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I was pretty amazed when I read an article today dealing with teenage pregnancy at an Ohio school. From the article:

"There are 490 female students at Timken High School, and 65 are pregnant..."

So that means that more than 13% of the female population of the high school is pregnant. That's astounding. It's interesting that I came across this because Samantha noted recently that there aren't many teenage pregnancies at the school she worked at.

Just as I was starting to feel comfortable at my job things turned for the worse. Lots of layoffs and the company isn't doing so well.

It's time like this when it's nice to have a loving family and friends. Here are some pictures of Jace:



and

I've been with my company for over five years now and up until now I've been buried in the depths of a cubicle labyrinth which had up to four people in each cubicle at any given time. With all the layoffs and people leaving several cubicles opened up. One coveted corner cubicle became available a couple months ago and nobody took it. Recently management told the office that anybody could have it but everyone I talked to was too afraid to take it out of fear of bringing too much attention to themselves. I had no problem taking it. The above picture is just something I randomly pulled from the web but it's close enough. I have a desk surrounded by windows plus I have a semi-private balcony. I love it. I feel more like a human being because of the privacy and because I'm not made to share close quarters with others. It's still just a cubicle but it's better than before.

I've learned it's best to not be plagued by fear at work. There is a lot of paranoia that happens when you work for a company that lets people go every few months. The fear can destroy you though. It's better to just do your job and learn new things so that if you do end up getting canned you have something valuable to take to your next job.

Speaking of fear, I just found out that all the resumes posted by employees at my company are searched for on a regular basis. When someone is looking, my company knows. I could let that scare me or I could just resign to the fact that we live in an information society and I'm not doing anything wrong.

Still, as I've said earlier, I'm not going to name my company in this blog. I think that is a justified fear :)

At 5:00 PM on Friday an elderly man crashed his car into the main power transformer for a four block radius around our house. I have no idea how the accident happened unless he fell asleep or was drunk. The power stayed off for 26 hours. This is the hottest time of the year here and our outside thermometer hit 104 degrees. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night. If you don't know I require several fans and the A/C on to sleep peacefully on a warm evening. Samantha and I did have a nice game of Scrabble by candlelight.

The next day we went to the park and hung out in the shade while watching a kids' soccer game. Jace enjoyed watching the kids:

Asha played Frisbee until she got close to overheating:

Also, here is a video of Jace "cleaning" the refrigerator.

This is one of the more inventive games I've played in a long time. The game content is from google.com so it's theoretically limitless. It works off of images.google.com by showing you a collage of images and making you guess the keyword. Check it out!

For any of you who watch CBS's "Big Brother" you'll know that they are allowing America to vote back one of the evicted house guests. Even if you don't watch the show click on the above image to vote for Kaysar. He's a cool guy.

Jace is obsessed with computers. Whenever he hears me open my laptop he comes over and starts poking his fingers in the cooling fans, ejecting the CD, hitting the keyboard, and unplugging the power cord. Also, he has been interested in our desktop computer lately. Above is a picture of him typing and opening applications. He climbed up there himself. Click here for a great movie of him playing with the computer (even using the mouse).

I finally dragged him away from the computer because I was afraid he'd delete something important. He screamed for about fifteen minutes.

Wow, last weekend was pretty crazy. Three hot crowded days of racing in downtown San Jose. I had never been to any kind of car race before so I didn't know what to expect. I was just looking forward to seeing cars going over 180mph in downtown San Jose.

At first I hung out at the straight sections of the race because it wasn't crowded. However, when cars that fast are racing all you see is a blur. So I spent most of the rest of the weekend at a sharp corner to see the drivers slam on the brakes, skid around the corner and accelerate. But the coolest part was watching them crash just a few feet in front of me. The pictures above and below are from cars slamming into a wall RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. Each time it happened the whole crowd jumped and yelled.

Also, I'd have to say that of all the various leagues (Atlantic, CHAMP, Touring, etc...) I actually liked drifting the most. Drifting looks like Oakland's sideshows if you're from the Bay Area but it really originated in Japan 20 years ago. Here's a link to a video clip I recorded. It was amazing to see cars sliding sideways at 70mph coming straight towards me with smoke filling the air. I highly recommend it.