My Gay Life

Just a fun fact for Saturday night. I currently own 12 domain names (down significantly from 20 I used to own) and host 8 distinct websites. Four of those sites are currently active, 1 has been taken down due to hackers and I am too lazy to fix, 1 is a site that I have abandoned, and 2 I just have never gotten around to. They are low priorities.

And apparently I need to spend some time and do some work on the ads on this site as they are overlapping the sidebar. Maybe I will get to that tomorrow, but probably not.

I wonder what the Religious Reich would think if this were actually true. I suspect it would be no big deal and not doing anything to kill marriage. Gay marriage on the other hand is going to end society…

I often get asked if Colorado is really cold in the winter. That is the general perception and people want to make sure their belief is true. And as every Coloradan knows no matter what the question is when it comes to weather in Colorado the answer is always “it depends”.

Yes, everywhere in Colorado there are going to be some very cold days where it is -15 out. However, general weather patterns vary tremendously across the state. I cannot talk in detail about the entire state because I honestly do not know how harsh their winters are because I do not live there. So I am going to focus on Colorado Springs.

Compared to what most people who are not from here believe, Colorado Springs has extremely mild winters. Yes, we average 40+ inches of snow a year; however, it melts. Well for the most part it does. When you hear stories about how we had a blizzard in the morning and it was all gone that afternoon that is not an exaggeration. It is actually common especially in the later winter months to have a lot of snow in the morning and the temperature will be 60 in the afternoon. However, there is one big exception to snow melting and that is snow does not melt on the north side of building and fences. I will have 6-12 inches of snow in my yard about 4 feet wide on the north side of my house and fence from November until April. There will not be any snow on the rest of my yard and it could very well be 50 degrees out.

Colorado Springs has very fast and very massive temperatures shifts. Even during the summer there is a minimum of a 30 degree change in temperature between night and day. In the winter that change can be even greater. So yes it drops below freezing pretty much every night, but during the day 40s are the average and 50s are common.

No Colorado Springs does not have a fall. Our first snow is usually in mid October but late September is not unheard of. In fact 2 weeks ago several inches of snow fell on top of Pikes Peak and it has continued to snow up there on a semi-frequent basis since. Raking your leaves is usually a race to make sure it is done before the next time it snows.

But no Colorado Springs is not Minnesota where the snow sticks around from December until March. Yes it can snow in Colorado Springs 8 months out of the year. But in between those snow storms it will be surprisingly mild and it will always be sunny.

I have finally sorted through my pictures from the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. Here are my favorites as promised.

Yes they really do go fast and yes you are very close to them when they go by. This also unfortunately is my best picture from the prologue in Colorado Springs. As the week went on I got much better with my picture taking.

Aspen was a tough town to take pictures as it was raining and I did not have my “good” camera with me. I have several dozen pictures but this is by far the best showing the Yellow Jersey in the final bend before the line.

Read entire article.

If you read gay news blogs you are bound to be hearing about the Miami Dade teacher Shawn Loftis who was fired for his former gay porn career.

Many are going to turn this into a claim that he was fired because it was gay porn. If it was straight porn he would have been fine. Although I understand the sentiment and the fact that the supervisor who wrote him up and caused him to be fired stated that he was being written up because he owns a gay website, I am not sure that is the full story. The write up for owning a gay website is extremely disturbing.

I did a little research after finding this story. In the first 6 pages of Google results for “Teacher fired for porn career” I found 4 instances of teachers being fired for a history of porn. Of these four, only 1 of them was fired for gay porn. I know there are a lot more cases and a significant amount of research may find that a disproportionate number of teachers fired for porn careers are gay, but it is apparent that both straight and gay porn stars get fired from teaching.

Therefore I am not appalled that a teacher was fired for his gay porn career. I am appalled that a teacher can be fired for doing porn in their past. Should every teacher who has ever smoked a cigarette also be fired? Smoking cigarettes is not a good role model for children. Or how about firing every teacher who has ever cursed? Maybe since they are using the morality argument fire every teacher who has ever had a divorce. Or every teacher who has ever had sex outside of wedlock.

We live in a society where if you do not follow the norm you are portrayed as a criminal who should not be around children. Teachers are people and just like everyone else they make mistakes and probably have some things in their past they are not proud of. This is not about children. This is about society punishing people who are different because if they are different there must be something wrong with them.

Well it is Friday night. I am done with my introspection series so the posts should get a lot lighter going forward. To any of my readers I depressed with that series: Sorry but I needed to get that off my chest.

I followed the USA Pro Cycling Challenge around the state last week. It was an absolute blast and a good excuse to visit Crested Butte, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Vail, and Breckenridge Colorado. If you ever have the ability to watch professional cycling in person I highly recommend it. There is no other sport in the world like it and definitely no other sport in the world with the incredible level of access to the athletes you find in cycling. I PROMISE pictures are coming; however, I have almost 2,000 pictures to sort through from the week.

In other more boring news I painted one of the walls in my family room tonight. I am doing a two tone approach with one wall slightly darker than the other. Once I finish you will probably see pictures, but that is at least 2 months away.

I have realized that I am no longer happy at my current company and am seriously looking for another job. Despite my wishes that I could become a bike mechanic or a professional bike race official neither of those are likely in my career path. Taking a 60% pay cut would be extremely difficult. If anyone knows of a Business Intelligence architecture or ETL position in Colorado Springs let me know.

With it being labor day weekend that also means that it is time for the Colorado Balloon Classic. I will definitely be going. On the downside though that means even MORE pictures to sort through. Oy Vey.

Well I guess I should get to sorting through pictures. At this rate it is going to become a full time job.