Changing The Family Business Flag

Spent the past few days overhauling the web page I made for my girlfriend's business - Mini-Storage of Gainesville. Apparently Penske decided that they wanted to move operations into Home Depot across the street where they would be much more visible, and they gave her less than a month to prepare. That decision could have put her AND her neighboring businesses out of business all at once. The neighboring businesses never knew how close they came. :(

Luckilly, they signed a waver of the contract which would have prevented her from starting up a competing business for 6 months after separation, and within days of the notice, she was able to get a contract with U-Haul.

But this meant that I had to completely rework the web page I made for her. (sigh)

So I got to work and everything is now changed over. She will no longer be renting out Penske's, but U-Hauls, instead.

She actually started out something like 15 or so years ago with U-Haul. She's even had a past Gainesville Sun article written about her and how she helped the owner of the Memphis Bell with a big discount when he had to make an emergency landing in Gainesville years ago, in need of a new engine. :) Apparently it was a big deal how she helped him out. I should probably post that article on her website in the "About Us" section or something. We couldn't use it before because up until recently she's been dealing with Penske trucks, and the article was written when she was renting out U-Hauls.

On Starlings, Falcons, and Stalkers...

If you've ever been stalked by multiple people before as I have (see Where'd Todd Go?...On Dealing With Psychopaths and Stalking), this video makes total sense to you. I came across it when a Facebook friend posted it, and it made me stop and think.

This video was interesting to me because I couldn't believe that the birds would act in exactly the opposite of what you would expect. You'd THINK that where attacked, they would disperse in every possible direction in order to confuse the attacker. Instead, they all balled into one gigantic black ball, offering up any NUMBER of choice peices of meat.

Then it hit me...

I thought about my stalkers and how they had reacted when I fought back to make them stop. It's something in every animal - even in humans; but especially in animals.

When you're an animal and you know you're about to die, you panic, and you blend in with everybody else in the hopes that the attacker will get confused and *miss* you and get someone else, instead. Or, in the human equivalent: when you get caught, blame everybody else, and hopefully in the confusion someone ELSE will get it, and not you.

I see this darkness in far more people now in my learn-ed age than I would have ever allowed myself to have realized or believed in my naive, inexperienced, and cheerfully hopeful youth. I remember always having exaggerated, elevated, much brighter hopes for mankind when I was a lot younger. (sigh)

In the human world, we're supposed to be intelligent. In the human world, we're supposed to have something that the animals do not, called a "conscience, which supposedly "elevates" us such that it allows us to overcome our instincts to do amazingly honorable things to protect others from harm. In the human world, we're supposed to be more "civil", with morals which are designed to make us own up when we've done something wrong. In the human world, we're supposed to know huge-sounding words such as "honor", "chivalry", "compassion", "understanding", "kindness", "fairness", and phrases like "service to others".

I keep hoping to see good examples of "civilized" humans in my life but in reality, I am continually disappointed at how, in the end, instinct always overcomes, and the good guys always get it because the bad guys were too chicken, and despicably dishonorable.

And you know, it doesn't seem to matter how much "religion" someone's got, either. Even politicians go to church and know a few verses to fool people. For most, religion is simply a notch for the belt - something to put on the resume to fool others into believing that you're a person of "good character". Where is religion, today? It seems to be filled more with goodness-sayers and fast-quoters than very many actual good-doers. I think more and more people are giving up on "religion" these days for that very reason. It doesn't hold the honest goodness and the truth that it used to, anymore. As a result, the world has become so much darker these days; and much more of a "fend for yourself and blame it on the next guy" reality, today.

In the end, the Judases vastly outnumber the ones who are willing to do the right thing, blaming everyone else, hiding behind public service activities and faked good intentions for "alibi", and trying to use everyone else to save their own butts when that falcon "piper" turns wielding really sharp claws.

In other words, that reaction in the video made TOTAL sense to me.