Jimmy.Brainflush.com

Good morning everyone!

I’m back from Chicago, and back to work. I hope you all had a great holiday. It was great being home in Chi-Town. I got some really great gifts and got to spend quality time with my family.

Here’s the lowdown:

I left Cleveland Friday at noon. It took me 8 and a half hours to get home. I faced every winter weather phenomenon on my way home - mainly in Indiana on 80/94, the worst travel spot in America.

It started snowing about halfway through the state, and turned to whiteout about 20 minutes after initially seeing snowflakes. I was listening to “She Like’s the Weather”, a remake version by the Counting Crows, ironically when I hit the worst of the whiteout. I crawled at about 5 miles an hour until everything cleared to black ice. After about 5 minutes of this, I watched an eighteen wheeler slide whilst attempting to brake. The front and the back synchronically slid about 45 degrees, nicely blocking both lanes of traffic.

Some A$$hole in an SUV was speeding down the left lane, and ended up in a snowdrift on the side of the road. Yes, it was a Lexus, and yes, I laughed like a little kid when I saw it trying to work it’s way out. I laugh in memory everytime I hear the “Let it Snow” commercial on the radio or on TV.

SUV’s don’t necessarily suck - the drivers who buy them do. They reprised all of those gay Lexus Christmas commercials - and I’m wondering who’s so pretentious as to buy a Lexus for their loved one on Christmas. I’m further miffed to find out who does such things.

I went down to Lexus of Schaumburg and asked one of their salespeople if this, to his knowledge, has happened. He said he knew of 2 or 3 that had been LEASED as Christmas gifts. What’s the deal with that? That’s like giving a computer with the 48 buck a month payment plan. It’s trashy, ignorant behavior like that which makes white people hated by everyone.

Also, might I add that these commercials do nothing to help the image that Americans are lazy rich people.

But I digress. Got home and was bullied into seeing the Lord of the Rings movies. They were awesome, if not long.

Spent Christmas eve at dad & Judy’s and had fun. I got my new Sonicare Elite toothbrush. It bugged my mouth for the first three days, but since then has been awesome.

Christmas day was spent at Grandma’s, with great food and family. Mom was sick for the holiday, which put a damper on the whole day. Spent the day after gutting a relative’s basement. It was bizarrely fun.

I’m looking forward to homeownership, I guess.

Drove home Sunday, and slept most of Monday. Back to work though, happy to be home.

‘Til Later,
Jimmy

Ya fucking hoo.

Me.

That’s just SO F’d UP!

Okay, Good night.

Hey everyone! Bill Adler from Utah was told by his friend Alan that I’m funny and his friend Alan who’s now my friend sends me this email that he searched yahoo and came right up with my site, and why haven’t I posted in a while?

And I said to myself a while? It’s been like 7 days which isn’t long for me but is for most and he said he FOUND ME ON YAHOO.

Then I stopped… my heart racing.. blood pumping through my veins.. I did a search for Jimmy Brainflush, and I saw the light.

Three hits, all me. Okay, so the bad news is it’s a Link to THE Old site.. so I totally figured out why he was saying this, and emailed him saying come HERE, and so he’s like, Yeay! and there’s tons more to read, so like Christmas for him and Christmas for me!

Phew.

So I have a quandry. Google, my searching savior for as long as I can recall - based on the turning yellow underarms of my very own google t-shirt, a while, is now not so great.

‘Cuz to them I don’t exist. I want to drive out to California and talk to the two dudes who were featured in a not-so-nice article in Fortune, and explain myself. Is that wrong? or the sad, trivial pinnacle of geekdom?

Freaky weirdness - someone from Jimmy’s COTSHEMA (cult of the software he manages) called him LATE in the office tonight and asked if he’d like a job JUST managing said software at said company.

Not so freaky, as Jimmy has shared with fellow cultists the joys and triumphs of Data Partitioning, database pruning, 4 seperate yet sharing datasets, Screen Painter customizations, and the like to much acclaim.

The freaky part was the 65 large part.

For real? For Jimmy? Sheeeit. Sheeit again.

What’s the catch?

The catch is Jimmy has to take some tests.

Jimmy hates tests.

Sheeeit.

65 large? Rilly?

Hmmmm..

But then I thought about the Bear, Lorrack, and all my chumlen. I thought of the Bub, and his sayings, and the Sheeit from me that the Bear and his team have put up with.

I thought about how I’ve grown as a person, professionally, socially - how they’ve helped me become a whole different person.

Then I thought about the 65 large again.

Then I said to myself, how did I get into this quandry? Seriously driving home through the snowy Star Warzed I 71 I thought, what if I fell asleep at my laptop and drooled a goober that sent electric current to my brain saying “65 Large! 65 Large!”

I did the math because Jimmy’s a ho that way, and after taxes I’d have 1800 every 2 weeks!

That freaked me out. What would I do with that much money? I’ll tell you what I’d do - buy some grade A crack cocaine and start working the street corners at night and on the weekends.

I’m kidding. Really I am.

Going Home

48 hours from now I’ll be at home in Chicago. My home is a pigsty, I have to do laundry, but I don’t care.

Christmas Wishes

To THESPNBOY - Thanks for letting me borrow your wireless connection to post this. You Rock Building 5 on the Club Drive.

To Dave - You Rock for making this site appear, but for the new year can you set a link to Jimmy on the main nothing brainflush site I’ll give you candies.
You’re still my hero though Dave.

To Nay - I know you’re hating the season right now and that it still hurts and that’s okay. Take as much time as you need but not too much, okay? I’ll be here to chat whenever you want.

To Lorrack - You’re a boss and a friend and it’s all good. 2004 will be a great year of newness, and of cleanup and quiet.

To my Brother Dave - May you find truth and honor in your pursuit of post-college employment; you deserve it, and it deserves you.

To Angela - Call me. Where have you been? Merry Christmas Sweetie.

To Malorie - I haven’t seen you but I promise to visit after I get back from Chicago, we have things to discuss and I’m sorry I’m a pudhead. May this year bring you joy and laughter and me.

To My Sister Bren - I hope this year you settle down with your man so Mom doesn’t worry so much about whether or not she’ll be seeing grandkids before too long. Also, selfishly, to relieve the pressure off of all three of us. I wouldn’t mind this being our last We’re All Single Christmas.

To Dad - You and the Judester have fun together, and I have fun with you two. You laugh at my jokes, and I see more and more of myself in you. May this year bring you less house headaches and more relaxation, and less allergy problems.

To Mom - I love you mom. May this year bring you continued peace in your life and contentment in your cozy home. I look forward to 52 Sundays of laughter and crazy goings on at your work and among your friends. I’m sure they’ll be those sad sad stories that I hate to hear but afterwards am glad because they make me very thankful for all we have.

And finally to you, reading this - May you make it your quest to find the two dudes who made Google, and get them to rank Jimmy on their site. That is your mission.

Also, you’re the one keeping this Jim Broniec real and present in Idaho, New York, Canada (Woo-Hoo!) and Switzerland. May your burdens be light this year.

I hope I can continue to make you laugh, appreciate, and enjoy life as we both go through it together.

Good night. Sleep Tight. Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite.

Okay, Learning lessons… When you lose momentum in an upward direction, you start to slide in a downward direction. This downward force is much stronger than the upward direction.

Reversing it, it seems, is quite the task.

I’m learning this, and the process of learning these things rather sucks for someone as impatient as myself.

Beautiful women are like beacons of possibility. They inspire men to go the extra distance, to change what needs changing in spite of self-doubt, life stagnance, or a lack of direction.

Consider them as candles that burn lightly in the distance, creating an inquisitive drive to get ‘there’ wherever that bright light exists from the dark point you may find yourself in.

I’m not saying that I want a beautiful woman for the sake of her beauty. In my experience, I’ve found beautiful women have more baggage than, say, cute women.

They have pretenses, pre-judgements, and more of an internal sense of standard and rightful priviledge than the average woman, who herself, as an innately female being, has plently of roller-coaster material to deal with.

I understand this, and am glad I do. These distinctions have saved me from keeping a lock and adding complexity to my life when it did not suit me.

What’s fun is the beautiful women know I’ve keyed in on this, and it for some reason draws them to me.

Not all, some find me so far out of the radar that my existence doesn’t seem to filter into their radar.

Some men find this humiliating or debilitating or whatever. These men need to know that it’s a habitual instinct we humans possess. We filter out so many of our environmental processes to avoid overload as instinctual beings.. this is the meat that seperates us from, say, cows.

So to those of you who are doing the whole “I’m not worthy” crap, you’ll get what you deserve.

I’m leaving work and just wanted to wish all a good evening and good night. Quickly, here’s my top 5 things I am thankful for this holiday season:

1. My Job
2. Friends
3. My Family
4. You, fair reader
5. The Future, and all its muddled happenings that I’ll be chronicling here.

I hope you’re happy. My inbox has been quiet today. I appreciate it. I hope I haven’t lost any of you. If so, perhaps you’ll come back. I apologize for not being a reliable person. It’s one of my pre-new year’s resolutions - to be more reliable.

So that said, I hope you’re having a good day where you are. I could go on a rant about the inefficiencies of parcel delivery companies, but I’ll spare everyone the details.

We had our yearly Christmas awards today, and I must say that as each of these things are held, I sense the growing team mentality that the Bear, our CIO, has put together.

These kinds of scenarios are rare in the IT field - people who stay at the same company for extended periods of time, and I believe it has a lot to do with the Bear, and the management staff he has put into place.

The only caveat of this otherwise enjoyable day stems from a rogue photographer in our web group. She torments me with her incessant need to play the paparazzi with the camera, especially when it comes to your humble correspondent.

It’s a sort of work game that makes this feel like a family. You know how every family has the photographer, and there’s the Uncle Complainer, who always expects more out of anything.

All in all it’s fun, though. Truly, a fun place to work. I actually miss work when I’m on vacation, which I really can’t logically explain or create excuses for.

Tomorrow we have our annual Firm Holiday Shindig at the hotel attached to our building. I may actually go to the after party this year, as it is located in a trendy part of the warehouse district.

I’m feeling good today. Hope you are also feeling the same.

A spotty poster, 5 days hiatus.. and already 5, yes five of you have asked what happened. Rumors ranging from being shot at on 270 in Columbus to running out and joining Greenpeace were in my mailbox. One person, who I would like to thank, thought I went to a boot camp.

None of the above are true. I’ve been busy prepping for the holiday, and observing the North Coast weather patterns. After two people nagged - I mean asked - about the book, I sat down and wrote another 7 pages.

I went to my first Browns game on Monday night and braved the cold and the heartache of another stupid loss.

For those of you keeping score at home, I’ve rejoined the land of vicarious living through sports teams. In this town, it’s an instant depression provider.

I love winter. I have been hanging around people who are having a rough go of it, and to say the least it’s given me a new perspective on holiday and cheer. I haven’t had an unabashedly cheery mood, but I have made deep strides to accomodate the holiday songs into my daily routine. Isn’t it f’d up that most of the great songs were written before 1960? It’s like after 1960 the innocence and suppression of bad things ended and suddenly “dreaming of a white Christmas” became a foolish thing to do, ’silver bells’ acquired too much rust, and the rightness of our nation and her expressive clarity disappeared.

It’s sad, really. We can also make the same distinctions of American Life before 9/11 and after. While the effects have been swallowed into the subtlety of our daily lives, the ringing sound of it still annoyingly persists, like when you have that high-pitched ringing in your ears that envelopes everything and everyone around you.

And on that note, I keep coming back to May of 2002, when I was in New York City, setting up our offices there. It was after 11 o’clock PM. I was alone in the Manhattan office, save for the cleaning folks, pushing out the last 5 desktops in a total rush of a spent second wind when I was given pause by something simple, breathtaking, and solemn.

At one of the secretary’s desks, on her purple/burgundy fabric wall divider, sat a loose Kodachrome picture from I would guess late 80’s early nineties of the midway between the two towers, hanging on a yellow pushpin. The midway was decorated with what I assume to be the same decorations that had been used five years prior - a simple “Merry Christmas” in red lettering around the fountain and Christmas tree.

I imagined the full scene. I could see a fog in the background, and rain pellets frozen in mid-air during the brief frame of this picture. Tough New Yorkers were walking into the wind, bent at a 78 degree angle, head down walking presumably towards the subway, not paying attention to the view.

I felt the frustration of the picture-taker, debating whether waiting in the rain for enough people to clear out of the view, or exposing the camera to the harsh elements on such a cold day would be worth the effort considering they’d probably have the same decorations up next year and in years to follow.

I’ve had dreams that I’ve walked there, and saw the person snapping the photo. Just a simple black silhouette and a flash - the flash always coming when I look in their direction, shocking my eyes and not allowing them to refocus on the individual who took the photo. It started a whole cascade of uneasiness that lead to my purchasing “What We Saw” the CBS report of 9/11, which included the video from that day.

On some kind of sub-conscious level, I thought that if I watched it enough times, the gnawing uneasiness would change to a numbness that I could tolerate and move off from.

I have since found that occupying myself with other things seems to be the best medicine. But back to the desk, in the office, in the quiet of the city night…

.. Dangling from the yellow pushpin, hovering above the photo, in the same exact tint of yellow.. maybe yellow number 5, hung a rubber strap who’s sides fed into a fiber painter’s mask, still improperly thread from what I assume was a hasty application in a moment so unreal that words cannot describe. The criss-cross yellow grabbing stitch of the strap clung awkwardly against the mask with a large gap of excess between the mask and the end of the strap, creating a bow like shape that reminded me of hanging yellow ribbons on our house during the first gulf war.

The mask front had a slightly gray hue of dust, with finer, more boldly defined lines along its sides.

In the darkness, in that moment, I made a memory of a lost time, a jarring reality, and the textile sense of presence that you connect with a few times in life. The moments where the voice in your head that’s always talking gets quiet.

You hear yourself breathing, the lights humming, and off in the distance, over the late night quiet of a Memorial Day holiday patrolled Brooklyn bridge, you hear a taxi’s wheels humming their way across the metallic pattern of ninety degree angles that support life in motion.

I’ve slacked, but I’ll post daily from here on out.
I’ve got no excuses not to.

I’m beyond ready.

In his epic Self-Building workshop Personal Power II, Anthony Robbins mentions the power of decisions. These words are in my head now.. Something along these lines:

“When you decide, you cut off from ANY other option. The Latin Root of decide, decir, means ‘to cut off from’. Okay, so how can you use that statement in your life?”

I get it now. I’m sorry I’ve been such a slacker up to now. I’m sorry I ever bought that pack of Camels that October night. Sorrier, still for smoking them.

Because it all lead to here and now. Where I am is where I don’t want to be. I’m not living up to my potential. No I haven’t studied for the test, but I will.

I make this promise for the hundredth time. Hopefully, it’ll be the final promise. I’m really tired of building up the momentum and then falling down again. I’ve had it! Enough is enough!

I decide here and now to NEVER SETTLE for anything less than what I can be. End of discussion. Period.

Starting now.