’s who they were.
These guys are going around selling leaving the impression with businesses that they are with Google and they aren’t. They’re just people offering to do SEO and SEM.
Ugh.
If you’re wondering which company it was, they are called Hot Spot SEM, you’ll see I wasn’t the only guy that was given the impression he was getting a call from Google directly. Normally I wouldn’t have posted such a rant publicly, but this was absolutely misrepresentation and the fact that I was given the impression they were Google tells me this was deliberate.
If you’re doing SEO or SEM the process always works, there is absolutely ZERO need to portray yourselves as Google. I see the intent in garnering more clients, but it’s a shit tactic…thus you get my post here on my blog.
http://m.mrnumber.com/1-949-268-1067 <-Notice I wasnt the only person that felt this way.
What is a fekton?
This is where I make a word up (fekton) to avoid the unnecessary social backlash that usually accompanies people with no filter. Like me.
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