Even though I have always admired the weapons that the military uses, I have never really had the urge to join the service.  Perhaps it is the fear of commitment, or the fact that being in the army can put you in dangerous situation each and every day, but the army wasn’t going to be for me.

But that didn’t mean that my fascination with automatic weapons went away.  No, it meant that it was going to be even more of a challenge for me to find a way to pursue my hobby without buying illegal weapons.  I could live with that since I really didn’t want to go to prison, but I was sure there was an alternative.

In fact, I found the alternative in the most unlikely place.  While out at a big box store, I happened to browse through their hunting section where I found life-like replicas of some of my favorite assault rifles.  It was at that moment that I was introduced to airsoft rifles, and I fell in love.

I bought myself an Echo1 airsoft rifle at that moment, and it has been one of my most prized possessions ever since.  I take it out to the rifle range that I made in my backyard whenever I have the chance, and you can find me out there hours on end with a big grin on my face.

Sure, it isn’t the real thing, but it is damn close, which is good enough for me.

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One of the most frustrating things about keeping up with the Jones’s when it comes to technology is that you end up with a lot of different things.  It seems that each new generation of gadget (especially digital cameras) uses something different, and therefore you seem to end up with a lot of “extras” that you never thought you would end up with.

For example, I look at the past three years of buying and upgrading my digital camera.  Now, I guess I was suckered with the latest and greatest things (you know the “more megapixels the better” mentality) and I had to have the latest and greatest.

But the one thing that I didn’t really consider was the number of memory cards that I would collect.  I guess with most of the cameras that I have purchased, they all came with a teaser card (you know a really tiny one that lets you take 3 or four pictures), and it seems that I have a little collection now.

I worry about my cell phones as well, since my newest one uses a microsdhc card.  Does that mean that I will end up with a stack of memory cards I can no longer use in my phone?

Needless to say, I wish there was something that I could do with all these old cards.  Heaven forbid I actually throw them out.

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One of the things that my father always taught me was that the first impression that you make is the most important.  If you screw that up, chances are that you will never be able to recover.

So as a business person, I have followed his advice religiously.  When I am meeting a client for the first time, I make sure to do a bit of rehearsal beforehand, and make sure to brush my teeth.  I also make sure that everything is in its place and that I am organized for my meeting.

I have also put my diploma display in a central position in the room, so that they can see my credentials immediately.  I find that most people gaze long and hard at each college diploma frame to get a grasp of my education background.  Considering that I went to one of the most prestigious schools in the country, most of them are impressed even before we sit down to chat.

For the most part, I do succeed at making a great impression the first time, but when I fail, I make sure to ask for feedback from the customer as to what I could have done better.  Most of them have given me some constructive criticism, and I apply it so that I can be more likely to succeed for the next client.

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I am not one to step away from a challenge, so when a good friend of mine challenged me to put on a charity function, I couldn’t say no.  But the truth of the matter is that I had no idea where to start or how to run one, but it couldn’t be that hard, right?

Alright, so a couple of weeks into planning, I realized one thing: it wasn’t necessarily going to be hard, but instead it was going to be a lot of work.  Not only did I have to book the venue (which has thankfully been done), but I had to come up with a theme, some charities that we are going to support and send out invites to as many people as possible.

Speaking of invites, that has been a chore in itself.  Since we didn’t have a list to go from, we have been basically sending out the invites to “cold” prospects, but we are almost done.  We just sent some invites out to Tampa criminal lawyers, doctors and optometrists.  That leaves us with less than a quarter of the phonebook left to go.

With the event in just a few weeks, I hope that we are able to raise a lot of money for charity and have a good time doing it.

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Before I start writing this, let me just say that I love my wife.  She is one of the most amazing people that I have met and I love her to pieces.  We have been married for nearly ten years now, and they have been some of the best days of my life.

But there have also been a number of times where we have butted heads.  I guess you would have to say that we are both stubborn, and sometimes we struggle to come up with solutions for our disagreements.  Perhaps the worst arguments that we have ever had were with respect to what we were going to do for vacations.

You see, my wife is a big fan of visiting as many tourist attractions she can.  She loves to spend hours at museums or walking through ruins, and spends a lot of time researching the places that she can visit.  So, when it comes to vacation spots, she wants to visit places where there are places to go, and she likes to plan things out accordingly.

On the other hand, I am more of a beach bum.  I choose destinations based on the fact that they are coastal regions and have a beach where I can sit all day.  I guess I like to relax, and a beach provides a perfect opportunity to do so.

Needless to say, somehow we seem to find places where we can both get what we want out of our vacations, but there is a lot of fighting.  At least we have fun when we get there, right?

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