There are certain goals that I have set for myself before I die and here they are

- Be a good father to my kids and be someone they can be proud of
- Change my actions and behaviors so I do not act like my parents
- Own at least one share of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. A stock (BRK.A closed at $101,900 today, and yes that is over 100k, went up $1300 just today)
- Give others the opportunities I was denied by helping in the community or donating money.
- Be known in some way

The last one sounds like I want to have fame and blah blah, I really just want people to be able to say, hey this Pete is a pretty good guy, he did [this] and it is awesome.

It was in the 30’s today and we had some snow flurries. It is a little early for it to be as cold as it is. All these signs are indicators it will be a good (as in cold and snow filled) winter.

Today at noon it will be 2 years and 7 months since I had my last cigarette. On March 22nd of 2004 I quit cold turkey and in January of that year I quit dipping. Smoking and dipping are obviously bad, but I think dipping was the best thing I could have done because as gross as it is I liked it. I never liked smoking so eventually I could have quit and only dipped, but then I would probably have gotten oral cancer and my life would be even worse. For anyone trying to quit smoking I wish you the best of luck. The one thing I did differently from any of the other times I quit smoking was that I kept a pack of 19 cigarettes around all the time. I smoked 1 out of the pack and I quit and made sure that pack was around me so I had to make the choice. The other times I smoked my last cigarette in the pack and said I was done, then I would say oh, I’ll just have one and I would buy a new pack or bum one of someone which in both cases just started it all back up.

It took me 7 years to quit and that is how I did it.

For a while now I have wanted to work for Google as I’m sure many people do, but until today I didn’t know about all of the benefits. Here are links to the pages outlining their employee benefits.

Summary

Benefits for US Employees

Quick Summary:
- On-site Healthcare
- Childcare
- Life, Disability, Accident insurance
- Financial, Legal, Counseling Services

This is only a short list of the reasons I would like to work at Google and they are only monetary benefits.

Update: I started working for Google in January of 2008 as a contractor and became a full time employee on July 21st, 2008.

They had a deal going on recently, you could get a 400gb SATA II drive for only $99.99 with free shipping. I ordered it, and they told me that my order was cancelled. I called in that night and placed another order and after dealing with a somewhat worthless person on the phone he said I would recieve confirmation. I did not recieve confirmation and called the next day when I noticed I had 2 $99.99 holds on my account. I found out that my order had been cancelled again, both times after the special had already expired. I also found out that they get authorization and lock funds before they verify any information. That means that for 72 hours your money is not available to you, so if they cancel the order and you only had that amount of money in it, you have to wait 72 hours before you could order again. Luckily I had money in my account to cover the 3rd 99.99 I would have taken out of my available balance. The problem was that my address changed and the way they verify was not working and the correct address was not working either. So they had to have a manager process it and I luckily recieved the sale price. I recieved my package with free shipping and only paid $99.99 when they are now selling them for $189.99. I got an incredible deal, but I feel all of that was a real pain. Until they have a crazy sale like that again I will probably not buy from them, first impressions matter.