It’s funny on how we are responding to the Kaepernick Nike ad. I’ll kick this off by saying I don’t like Kaepernick as a football player, and I don’t agree with his approach. I get the message and their are many other individuals handling it a whole lot better then him. With that said I am confused at why your so made. Who cares.Continue Reading
My Thoughts
Anthony Bourdain
The culinary world lost a great story-teller recently when Anthony Bourdain took his own life. I will start by saying I do not support suicide, I do not condone it, and really can’t stand that people end their lives this way. With all that being said
I also understand that people fight demons we can’t see and battle wounds we can’t heal.
Looking from the outside in it is easy to be judgmental, I mean hell what could have been his issue the man traveled the world drinking and eating his way through some of the greatest places this planet has to offer. Many of us out there dream of that kind of life. I also understand that from the exterior some look like they are living life to its fullest, yet on the inside they are always alone. I would love to keep going on and on but that’s not my place, I only hope that the culinary and travel world can find another orator to tell its story.
Here’s to you Bourdain. Cheers!!! PROST!!!! Skal!!! Salute!!! Brosd!! Santi!!
What are we Doing Wrong
This will not be a write up for political change, or a call to arms. I fully understand the danger of guns in this country but I also understand that we are far to gone to ever stop this Nation from having guns. The good guys will always need them because the bad guys will never put them down. I believe that part we all understand to a certain extent. The part none of seem to understand is why are people, more so children, going into schools and shooting anything moving. We want to blame the guns, we want to blame the politicians, we never want to blame the kids doing it or their parents. What are We Doing Wrong. Continue Reading
Brew’s, Grub, and Good Times: Local Craft Brewer’s are changing the Drinking Experience.
Over the last decade there has been an explosion of craft beer distillers opening up every where. In Delaware it seems every other week a new one is popping up in a storage building, someones backyard, a warehouse, just about any ole place. I personally couldn’t be more excited. The best is that this has become a great form of entrepeneurship. The combination of craft brewers and food trucks has changed the lanscape for hanging out and having a good time. Craft beer distillers have an amazing impact on the local economy, plus they give locals a place they can call their own. Continue Reading
WTF Tide Pods
Are you fucking kidding me Tide Pods. As if people couldn’t get any dumber they are now competing in the TIDE POD CHALLENGE. Morons will literally eat fucking anything. Here I got on for you, let’s try the ” EAT A BAG OF DICKS CHALLENGE.” If you catch any of your children or I should say teens doing this you should punch them in the face, Hard like really Punch the shit of them. Dumb Asses. I am not going to attach any videos of assholes doing this because I don’t want to encourage them to do other things like eat dog shit or a bullet. Why not try the “Go help someone out Challenge.” Yeah instead of eating laundry detergent why don’t you eat a good time, get some real friends, I don’t know maybe I am living in a bubble. Whatever I’m done with this rant.
The Introduction of Her Vault
This is a small introduction to Her Vault the new contributor to HISVAULT.com. She is my partner in crime and my true drinking buddy, yup she is the wife. I will be letting her tell you the rest on her first post. Listen she has a lot to say and will contribute to this from a female perspective. Plus is is going to be nice to have some back and forth on different topics. She is going to focus on all the same pages, the biggest being DOW (Drinks of the Week). Baby girl love her some wine. We feel like this will be a fun opportunity to reach new audiences and expand on the fun. Like everything we pretty much do it together so why not this as well. We will add a section specifically for HER VAULT, this way she can have her own space as well. Lord knows women need there own space. Look bottom line is this is going to be fun and we can share all the crazy shit that we tend to get involved in. The best being most of our conversations. I will also use this chance to expand on the You Tube channel and our other social media accounts.
For those of you that actually read some of this thanks. We will be looking for new authors and contributors down the road. This is a new year and changes are abound.
8 years until I retire and I still have no clue what I want to do
8 years seems like a long time but in the reality of things I know it will be here before I know it. I am always planning for the future yet there is a burning sensation that I have no clue what I am going to do when I retire from military. I continue to fill my toolbox with all these things that I can do yet have no clue still. In two years I hope to have my masters completed in home land security but don’t necessarily want to work in the field. I love cooking and would love to open something on my own but am scared to death of owning a restaurant. I want to get a real estate license yet I am afraid that I won’t make any money and that the market could be bad. I want to travel the world eat, drink, and have fun yet don’t know how to make money doing it. I would love to be a sports talk radio show host. So the real question I guess is how do I figure out what to do, how to be happy, and make some money doing it all.
MILITARY
My military career will come to an end in just eight years. This will be by choice, I don’t want to stay longer than I need to and I will need to give some time back to my family. I can’t and won’t ever complain about my career because it has given my so much, my house, my education, friends, respect, and allowed me to learn so much about myself. So some will ask why leave than, it’s because of the earlier statements plus it will just be time to go. The last eight I consider the back-end of my career because in just six years I will begin to work on leaving the military and transition to the civilian world again. This will be an exciting time and I truly can’t wait.
THE MASTERS
The goal for the Master’s Degree was and still is a plan B if I don’t ever find something that I love. See, I believe that in my second career I should do something that I truly love. If that is the case then I will be traveling the world and getting paid handsomely for it. Most likely though this won’t be the case and I will need to make sure that I have a fall back plan, the degree. I guess folks will question me on why I am spending all this time getting the Masters and not use it. Good question, I really don’t have a great answer for you. I want my daughters to see that it can be done, I want to be the only person in my family to have accomplished it, I really in enjoy the material, and I want the back up plan. Thats really the jist of it.
COOKING
Cooking is my happy place in life. When ever I am stressed I enjoy getting into the kitchen and experimenting with a new recipe or just throwing things together. When I am in the kitchen everything just goes away and I can focus on the food. I am by no means a master chef, but I do pretty good in the kitchen. I believe food brings people together and cooking a meal that everyone loves is very gratifying. I am happy when everyone else is happy and great food has that effect. I also enjoy when that food comes together with great conversation. My favorite holiday is thanksgiving because I get to make the majority of the meal, and once everyone is done they sit and talk at the table. It’s that moment that I enjoy the most. am I able to turn this into a career, who the hell knows. I am scared to death of opening a place of my own, plus I enjoy the experience not everything else that goes with owning a place. I think that having to manage, and schedule, and all those other aspects will take away from the romance of the experience.
REAL ESTATE
Getting my real estate license is the least likely avenue that I will take. I think that I like the idea of being a real estate agent more than anything. Being out of the office, helping people find their forever home. Again I think I like the idea of this, my fear would be that I would suck at this and make zero money or the market crashes right as I get my license. I don’t think I could take putting in all that effort and time just to have something fall through at the last minute and lose out on the commission. The fantasy in my head is that I sell great big houses and make tons of money doing it. The reality is that I probably wouldn’t make that much money and end up in an office somewhere doing data analysis for the Department of Homeland Security.
SPORTS RADIO
Sports talk radio show. I would love to sit and talk sports all day everyday. If I had it my way I would be on the air talking Eagles, Phillies, Flyers, and Sixers each day. Years ago I though about going to the Connecticut School of Broadcasting and trying to break in to radio that way. I got scared off and chose a different path. Once again unable to pull the trigger. My show would consist of myself and my BFF talking and going back and forth on various topics. This may be something that I pursue yet but fear it would be too hard to get exactly what I want. I fear that I would be sitting and playing the same new dumb ass song over and over again until I am forced to beat the hell out of myself.
WORLD TRAVELER
My pipe dream, my coup de gras would be traveling the world enjoying various ethnic foods and cultures with great friends. I would do all the things I love, met great people, and sit in the morning having coffee and talking about my adventures. This is the one I get lost in, the one I know is the furthest from the truth of my life. I would have a couple of friends to travel with me, hell we may even have a you tube channel just to document our adventures. Honestly I just want to travel and share my experiences and yes get paid for doing it. This would be my true happy place, my true career. Truth of the matter is that I have no idea how to do this, and it is so different from the structured life I have always lived. I know where to be and when to be. I hate being late, I hate not knowing. I love the idea of not having to watch a clock but after 17 years in the military I don’t know any other way. When I go on vacation, like the Dublin trip from last year I was more than happy having a loose schedule and not having to follow a clock. It was nice to just get lost in the day. My fear is that this is a dream and a dream only and that in 10 years I will be sitting in a cubicle answering to a kid half my age on why the hell I am staring at a photo Australia. Fuck you Steve it’s my dream, I quit.
Just like that I have already quit a job I don’t have because I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I look forward to the journey and trying to change my ways so that I can eventually do what I love. Will I ever get there, who knows. Will I ever met the right people along the way, again who knows. My life path is unpredictable I only hope that when I come to the cross-road I will have it in my to make the tough choice not the safe choice. 8 more years until I retire, and I have no clue what I want to do.
Coaching Youth Football – When you don’t have a dog in the Fight
Well it looks like I just completed my third season of youth football. Each season I have been fortunate enough to be the assistant coach helping teach kids the fundamentals of football. We volunteer our time and comes with a lot of highs and lows. For myself I don’t have a “Dog in the Fight,” meaning I don’t have a son on the team. I have two little girls that play soccer. Why am I not writing about them today you ask, because there isn’t enough internet to talk about my angels. Back to the boys.
Not having a kid that plays allows me to evaluate and yell at each kid with equal passion. This is makes it fun but even better than that I can take joy in watching each young man progress during the season. This is the part that makes it worth while. We invest a lot of time discussing each kid and where their current strengths are on the field. This does not always mesh well with what the parents believe their talents are but that’s okay. The key is getting the children to learn as many positions as they can and learn enough not to get hurt on the field of play. Some kids will only play the line, others will play running back, and some will only play on defense. The key is for them to learn discipline on the field and understand what it is like to work and move as a team.
The foundation for the head coaches philosophy is to start with discipline, and playing hard. If we do the right things and play hard winning will be the by-product of this. Now I can also say that winning isn’t the first thought in our minds. Yes we do want to win every game but we also want the kids to learn the fundamentals of the game so that they can play at the next level. When I say next level I don’t mean the NFL, I mean the next level of youth football. NO YOUR CHILD PROBABLY isn’t going to make it to the league, but he can have a long and fun youth, highschool, and collegiate career if they play hard and stay disciplined.
The most satisfying moment of the season came in a game that we didn’t even need to win. In the current rules there can be a coach on the field to assist the players in getting set. This is generally necessary because the kids lack focus and tend to either false start 
or line up incorrectly or run the wrong play. We as a team prided ourselves in the focus and discipline of our team. This all came together in one gamer where for one series we gave the plays to the young QB while his center got the huddle together and let them run the plays on their own. They did this with zero error and was amazing to watch since it hasn’t been done at our level all season or after. For the coaching staff this was a major win because it showed that our boys were playing at a much higher level as far as fundamental football goes.
This year flew by just as the others had and we had a great time doing it. The parents were the best group we have had so far in the three years that we have been coaching. The boys grew as young football players tremendously and it showed. Some of the kids were very raw that we got this year. By the end of the season they were all playing at an amazing level. Our starting backfield developed into to amazing runners, which was great because the season before they barely got to touch the ball. The defense got more and more intense and as the season went on and they developed into a group that could keep us in any game. The maturity level that this team displayed was second to none. this group didn’t talk trash, they always played with extreme sportsmanship, and they worked together as a team. We never told anyone child that they were better then the other boys, never eluded to a favorite, never let anyone think that they were any less important then the next kids. All of the kids played a huge part in the success of the season.
The biggest props needs to go to the most thankless job in football and that is the offensive and defensive lines. The lines are the most important job in the game and with out sound play at those positions the defense can’t stop anyone and the offense will never move forward. This group worked hard together all season and to watch them move as one unit on both sides of the ball was amazing to watch. My hat goes off to them because we would have never gotten as far as we did if it wasn’t for the selfless play of those kids, who by the way never complained. These boys just put their heads down and grinded it out.
Many will determine that our season was not a success because we didn’t win the championship. I will argue the opposite. The season was a monumental success do to the growth of the boys this year. Hopefully we get to move up to the next level next season becuase I believe we have an amazing foundation and footprint to help develop great football players. Although we want to win, we want to develope first. Winning will come when these boys go to highschool and college. Yes I agree that winning is also an amazing tool and teaches great lessons, but more important is that losing teaches even more and always re-enforces that lessons that were put forth.
Congrats to the parents and players from this years Little Pro Eagles of the MOT youth football program. These boys had an amazing season and have come a long way and will be great next season when the return to the little pros or move up to freshman football. The MOT Youth football program is in a great place and has some great coaches coming up in its ranks. I am happy to be a part of it and always thankful that I get to play a part in teaching and developing young men into not just great football players but great people.
I want to personally thank the league and more importantly all the parents that stuck with us even when it didn’t look like things were working, I can tell you that once the boys excepted the lessons they began to win. This was all set forth by the head coach Donnie. He will never accept credit for doing great things but he puts in an amazing 
amount of time and energy each week to get these kids prepared to play football. I know this because I am not just his assistant coach but his boss, so I see it everyday, literally every day.
Lastly I want to thank my wife for allowing me to assist in coaching these kids, it takes up some of my time from the family but she knows I truly enjoy it even thought I don’t have a dog in the fight.
Roy ” DOC” Halladay
Today 7 Nov 17 the world of baseball lost a great ambassador in Roy Halladay. For me he was a representation of a great era of baseball in Philadelphia. He was the guy you truly felt bad for when we didn’t get that World Series victory 2011. He was a true professional and one of the most dominate pitchers I had the fortune of watching. He is the type of player that you can’t replace, a truly great person. He was a blue-collar pitcher that end his career in a blue collar town.
Doc you will be missed.
Leadership – It’s Different for Everyone
Leadership as a word has a definition, but the reality is that we all know that leadership is almost undefinable. Everyone has their own take of what leadership looks like or what a leader is. Some thrive in leading while others are just comfortable following. Both are just fine and doesn’t mean your weak or arrogant if you choose to be one or the other. I will attempt to tell you my thoughts on leadership in the following writing. Again this is my defenition of what I look for in a leader and how I attempt to lead. It doesn’t make it right or wrong just makes it my style. Hopefully it sparks a conversation about your style and what works for others. Trust me I want to hear about it.
I’ll start with my foundation of how I lead people. My main focus and goal is to find out what motivates them or what makes the individual succesful in completing tasks. I have watched over the years too many leaders attempt to make their subordinates act just like them and in the end it rarely worked out, unless that person has a similar personality. Rather I find what makes them tick and conform to the varying styles of those I supervise. This is a lot harder and can take a manager or leader out of their comfort zone. I have always felt though that it is important for the leader to carry this burden rather than those who they supervise. Although difficult it can produce amazing results.
My initial conversation with a new employee generally begins the same way, I inform that we can all work as equals until your actions dictate other wise. This just means that I won’t take the “I am your boss or superior” method until I truly need to. I have found that this can help spark more conversation and allow those that you may supervise to have a little more ease when speaking. They may have ideas and contributions to add that may be of help, but being scared to speak may shut them down.
I have a belief in professional arguments. This happens a lot in today’s world but the biggest problem is that they can get personal. Having a professional argument is healthy in many ways as long is it doesn’t get combative. The main focus is that you can argue over one topic but be able to start all over again on a new one. The world moves to fast to waste time holding on to long. This again will be on the shoulders of the manager or leader. It will be his or her responsibility to keep it civil, yet make the room calm after a passionate discussion. You want to be able to have lunch with these people later on.
Loyalty and Respect are major factors and many times confusing. Leaders tend to get caught up in that their subordinates must show them loyalty and respect because they allow them to work for them and they get a pay check each week. Monetary compensation doesn’t create loyalty or respect. These people work for you so you OWE them a pay check. Loyalty is a two-way street just as much as respect is a two way street. You can’t demand these without starting off with them. Employees want to know that you are going to be there for them during tough times just as much as you would expect them to be there for you during tough times. This takes many leaders out of their comfort zones. You have to view these qualities as fluid items constantly moving. Just becuase you showed respect or loyalty once doesn’t garner you the return for a life time. The best part is that if you show loyalty or respect in small doses employees will return it in a large quantities. It means a lot to them so hand it out.
Get past judging someone based off of their personality. This is difficult, very difficult. We have all had that guy or gal that we have worked with that everyone believes is weird, creepy, or just off a little bit. This may be a opportunity to take on a surprising challenge. We tend to shoot ourselves in the foot by turning people away because we can’t get past our first impression. Yes people can be awkward, quirky, and just strange sometimes. With that being said though we may be missing out on someone who is truly talented and just need to be mentored our guided into the right direction. Remember at some point someone took a chance on you.
Stop trying to fix the weaknesses of grown adults. We waste way to much time trying to fix individuals weaknesses and avoid improving their strengths. It is much easier to improve something that is already working rather than slowly trying to fix something that doesn’t work. If someone is a terrible public speaker they can slowly get better over time, yet if they are amazing at communicating on social media then allow them to be great there, and have some one else talk to the public. Exposing weakness is counter productive and harping on them will not build up that personal equity that is so valuable.
You as a leader must constantly build personal equity in your subordinates and employee. Small acts of kindness can build equity within an employee like you wouldn’t believe. Don’t kill an employee over being late because their kid got sick and they had to drop them off at school one morning. Relate to it and let them know it is okay. This doesn’t mean you should allow someone to walk all over you or take advantage of your kindness but one incident shouldn’t be a determining factor of whether someone is going to be a good employee or not. Things like letting people head home earlier becuase the snow is piling up builds equity. Bringin in coffee and doughnuts builds equity. Actually asking and truly caring about someones family helps build equity. Personal equity is an amazingly strong trait to build in an company, and is irreplacable but quckly lost if taken advantage off.
As I stated in the beginning this isn’t a fail safe way to lead people or supervise. It is just tools to add to a toolbox of managing styles and methods. The best thing you can do is find what your great qualities are and work on making them better. Continue to build personal equity with those that you work with, make them feel apart of something. People want to be emotionally invested into what they are doing. If they can’t do that eventually they will leave. Remeber these are people, members of your community and in a lot of cases friends. As a leader you should be constantly refining your craft and learning new and improved methods, also don’t be afraid to fail or make mistakes. Create employess who are happy and invested, if you lose this side, or miss a chance to get them invested and you may miss out on something special.
Just my thoughts.