Ok, another look into my exciting life.... We won’t dive into the little things because the big things are REALLY big! Ok, so I work for an insurance company, Great American Insurance, here in Richardson. The headquarters is in Cincinnati and we are just a branch. At this job I am the help desk guy doing basic computer repair and software trouble shooting... I love my job! Ok, so to sit here and do what I actually enjoy doing, I make $10 an hour but only get 20 hrs a week.... anyhow, here comes the big news... I work with 2 guys, Andrew and Tom, and have a boss named Chuck. A few months ago Chuck was asked to be an expert witness for a big case against Microsoft. Chuck has written 8 security books and has several (like 3) Masters Degrees. Ok, so Chuck asked our divisional president if he could take this expert witness thing on the side and the president said sure, no biggie.... well, he thought it was just going to be a temporary thing, and has been working like 10 hrs a week or so on the side for this group of lawyers doing this thing. He makes $200 an hour doing this expert witness gig and in the past few months has already made $100,000 just on the lawyer thing. The lawyer group said they are really liking his work but their only problem is that he isn't giving them enough time, the case goes to trial in 45 days and they want him on it like full time.... said they would guarantee him $135,000 for his work over the next 45 days!!!! He couldn't pass this deal up as that would mean that in 4-5 months he would make 2 years worth of his pay at Great American. He went to the president and asked if there were some way of taking a leave of absence or something as he didn't think the lawyer job would last very long and he wanted something to come back to, something steady. She said they don't really do that for a management position and said she would see what she could do. She came back to him last Friday and said he had a leave till October and he was excited... could have his cake and eat it too!!! Well, Friday evening when he got home he found that he already had 3 other cases in which people wanted him to expert witness.... most going rates on expert witness are from $300 to $500 an hour.... Long story short, Chuck resigned. Chuck is now on a cruse and will be back on Monday, his last day is the following Friday at which time Andrew, the guy I work with, will become my new boss. Andrew is AWESOME and has already set me up with 29 hrs a week instead of simply 20.(there isn't a budget for me to go full time and part time ends at 30 hrs) So, Andrew got a promotion to management and Tom got a consolation prize of a monetary promotion and I get more hours... All is well! I am going home this weekend, spending some time at the lake with my family. Tracy is coming with me so that will be fun. I might be able to say hi to some old friends, hope to see Ash and the baby.... Not sure exactly what we will be doing but it really isn't much of a trip as I have to be back to work on Monday morning so really only Saturday and Sunday morning, not much time on Friday night. Well, hope all are doing well and sorry for having not updated more recently!!! I will try to keep up with it a little better... Take care! Oh, and Chuck is giving me his LEATHER couch on the 23 so that makes me happy.... how could I say no to a basically new black leather couch!!!! Aaron