Tjoe's Blog

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Kicks For Katrina - Results

A giant THANK YOU goes out to those that donated to this wonderful charity. The Ronald McDonald Houses Charity is a fabulous group and deserves all the help they can get.

Results:
The Homewood ATA = $2,217.16
The Darien ATA - $1,400.00 (rough estimate)

Total for Greater Chicagoland ATAs = over $15,000 !!!!!
We presented the grand total check to Ronald McDonald at our tournament last weekend (Nov 5, 2005).

I want to thank the wonderful people that donated through me:
Asriana (from SST) = $20.00
Ken M. = $20.00
Dan P. = $10.00
Joannie B. = $10.00

I had someone take pictures for me and I'm still organizing and resizing them. They will be posted here real soon (probably after this weekend's tournament). For now, here is a silly one of yours truly.

Kicks For Katrina

Our taekwondo organization is trying to raise money to help rebuild the Ronald McDonald House that was destroyed in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

Many of the Chicagoland schools are doing a special event (our school's is this weekend) that we are calling "Kicks For Katrina". We have a modest goal of 500 kicks during the event.... now, 500 kicks is nothing for some of us, but it is quite a lot for our younger students. And, it's not really about how many kicks, but about helping out in this very worthy cause.

If you want to help us send money to the Ronald McDonald House Charities to specifically rebuild the New Orleans' house, you can click on the Donations button (below) to use PayPal, or you can email me for other arrangements.

Donations of $5, $10, $20, etc., or anything you can spare would be wonderful.

If the Donations button doesn't work, go to Pay Pal, select Send Money and put in my email address (TJoebgen@Yahoo.com)

I'll be updating this page, or posting a new one, with results of the event and photos. I also want to put the names of those who donated (so if you don't want your name put on here, tell me please).

Thank you,
Terry
TJoebgen@Yahoo.com

Certified Taekwondo Instructor!!

I had my final certification camp this past weekend, and, after weeks of nervousness, sweat, worry, doubt, anxiety, etc., I went to camp for my final physical requirements and to take the most nerve racking test I've ever been a part of in my life.

I've been ready for all the physical stuff forever - although it was more exhausting than I was ready for ;) But the scariest part of the entire process is this 5-minute "pretend class" that you have to give. The worse part is that this test isn't given the same way twice. I've been asking people that have done it in the last couple of years what to expect. Their stories differed from each other, and what I went through wasn't like what they did.

What's expected during the test is to hit all of the teaching skills that the American Taekwondo Association (ATA, www.ataonline.com) has created, while teaching a class your own way. It is not scripted or laid out in any way. Teaching for ATA is WAY more than just teaching martial arts - that's a piece of cake compared to what they want you do in this organization. Anyway, the pressure that I felt coming into the weekend had me nearly shaking whenever I had a moment or two to think. Luckily, they kept us busy with non-stop workouts practically the entire time. I lost about 10 pounds in sweat!

Nick went to camp with me, but he was just "camping" while I was "leveling up". Camping is where there are all kinds of martial art type of activities. Leveling is where people are doing one of the 3 certification levels in order to become a certified instructor. We are all together as a group several times a day, but our activities are so different. As a group, we had a goal of 900 kicks for the weekend. But my group - people preparing for final certification - easily did twice that many. If I had to guess, I'd say that between our group kicks for the goal, and our non-stop workouts, we probably did 2,500 kicks.

I was expecting the big test (although it's only 5 minutes - timed, it is a BIG test because this is the one that makes or breaks you. You don't get a second chance on it like you do for the physical material) to be on Sunday morning. Instead, it was on Saturday night. I was glad of that because I was afraid that I would not sleep at all Saturday night. Instead, I didn't sleep at all on Friday night.

Another reason for my anxiety was that I was suppose to be put into a hotel like room for the weekend because of my certification status. If you are just camping, you are in the cabin with the kids. And, as an adult, you are also the cabin leader and responsible for their location and behavior at all times - a very time consuming job. But if you are certifying, you can be in the hotel rooms and might have a roommate. The rooms have privacy and their own bathrooms with showers, etc.. I found out at check-in that I got bumped down to a cabin due to many higher ranks being there - urg! No privacy, no sleep, bathrooms and showers a 10-minute walk away!

So, now I am very glad that I came very prepared. I had been designing my class planner for my test for the last week or so. I rewrote it everyday and refined and tweaked it each time. Every time I tried to work on it at camp, somebody would come around and talk my ear off during the only few minutes of personal time that I had. Even at lights out, the guy across the aisle from me kept yacking at me until about 1:30am! He's an adult also, and was there to take his level 2 seminar and tests. He's an interesting guy but he chewed up all my time. Then, I couldn't get to sleep at all.

Saturday, the morning started out rainy, but us levelers did our morning workout outside. It eventually got nice out and all of our workouts, except for one, ended up being outside. It was great in the afternoon. Just cool enough that we weren't overheating, yet not cold. A beautiful breeze was keeping us dry even though we were sweating like pigs.

Finally, Saturday afternoon I got a little bit of time to make final run-throughs, then it was test time. It turned out that our pretend students were going to be all of the other levelers (level-1 and 2 testers) and all of the people that are already certified instructors that are there for re-certifying (which we have to do often). Us level-3 people (11 of us) were split into 3 groups and the other levelers were split up so that we each had about 12 to 15 people in our pretend class.

I can teach my kids at our school and be as cool as a cucumber. They are there to learn from me and it tends to just flow from me naturally. But these tests when I'm pretending to teach people that know as much, or more than me, in front of someone who is judging me, is very, very hard to do. I choke up during our test runs of these at instructor classes. So, I've been extremely nervous about it.

So, we get our uniforms on and go to the room for testing. You can feel the tension. The 11 of us are so nervous that this big room is overwhelmed with it. All of the other people could feel it too.

I wanted to be the first to go, but ended up going 2nd. By time it was my turn, I was shaking so bad. I swear that the butterflies in my stomach knew more TKD than I did as they were kicking the crap out of me! Then I was called up. I started, and went through my material. We were allowed to keep a copy of our lesson plan with us and refer to it as often as we wanted. I only needed to look at mine once, and that was only out of nervousness. Thankfully, the judges almost know how nervous you are. I say almost because they didn't have to do this kind of test when they became certified instructors. Theirs were a bunch of written tests and then a physical test. I'd have paid big money to do it that way instead of this way. Anyway, I got passed a key area of my lesson plan that ensures that I hit all the marks that I would need before the judge called "time". But, they don't tell you how you did.

Then, I had to do my physical tests. I had to do any 3 of 9 forms (routines) that they called out, and any 9 of 27 extra segments that they called out. I only had one spot of trouble on that - the extra segments (called 1-steps), the judge called out one color belt (yellow) to do, but I thought he said a different one (orange). So, I'm on my second one for orange and stops me and restates the other color. I smiled and said "Oh! Even better." then popped the yellow ones off flawlessly, smiling all the way. They got a chuckle out of that.

Then I was done. I sat back down in our waiting area while I watched the last person in my group go. My entire body was shaking, my mouth was bone dry, and I felt like I was going to pass out.

After the last person finished, the two judges went over their paperwork, then, after what seemed like an eternity, they called us all over to them - including our pretend students so that they could hear some good tips that will help them when they come up and do this in the future. He still wouldn't tell us if we made it or not, but the comments that he had for us didn't seem like they were the kind that you'd say if you were trying to ease someone into it, or to justify why you judged them the way you did. Instead, they offered us advice on things that they liked (i got several good comments like that) and things they didn't like.

Then we were dismissed to get ready for the bonfire. We would have to wait until graduation ceremony on Sunday morning to find out if we did it or not. I was relieved that it was done, but still terribly nervous for not knowing. It wasn't until after the test that I started to feel a little tired from not sleeping the night before. After the bonfire, and listening to the guy across from me talking to me most of the night, I think I got to sleep around 12:30 or 1am. The beds are uncomfortable, but the worse part was the noise they make when you roll over. Anytime anyone rolled over, it practically woke up the whole cabin (sleeps 14, mostly in bunk beds). But I did manage to sleep for about 4 or 5 hours.

I got up at 5:30 am Sunday to get dressed and ready for the 7am lineup for graduation. I went up to the hall at 6:30 and we had to wait in absolute silence to reflect on our journey to where we are. I was getting nervous again. I'd been told that they will let everybody get called up, and they will even put the stripe on you, even if you didn't pass. Then, if you hadn't passed, they would tell you that they did the ceremony so that you wouldn't be embarrassed. I was told that sometimes they do this the night before, but I hadn't heard anything. So I thought that I might be told that morning, but still nothing.

Then it was time to line up. We did our candle ceremony, and then we were called up, one by one, to get our stripes. Our group was last. It sounded like the people were getting called up in alphabetical order. When my group started to be called, the names got near mine alphabetically and then passed by and went to Ms and Ws and Vs. I was starting to feel bad, then more names were called, including mine! I felt so overjoyed, but still rather cautious. What if the second pass through the alphabet was for the ones that weren't going to be really getting it?

My school owner was one of the 3 masters at the front that present you with your stripe. My instructor shook my hand and smiled when she said congratulations. Okay, that seemed like I might have actually made it... but there was still the chance that they'll tell me after.... Anyway, I shook the hands of the representative from headquarters and the other judge, and then got back in line. Then we were dismissed and allowed to have pictures taken:
- 11_New_ATA_Certified_Instructors.jpg
- All_Level-Testers_Certifieds_and_Masters.jpg
- Master_B's_NEW_Instructors.jpg

Then, twice more that morning, I got a hardy handshake, smile and hug from my school owner, so I'm totally confident that I've done it now! I am a fully Certified Instructor!

I definitely over-prepared during the last couple of weeks. But I don't regret even one minute of it. I felt so good about all of my other requirements over the weekend because I was as prepared for them as I could possibly be. I always know all my forms and segments. Many instructors have to refresh them in their mind when they come up in a new testing cycle. I keep them by using all forms and segments in my morning workouts. My preparations the last couple of weeks were in memorizing all of the material by their names and numbers. I can now recite all the class mgmt skills, life skills, and leadership skills. I can recite all form move numbers, kihap locations, and segment breakdowns. I'm glad that I was prepared for all of those. They helped me during the physical portions of camp, but were not needed for my big test. I only needed to know the 10 class management skills for it. But I'm still glad to have them tucked away in memory now.

So, there we have it. My certification. Now all that remains is all of the paper work and waiting for processing. I have been so focused on this goal for the past year. Now I have to make a new goal. Last year, my goals were easy: Get Black Belt, Get Levels 1 & 2 done, Get to camp in 2005 for level-3. Last year, while I was just a camper, we had a campers gathering Friday night and we discussed goals. I announced, while sitting there as a Brown Belt, Red Striper with only about 30 or so class assisting hours completed, that my next big goal was to come back to camp the following year (2005) and test for my Certified Instructor stripe. The applause that followed was the kind that you get when you declare something that most people think you can't do, but they applaud anyway because you have really big dreams. It's typically a 3-year process. Well, there I was, exactly 1 year later, getting the ceremonial black stripe draped over my neck.

GrayWolf's Disney Travel Book

Our friend, GrayWolf, of StreamingSoundtracks.com and from his famous Blog: www.wolf-howl.com, has made a wonderful book explaining all of the great things about Disney World that you wish you knew BEFORE you went there.

Check it out here: www.wolf-howl.com/2005/05/free-disney-travel-book.html

Star Wars ALL DAY at StreamingSoundtracks May 19, 2005

You can WIN the Star Wars EP3 Soundtrack by promoting this event. Simply make a message about this event in you BLOG or Website, then post the URL to that message to the comments section at the bottom of this SST page.

Don't forget to go to www.StreamingSoundtracks.com (SST) and listen to the Listener Rated number ONE Soundtracks station at Live365.

And be sure to listen to the entire EP3 Soundtrack on Wednesday, May 4 at SST!

Congratulations SST on your 10,000th member addition!

Panoramic view of my desk and window. Click image for full file (7meg). Funny, when I'm sitting in the middle of all this, it doesn't seem as messy it looks from here.

okay, here's the pizza.

pizza lurking. okay, it turns out it's kind of hard to see the plate of pizza on the left, on top of the material I'm studying, in front of and next to my various PCs - both of which have SST on them.

This one is in honor of Saffron becoming an Admin at SST. Well, we didn't have ribs, so a hotdog had to do :)

At Six Flags Great America (Chicago) a few years ago.

Closer view of the main bird feeder.

A Cardinal at the back of the feeder, a Sparrow at the front, a Mourning Dove (one of a dozen that hang out here) is on a back branch, and the tree is littered with many Sparrows and Juncos. There have been days when there were easily more than 100 birds at my tree. It is common to have Cardinals, Blue Jays (at the same time too), Robins, 4 or 5 different kinds of Sparrows, Juncos, Chickadee's, Finches (House and Golden), Grackles, Starlings, Snow Geese, etc... all at the same time.

Rarest birds here have been: Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Yes - for real... after all, it is just a woodpecker, of which several varieties have been here), a Yellow Breasted Nuthatch, Killdeers, a Red-tailed Hawk and a Kestrel (Sparrow Hawk) .

A Mourning Dove (biggest), a Junco (close to tree), and a couple of Sparrows.

View from my desk outside my cubicle's window.

Personal Victory - Black Belt in Taekwondo!

It's Official! I got my Black Belt last week!

It was a wonderfully magical night and the speech that Master Barnum gave brought tears to a few eyes in the place, including mine :). During the event I even had my own cheering section. My wife and kids were cheering me on, but many of the parents their know me and know they all started cheering and chanting too - it was so fun. I've known all of my material by heart for a long time now. In fact, at my pre-test for this final test, I received all Excellent marks on my score sheet. The only thing that could get in my way on the actual testing night was the board breaking.

Even the best board breakers have a night when it just doesn't happen. I'm pretty good at basic breaks (not those jumping 360 kind - yet), but you never know when "it" will happen. I had been practicing this break for awhile and was confident that I knew how to do it. I had to make 2 different breaks. One was super easy, the other a step-reverse side kick. It's nearly a blind move and very easy to miss. When it was finally my turn, I got my holders set up where I wanted them, bowed for permission to break and went after my first one - the easy one. It popped easily. I lined up for the second one, took a breath to relax, let my mind go and started my spin. I popped that board so loud that everybody in the place could hear it (it's quite noisy during board breaking time as many people are going at once).

After that, I knew it was just a matter of waiting until the final announcements. There were 5 of us testing for 1st Degree Black that night: me and 4 kids (juniors). Master Barnum called the juniors up first, one at a time. Then just before she called me up, she took a breath and smiled, then called my name. The place erupted with applause. Classmates, instructors, my students and their parents, all cheering and clapping. Then Master Barnum did her speech about me. She used part of it as a sales pitch to the parents about signing up themselves, but also mentioned about all the hard work that I put in and how I am there so much. The most touching part of the speech was when she said that many people's lives there at the school, students as well as classmates and even instructors, were better because I was there. I heard a number of voices around the room confirm that. That's when my eyes had to get all watery. I was nearly tearing when I first got up there, but the speech put me over. Then I looked and saw that her eyes were watery too.

It has been a challenging and tiring road this year. This didn't come easy, and now I have so much more to learn. I just finished my first of a 3 part process to become a Certified Instructor. Saturday was an 8-hour workout and class. The workouts were hard, but the class was much harder. We have to teach much more than just moves. We teach an entire set of life values, and to several different age groups so we have to be able communicate these at the right levels. We have to find ways to work these values into our workouts and drills too. Funny thing, I don't remember getting taught this way, nor do I recall my son getting taught that way, but these value teachings have been in place for a long time. As it turns out, many instructors were trying to move away from that because it is hard to do. We are making a move to come back to some of our older ways. So, now that the class is done, I have days worth of tests and paperwork to do and then turn in. As a student, you have no idea how much work that instructor had to go through to get there.

My life has changed so much. I broke out of my daily routine and started something new, exciting, and even scary. I overcame my fears. I am more physically fit than ever in my life. I only wish I had done this many years ago. But now I have something to build on and grow for the rest of my life.

Just for fun - 2005 01 06.
This is a screenshot of our Office's video camera system (we also do security).
Our parking lot (left images) was just plowed 30 minutes ago (we all had to move our cars for the plow truck). I should have taken a "before" picture - there was about a foot of snow in the lot and some people couldn't get their cars all the way in.
My car is shown in the red box - I just moved it back in the lot.
The rest of the images in this shot are from around our building. And, no, I'm not in any of them :)

The Wrigley Building - my huge project this fall/winter. In addition to their heating and air condtioning, we are now controlling all of their exterior lighting including their new LED color lighting system at the top of the tower.

There are multiple levels of lighting (street, roof, and tower) with a total of 30 zones of lights controlling 279 bulbs for close to 300,000 watts of lights.

We Are Alone

As the Asian death toll now passes 80,000, I find that I still can't find the right thing to say about all of this. It is a horrific catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions. As I continue to struggle with my own beliefs of faith, or lack there of, I find that this event, along with so many other heinous disasters and conflicts in history, further cement my more recent beliefs: We are alone.

Believe in whichever religion that you choose, but if there was ever a time for divine intervention, the events of December 26, 2004 would certainly have been the time. Tens of thousands of people's lives lost in mere minutes, many more to follow as the fallout of disease begins. Yes, I believe that we are truly alone.

I think that there may have been a time when some sort of a divine being (or race of beings) put us here on this rock, but I don't believe that the hairs on our head are numbered, nor do I think that our thoughts and actions are being written into a book that will be opened on Judgment Day. I think these are just ideas dreamed up by some wise people to help put a chaotic and self destructive world back onto a more civilized track. Stories back then could mostly travel by word of mouth, were often distorted and exaggerated along the way, and nearly impossible to verify the facts. The same sort of stories could not be made up and distributed today, not with the ease in which we can pull up information. So, instead, we are told that we must simply have faith, or to not question God's will. Nice disclaimer.

Here is an article that I found that I really liked:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/Waves-of-destruction-wash-away-belief-in-Gods-benevolence/2004/12/29/1103996611542.html?oneclick=true

I think that we ought to begin to take responsibility for our own existence on this planet. I think that using the crutches that today's popular religions put out there are no longer helping us. Mankind needs to take the steps necessary to protect mankind. Don't rely on divine intervention to protect you, your loved ones, or entire nations. Don't plan on us all getting together on some ethereal plane where all your hopes and dreams come true. This planet and this life is what we've got. Protect it. Make the best of it. Nobody else is going to do it for us.

We Are Alone

Back side of "Basics" pumpkin. Note image of the front in the window above.

Back to basics... sort of...

Back to basics... sort of :)

Our 3 pumpkins - 2004. Same as other one but the "cat" in mine is an outline now instead of open.

Our 3 pumpkins - 2004. Randi's is on the left (note frankenstein scar), Nick's is in the middle, the front of mine is on the right. Note the window shows the backs of them. Randi's says DOOM!

My Pumpkin - 2004,

My Pumpkin - 2004

Randi and Pepper (still at the breeder's place). We had just decided that this one would be ours.

My Wintertime Desktop

My wallpaper for winter with SnowForWindows turned on.

My Fall Desktop

Fall Wallpaper with AutumnLeaves
program.

Wallpapers & Screen Savers

I'm a rather messy person; at least my mother always use to tell me that. And, for some things, she is right. At home, my workbench is a disaster. At work, people look at my desk and see big piles of stuff. There really is a method to my madness with my desk though. I do too much for the size space I'm allotted - in my opinion.

But many things I like to have neat and tidy. One of them is my computer desktop. As my 3 different screen-shots show (1 at the very bottom of the list, the other 2 right here), very little clutters my Windows Desktop. I rely heavily on my Office Toolbar (with AutoHide turned on), and on the Quick Launch area of my Windows Toolbar. On rare occasions I'll have a shortcut icon on my desktop, but that is only there to remind me to look at those objects in the very near future. Otherwise, I don't leave icons laying around. On my non-XP (windows) PCs, I leave the icons (that the Office Toolbar needs) hidden behind an empty folder. On my XP machine, I use the setting that keeps the desktop empty except for the picture. I'll also keep an old program from YAHOO running: a news ticker that helps me keep in touch with the outside world. And lastly, on my main office PC, I keep Intellicast's radar image of the Midwestern U.S. anchored in a corner using Windows (2000) Active Desktop.

But, as clean and neat as that is, it looks rather boring. Wallpaper pictures have been around forever, and I have used hundreds. The last few years, however, I have stuck to just a few favorites. Most of these favorites I got from SecondNature (www.SecondNature.com) in there various free packs or in the disk that I was given. When I thought that golf was my friend, I had a nice golf picture. The woodpecker picture (way below) now lasts during spring and summer.

But, Fall and Winter, my desktop gets the real treatment. In the fall, I load this picture of a country store on a lake in the late fall at sunset (called Terry Redlin - Master of Memories, from SecondNature). Then I run a great little program called AutumnLeaves from Rick Jansen (http://www.euronet.nl/~rja/AutumnLeaves/). This program keeps the desktop alive during my regular work, not just during screen saver mode, with falling leaves, acorns, growing mushrooms, chipmunks burrowing, pumpkins, little wind storms, etc. The leaves collect on the bottom of the screen and on the top of any open window. The settings let you change how many leaves, how fast they fall, the kinds of leaves, nuts, and mushrooms, to pumpkin or not to pumpkin, and many other parameters.

I found AutmnLeaves after using Rick Jansen's SnowForWindows (http://www.euronet.nl/~rja/WinSnow/) program. I really, really like snow in the wintertime. I'm so surprised by the number of people that live here in Chicago (and anywhere that snows seasonally) that can't stand snow. Hey! It's freezing outside. You can't go swimming or walk around in shorts and a t-shirt (for very long anyway). You can't do much when it is this cold out, you might as well have snow on the ground and in the trees to make it look pretty. Dead grass and trees are very depressing to look at for 6 or so months - cover them up with snow. And, hey, while were at it, learn how to drive in this stuff so that you don't totally ruin someone else's day when you slide into them because you forgot that it's slippery out.

Anyway, SecondNature has several snow scenes that I like, but my favorite is an old farm house in the mountains. Running the SnowForWindows program on top of that is so pretty. Snow lets you change the types of flakes, how many, how fast, how windy, etc. You can even have Santa and the reindeer (with optional Rudolph) fly by.

On top of all this, whether I have my fall scene up or my winter scene up, the perfect topping to all of this is having the right music playing. Check out www.Live365.com and you'll find any kind of audio that you are looking for. While you are there, check out the station StreamingSoundtracks (also available at www.StreamingSoundtracks.com). The biggest and best Movie, TV, and Games Soundtrack site anywhere.