Chad Henk's Weblog

The next couple of weeks are going to be completely amazing. First off, my parents are going out of town over the weekend and it will be nice to have the house to myself and a select few friends. Being one of eight kids I rarely ever get any peace and quiet. My parents come home on Sunday and then Monday we leave for a much needed vacation. We are taking a cruise to Cozumel and the Cayman Islands. I have not been on a cruise since I was 10, so I am super excited about being of age in Mexico. So after that week, hopefully I am not too burned, my friend invited me to my old high schools prom to see everyone that I left behind. Plus on top of that I have a beautiful date and we get to take a strecth Hummer. The next free write that we have I will probably talk about these events after the fact, so we will see if the events live up to my expectations.

Unfortunately, I was unable to see the entire movie. I did see the first half of it in class and researched a little on what went on throughout the rest of the movie. I really enjoyed what I watched and I am very interested in watching the movie all the way through. I did not find the movie to be that ethical. Stephen Glass did everything for himself and did not care about who or what he hurt. He looked for a short cut to fame by creating interviews, stories, sources, and things of that nature. No one on his team ever questioned him, the only thing they would ever ask is “Do you have sources?” Stephens answer would then be yes and that was the end of it. Throughout the movie, Stephen plays the innocent guy and makes you think that the editor is sort of the bad guy. This was a really interesting true story that shows what some people will do for fame.

The story I wrote a mini-blog on was one in which a woman was harrassed into taking out her nipple piercings by airport security before she was able to get on a flight. The link for the article is

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/flier-blasts-tsa-over-piercings-removal/20080327192709990001#cmntbgn.

Here is what I wrote on this issue:

This is wrong on so many levels! I definitelty believe this is a violation of rights. It is really sad that in todays society someone can’t even get past security with just a pat-down, especially since they did not even offer. They degraded her enough making her show them but then, to add salt to the wound, they make her remove them with pliers! This is ridiculous! I have a lot of friends with this done and not one of them has ever had any problems going through security! Why was this woman pinpointed?! Soon you will see something along the lines of “Man has to remove penis piercing to board airplane”. What has our society come to today?

Here I am, two weeks before spring break and I am stressing my brains out. It is not just one thing that it stressing me out, it is a combonation of everything that is going on. I know I wrote about stress a few blogs ago, but it made me feel better to get it out by writing it down, eventhough only a handful of you are going to read this. I have to do so much by Friday it is not even funny. I’ve got to write my paper for this class, work enough to get ready for my trip, and get a haircut, and go get some more dress clothes, all in the next 12 hours! Then tomorrow I have one of my exams for my Origins class, which I have not done any studying for, as well as writing another paper for another class! Ahhhh! Why do we have mid-term exams anyways? They just stress everyone out before spring break. What are they supposed to do, make us ekjoy spring break more? I do not think so! However, What I just mentioned, I have to have done in two days, well more like 36 hours. That is only through Wednesday, we wont even go into Thursday and Friday! Saturday I leave for Boston, and I do not think I should be stressing out over stupid stuff the week before my trip (and my Birthday)!!! This is going to be one heck of a week.

The next project is soon approaching and I am still unsure what I am going to do. I keep putting it off because of everything else that is going on with school and work. I am pretty sure I am going to do some type of film, although I am unsure as to which film I want to choose. I was thinking about doing either Black Hawk Down, which is a war or military issue or possibly Catch Me if You Can which is a crime issue. I really like both of the movies, so I am unsure which to write about. I am leaning towards Catch Me if You Can though. If I end up just writing about a topic, I thought about same-sex marriages. I have always had a strong standpoint on this issue, so it should be easy to write about for me. So here I am, three topics to choose from and I do not know what I am writing about. Each one of these topics intrigues me in a different way. Talk about procrastination, cause this is due tomorrow and hopefully I will know what I want to write about by then. In all seriousness though, I really need to stop doing this, it is way too stressful. Way to go Chad.

Here is a word that almost everyone comes to find out about at some point in their life, stress. One definition on dictionary.com states that stress is “physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension” in which is caused by a situation or occurrence. I chose to write about stress to ironically enough relieve a little stress of my own. As I wrote about last week, my job requires a lot of hard work and dedication. Coming up in a couple of weeks is our annual conference in which I am stressing out over because my boss is stressing out over it. Also, it is very difficult to juggle a forty hour a week job and go to school full time. On top of that you try to have a social life and it does not always work out for you. I have found that I have been making a lot of people upset lately because I have been so wrapped up in school and work that I have not talked to some of them. This also adds stress to my life, which is stressful enough, and I just wish my friends would understand. I think I am going to start living my life with a new motto, live life day by day. Also, I saw a quote the other day that really made me look at life from another perspective. That quote said, “Never take life too seriously, no one ever gets out alive.”

I work for a company called Xplor International. As stated on our website, “Xplor is the community of choice for education, information sharing and networking that meets the needs of our members and provides leadership to the evolution of the document systems industry.” Basically, what we do is educate our customers with the newest technology within the digital printing industry. We have members in over 35 countries around the world and deal with companies such as Kodak, Xerox, and IBM. As one of only six employees in headquarters, I have many responsibilities. I manage all of our memberships, which is around 5,000 members as well as coordinate or EDP program. EDP stands for Electronic Document Professional. This is a big certification within the digital document industry and is highly valued and desired. In order to become an EDP, you must meet qualifications such as: being in the document industry for over 5 years, obtaining over 150 credits, (credits are attained by educating others or yourself and the number of credits is based on what you have done), and currently work in the digital document industry. It is a very manual process and takes up most of my time. I love my job because once a year we have a conference in March. Last year the conference was held in South Beach Miami and the year before that it was in Dallas, Texas. This year it is in Boston, Massachusetts where I lived for a while. I am very excited to be apart of Xplor because of these once a year trips. I get an all expense paid trip to wherever we are going and I get paid on top of that. It makes you feel a lot older being apart of an organization like this because it feels like a job that I should have 5 or 6 years from now. The best part of going to these conferences is meeting the people that you have been talking with through email all year. Then they realize how young I am and are astounded to see how professional I am. I chose to write about this because we are only three weeks away from Boston!

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I read the article that Mr. Cochran suggested regarding companies sneaking charges onto your bill. I found this very interesting because not many people know it is happening. As the author stated, he was currently paying for a 400-700 kilobyte per second broadband service, but when he tested it, he was only receiving 29 kilobytes a second. When people call and complain about slow speeds, the author mentions many false things the companies tell you. Among these “problems” are: your computer, spyware, applications, Microsoft Office, or even the teenager that uses the computer. Customers believe this stuff because it seems very plausible, and the broadband provider would never screw you over; yeah right. This is why it is important to check all of your bills for discrepancies. In fact, I have been a victim before in this aspect. Since my father always taught me to check bills, I caught it before I was overcharged. I was at the bar with a few friends and we all bought drinks. So my friend decided to start a tab since we would be there awhile and it is usually easier that way. I told him to be careful, because sometimes bartenders will put extra drinks on the tab that they gave to their buddy or something and then charge you to make up for it. Sure enough, he got the bill, and just signed the receipt without even looking at it. Before he could give it back, I grabbed the receipt and looked at it. I found over thirty dollars worth of charges on there that weren’t ours. What is even funnier is my friend gave the guy a ten dollar tip too. We talked to management and we only had to pay half the bill. The lesson here is, always pay cash for drinks, do not start a tab.

As a car enthusiast, especially an import one, I decided to do my free writing on the 2008 Honda S2000 C/R. I myself drive a 2001 Honda S2000 and absolutely love it, so this new C/R is the perfect thing to write about. Just for a brief background, the Honda S2000 is a two-seater convertible and is described as a car with the size of a Mazda Miata and the power of the Porsche Boxster. The 2008 S2000 C/R was released in fall of 2007 and is dubbed to be light and tight on the race track compared to the older versions. Some say that after the 2008 model, the S2000 will beef up and add two more seats where other say it will continue to get smaller and more like the Miata. This years S2000 comes with 2.2 Liter, Dual Overhead Cam V-TEC engine that pushes around 240 horsepower and about 170 pounds of torque. It shed about ninety pounds of weight and shaved two seconds of its track time because of aerodynamic upgrades of a front and rear spoiler. Also, the tires in the rear are wider than before for increased traction. The biggest thing, however, is the new color that Honda is offering, APEX Blue. A drive test review stated that the 2008 S2000 C/R is a great car if you have the open road on a nice day, but it’s definitely not the car to drive everyday to the office, especially during rush hour.

2008 Honda S2000 C/R Photo 1

2008 Honda S2000 C/R Photo 2

Many people have many views on whether or not they should give a bum on the streets a dollar. Some people will always give them one, some will sometimes, and some will never. My personal opinion is that sometimes I will give a bum a dollar. Although I do believe if that bum tried hard enough, he should be able to get a job and make it on his own, I still give some of them money. The cases in which they receive money from me are if: they have kids, they are physically handicapped, or they are completely honest. Any other time then those, I do not give bums any money. I am very skeptical of most bums because of the research that has been done with regards to begging. As I said in class, one of my co workers actually went onto the streets with only five dollars and came out after three months in perfect health and a couple grand richer. If we give bums money and they do not even have to work for it, why should they ever get a real job? I work too hard and too long for my money and I do not like to give it up that easily. However, if any of my friends asked me for money, I would give it to them in a heartbeat. Although that is not what we are discussing, I just wanted to show I am not a heartless person. So I am one of those people who say, “I will give a bum money sometimes, only if…”