Get ready to be sick, twisted and freakay! Glenn Beck is coming to a "buttload" of movie theaters around the country on July 17 when his Dallas, TX live comedy stage show performance will be simulcast in HD nationwide to participating theaters.

Take it from someone who's seen Mr. Beck on stage a few times before, met him in-person, listens to radio show daily, and can't stop yakking about how Right he is... you won't want to miss this. Take your family, but make sure you invite someone who wouldn't normally go. You'll enjoy watching them pick their lower jaw up off the floor and wish they had worn Depends undergarments.

Tickets for this amazingly sick and twisted event go on sale a week from the day I'm writing this: Friday, 20 June 2008.

For more information, go here: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/11224/.

A couple weeks ago, I got an e-mail message from an old friend that I went to school with from first grade until high school. She was inviting me to join a social network she had set up using the Ning platform. I signed up and have been spending a little time there catching up with the couple dozen people who have signed up as well.

This is the first time I've ever heard of Ning. I'd be interesting in hearing what some people in-the-know, as far as social networking is concerned, think of them.

In related news, if you're an alumnus of the Granger High School class of 1990 and you have not received an invitation to the class Ning site, drop me a line with your e-mail address and I'll get you invited.

Talk about a frustrating experience!

A couple weeks ago, I had to go to a customer's office to do some network troubleshooting work. On my way, I received two text messages, in quick succession, on my phone (Palm Treo 700p w/ Sprint). I began to go to the text messages to see what they were and the phone "rebooted."

Now, this isn't a regular thing, but it's not unheard of for a Treo to reset. But this was no regular reset. My phone went into a nasty reboot loop-- never quite coming back up to normal operation. It would get to a certain point in the boot-up process and then reset again.

I tried just about everything I could think of (short of doing a hard reset that wipes all your data from memory) and nothing helped. I ended up taking my phone to the Sprint repair facility later that day. I went back in an hour or so and got the phone back to find they had done what I didn't do: a hard reset. All my data was gone. I had it backed up, but it's still a pain to restore everything.

It wasn't long before I realized the Sprint repair center didn't just do a hard reset on my phone. They also upgraded the firmware and the new firmware is abundant with annoying bugs that drive me nuts!

Several basic functions that had no issues before now have glaring issues. Here are some of the things I am having to deal with:

• Favorites button Quick Key in Phone application does not work. This is, essentially, a speed-dial function that lets you assign a keyboard key to a favorite contact from your address book. By holding down the assigned key, that person's number is dialed. Worked fine before. Doesn't do anything now. This sucks.
• Call list population is very undependable. I might get an alert that I missed 2 calls, but when I go to my call list to see who those two calls were front, they aren't on the list. If I make a call using a favorites button, the outgoing call isn't recorded in the call list.
• Ring tone and alert sounds "fade in." This seems like a "volume escalation" feature, but I've double and triple checked (and then some) that the escalate volume checkbox in the Sound preferences is not checked.
• The On Demand application freezes the Treo. I used to use the On Demand application frequently to check weather reports and read News Of The Weird news articles. Now the only thing On Demand is good for is freezing up the device. The only way to remedy the problem is to do a soft reset or remove the battery.
• Deactivating the keyguard to delete or view messages is difficult. The Treo will act like the keyguard is active, but the normal "Keyguard: Press Center button to unlock" message does not display on the screen. Very frustrating.

Has anyone else seen these problems with their Treo device?

Should I take my phone back to the repair center or will they just do another hard reset and tell me that's all they can do?

I don't usually use the Fozzolog to dispense relationship advice... Well, let me think about that. When my wife and I were living with her brother and his wife as their marriage was crumbling, I guess I did say quite a bit about bad behavior in relationships then. So... let me start over: I haven't usually used the Fozzolog to dispense relationship advice since we moved out of my wife's brothers house when his marriage was crumbling. That being said, I have something to share that may or may not be of value to people who are in challenging, confusing relationship with a significant other.

Recently, a young woman I'm friends with has been talking to me about the relationship with her boyfriend. I recognized right away that she was a "needy" person in the relationship. As she talked to me about the problems she was facing, I told her about a relationship I had with a girl named Amy when I was in college. I was head over heels in love with Amy and couldn't get enough of her. Amy loved me, but she really grew uncomfortable of the constant pressure of my affection and my needs. To be blunt, I was smothering her. Then, one day, she told me she thought we should spend some time away from each other -- she needed "space."

This cliché of young love -- "I need space," was a dreadful thing for me to hear and I responded by giving her exactly what she did not want: more attention, more neediness, desperation, and more obligation to attend to me. Long, painful, ridiculous story made short: the relationship ended. I got fat, depressed, and still bear some emotional scars of the breakup today.

During the months that followed that painful split, as I tried to grapple with why a relationship that, in my mind, seemed so perfect, didn't work, I ran across a book in a bookstore titled "The Two Step." This book, more than anything else, opened my eyes to what should have been obvious, but wasn't: I was hogging the "dance" of the relationship.

This book does an excellent job of explaining how healthy relationships usually involve two people who regularly switch roles of "the seeker" and "the sought" back and forth. From there, it describes common types of dsyfunctional relationships and what can be done to make the relationship healthy. The authors use the metaphor of a dance to describe it and it works well. The book is simple to read- lots of fun drawings and simple messages. So, I found myself telling my needy friend about this book and even dug it out and scanned a couple pages from it for her. It's been about fifteen years since I purchased the book and it's still doing some good.

If you or someone you know is going through a difficult time in a relationship or having trouble getting past a failed relationship, check out this book. You can get it from Amazon.com and lots of other places, I'm sure. I noticed Amazon has some nice excerpts available you can look at to get an idea of what the inside of the book is like.

Yesterday was the Glenn Beck Christmas how at the E Center. The show was tremendous.

What not many people know is that I'm a Glenn Beck Insider -- part of a members only club that gets access to MP3 downloads of his broadcasts and access to a online discussion forum. Through the discussion forum, I organized an Insider get-together before the show. As we organized the event, a couple of the other Insiders indicated they might have a connection to Glenn's people and Glenn might be able to drop in for a few moments.

Well, it went about as well as it could have gone. I got to meet Mr. Glenn Beck, in person, for the first time. My impression: A tired, but sincere, genuine guy who is full of love for mankind.

Goozbach, AKA Derek Carter, former Guru, Xen master, and all-around great guy got married this last Tuesday to the beautiful (and smart) Charity Hammock. I took my family down to an open house for Derek and Charity in Derek's (sleepy) home town of Milford, UT.

I wasn't sure I was going to make it out of this reception, however. They had a dessert fondue table with an assortment of yummy finger foods you could skewer and rinse inside fountains of chocolate and white chocolate. In summary: A diabetic's worst nightmare. But, man, it was SO good.

Derek and Charity will be heading back to Atlanta, GA soon where they will be starting a new life together.

Here are some pictures! First, the lucky guy and lady:

Next, a couple of that dessert fondue y'all missed out on:

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I'm not sure I've ever felt so obligated to feel thankful for everything in my life as I do this year. What better way to express this than by posting a long-ass entry in my blog, right?

(Or, as our friends over at xkcd would say: "a long ass-entry".)

So, I've been creating a list in my head of things I'm thankful for, in no particular order.

I'm thankful to Robb Kunz at KnowledgeBlue for believing in the value Iodynamics could bring to his company and absorbing us so we can work together toward a common goal. It hasn't been the easiest thing for me to do, having been "my own boss" pretty much since 2003, but it has been a tremendous learning experience and II've tried very hard to keep looking at it as such.

I'm thankful to Thom, Adam, and Mike -- my colleagues and friends that shared the experience of running Iodynamics with me. They work alongside me now at KnowledgeBlue and I value their friendship, talents, and zeal. I'm also thankful to Stephen for working with us at Iodynamics. I'm glad we were able to teach him a lot of neat stuff and become great friends before he went off to teach for Guru Labs.

Dave and Chadd were instrumental along the way in making Iodynamics what it became, so I am very thankful for their contributions and for their friendship, which continues to this day despite the fact we no longer work together or see each other very often.

Where would I be today without Linus Torvalds and the open source community? I can't imagine where I would be. While I was a Unix person for a few years before Linux hit the scene, I didn't turn my back on the world of living under Bill Gates' thumb until Red Hat Linux was released. It's been about ten years now that I've been running Linux as my primary desktop operating system and twelve years I've been running it on servers as part of my jobs. While I would undoubtably still be doing something with computers had Linux not existed, I woudln't have been able to do the very cool things I've done and it woudln't have been as fun or as productive. Linux and open source software just rocks!

Before we leave the topic of Linux and the open source community, I want to shout out to some local folks that I'm very grateful for. Clint, for following through with the creation of the Utah Open Source Conference and the Utah Open Source Foundation and realizing a vision of a regional community of open source enthusiasts and supporters. Jayce, for his constant friendship and leadership.

I also can't go onto the next topic without expressing my thanks for the IRC community from the #utah channel on Freenode.net. The comradery and friendship I've enjoyed from #utah has been a great joy to me over the years. This has got to be perhaps one of the most fun, considerate, and polite groups of geeks I've had the opportunity to hang out with online in all my years on the Net.

I am very grateful to my church -- the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints -- and my local church leaders. I have been very standoffish in my participation in my religion for most of my life until this last year. While I'm still not a social butterfly as far as that is concerned, I have come to gain a much-needed new appreciation for the value of service to my fellow man during this last year. This began in April when I spent the entire day volunteering on Temple Square in Salt Lake City during the Spring session of General Conference. I was helping to direct vehicle and pedestrian traffic and over the course of the day, I saw thousands of fellow church members going to and from conference meetings and strolling about on the grounds of Temple Square. I came away from this experience with one very distinct impression: We are a beautiful people! I'm not just saying that because I saw a lot of pretty women (I did), but because just about everyone I saw was glowing, not just with happiness, but with a wonderful purpose. It was a subtle reminder that we're all in this life together and I can't think of a better group of people to be traveling through this life with.

I am thankful, of course, to my parents and my siblings. As I have grown older, I have realized two things: They are far from perfect; They are wonderful, good people. My mom and dad have been wonderful role models of service. Both of them are a lot more comfortable dealing with people than I am and it encourages me to get out of my shell. Many reading this may not know that my dad was a Utah state senator for twelve years when I was growing up. During that time, he worked hard to support the passage of bills that promoted conservative policies that were pro-Free Enterprise and personal responsibility. When I think back of some of the stupid ideas I had when I was younger and how tolerant my dad was of my misguided beliefs, it only increases my respect for him.

A couple years ago, I enjoyed listening to Jerry Doyle on the radio. He's a pretty cool guy, used to work as a Hollywood actor and now broadcasts his syndicated conservative talk radio program out of Las Vegas. His affiliate in Salt Lake removed his show and I was ticked off. I think they replaced him with Michael Savage who is angry, bitter, crotchety and not very satifying to listen to unless you are also angry, bitter, and crotchety. I wrote to the radio station to complain and, of course, got absolutely no response back. A few weeks later, my brother-in-law, Adam, asked me what I thought of this new guy they put in the afternoon spot Jerry Doyle used to occupy. I hadn't heard him, but I was happy they got rid of Michael Savage. Adam told me this guy was really funny, did a good show, and his name was Glenn Beck.

I gave Glenn a listen and was hooked immediately. In early 2006, I let my Rush Limbaugh 24/7 subscription expire and became a Glenn Beck Insider and a regular listener. It was also in 2006 that Glenn started up his TV show on CNN's Headline News and I was there from Day 1... even though the first episode really sucked. There were only about five of us that "got it."

Glenn's political philosophy mirrors mine almost perfectly and his re-embracing of religion in middle age is entirely relateable to me. His honesty, humility and sarcasm are refreshing. If I ever meet him in person, I'll probably bawl my head off.

In April of this year, right after radio personality Don Imus was fired for making a racial slur on the air, Glenn complained about the political correctness of the move without apologizing for Don Imus's comments. There was some talk of other prominent radio personalities like Glenn being taken off the air because their comments could be offensive to some people. Glenn took an extended vacation beginning April 16 but before he left, he appealed to his audience for more voices, not less. As he signed off he said, "You have your voice and others will start losing their voice if you don't start using yours."

I remember these words had a profound effect on me. I don't have a radio program, but I do have a couple ways of sharing thoughts with other people. One is this blog. Another is video. I decided I would work on creating my own brand of education and opinion through my blog and through my own video productions online. Thus, Solitary World was born. I haven't done much with it yet; Still trying to feel it out and find the best approach. I don't even know if it will be political, but it may be. We'll see.

I am very thankful to Glenn Beck... for everything he is and everything he does. Thanks, man.

Finally, there's my wife and kids. Sure, Glenn Beck is a nice guy and all, but if there was one person in this world who is singlehandedly responsible for me becoming a better person over the last decade or so, it's my wife. Her support (and tolerance) of me seems to have no boundaries. I don't know where I would be without her. I know it wouldn't be quite as nice as it is here.

My kids are wonderful and I can't be thankful enough for what the experience of being their earthly father has brought into my life. They are the most precious part of my life and I thorougly enjoy teaching them, guiding them, and helping them grow up.

If you've made it this far without falling asleep or bashing your computer into pieces, then have a Happy Thanksgiving!

If you've read any of my blog entries before, you know I'm a fan of talk radio host Glenn Beck. There have been a couple of recent developments in the Glenniverse lately.

First of all, The Telegraph -- a newspaper/website out of the UK -- ran a story all last week with their top-100 most influential United States liberals and conservatives. When Sean Hannity came in at number 44 and Bill O'Reilly showed up at number 82, I think most Glenn Beck fans expected he didn't make the list. On Friday, when numbers 1-20 were announced, Glenn showed up at number 18.

Here is the blurb they wrote about him:

That was cool, but then, over the weekend, the New York Times ran an article titled "A Folksy Guy, in Recovery, Is About to Land Millions" which talks about Glenn signing a new 5-year contract with Premiere Radio Networks reportedly worth 50 million dollars!

Sounds like Mr. Beck is doing pretty dang well for himself. On Monday's radio show, Glenn mentioned that, as part of the contract renewal, he brought many of the people he worked with as part of his radio and television shows who worked for other companies to work directly for him. For some of these people, they received 70% increases in their salaries. Everyone who works for Glenn gets the best health insurance money can buy and Glenn's company pays their premiums IN FULL. He also has a charity matching program in which he will personally match any donation to any charity by any of his employees.

Glenn's rise to success has taken about eight years. He mentioned in 1999, he could barely afford a $695/mo rent payment. He didn't say it in so many words, but seemed to imply that he attributes a great deal of his success to his faithful tithe paying as a member of the LDS faith.

So, it's been a great week for Mr. Beck.

In other news... I'm a Glenn Beck Insider. That means I have paid out some hard-earned cash to Glenn Beck's company so that I can have exclusive access to MP3s of his radio program, live streams, and other goodies. That's not the other news, however. As a member of the Glenn Beck Insiders program, I also have access to an online forums application where Insiders can discuss various topics. Now, I've never been a fan of web forums or bulletin board software, especially the PHP varieties that seem to be so prevalent online, but this community has really grown on me.

A few weeks ago, I found out about the Flat Glenn project. This was a project started by an Insider named Mae Lynn who wanted to start something akin to Flat Stanley in which a small, flat cutout of Glenn Beck was shipped from location to location in the United States to various Insiders. The Insiders would then take photographs of the Flat Glenn (affectionately called FG by most) at historic or noteable places. These pictures have been posted electronically to the Insider forums and to Mae Lynn's forums at flatglenn.com.

This sounded to me like a lot of fun, so I started asking around about it. I found out FG was bound for Utah, Logan to be exact, in a couple weeks and then would be going to Salt Lake. I had hoped to get my hands on him for a couple days, but discovered there's a LONG list of people around the country waiting for their chance to host FG in their town, so I'll just have to wait my turn to be a host. But I did hook up with FG's host, Gina, in Salt Lake City and met her at Temple Square for some picture taking.

Here's a picture of me, Gina, and Flat Glenn:

To see all the pictures that were taken of Flat Glenn in Salt Lake City, go here.

Wahoo! I got my tickets this morning for Glenn Beck's Christmas Show coming to Salt Lake City at the E-Center on Saturday, December 8. Insiders, subscribers to Glenn Beck's website, get first pick of tickets this week, but starting next Monday, tickets go on sale to the public.

I attended Glenn's Christmas show last year at Kingsbury Hall where he sold out afternoon and evening performances. It was a wonderful show and I can't wait to experience it again. It's a splendid mix of funny stories and Christmas spirit all mixed in with kick-ass lighting and multimedia.

This is a great show to go on a date to. Glenn's promised an extra hour as a special treat only for the Salt Lake City audience -- something he did last year too.

Check out this YouTube video about the show. See Glenn's tour page for more information about shows and tickets.

Look for me and Christine right up near the front!

I bought the book The Forgotten Man by Amity Schlaes from Amazon.com a couple weeks ago. I heard about the book listening to Glenn Beck’s radio show and have since heard several other people mention it.

The Forgotten Man is an amazing book that compiles a ton of information about what was going on in United States’ politics, society and government in the late 1920s and through the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The main thrust of the book is that, contrary to popular belief, the Depression was not caused by the crash of the Stock Market, although that is one event that set things into motion. The real undeniable truth is that the federal government under the leadership of presidents Hoover and Roosevelt did pretty much all the wrong things to fix the problems affecting the U.S. economy at the time.

I’m not finished with the book and I’ll give a longer, more detailed review of the book when I do finish it. For the moment I’m stuck and can not read any more even though I really want to.

See, I was reading along and it says “Frankfurter was irritated, drafting a letter to Brandeis...” and then I reached the bottom of the page. Moving to the top of the next page, I read “mother in a lean-to nursing a baby.”

I must have read that passage three or four times, trying to make some sense of it before I looked beyond the words and noticed the page numbers were out of sequence. The first page was page 306. The second page was page 275. In fact, pages 275-306 were duplicated in my book. To make matters worse, pages 307-338 were nowhere to be found!

So, I’m stuck. I notified Amazon and the fine folks there are sending me a new copy of the book and have given me return instructions for my “defective” book.