Random News, part something or other

I'm waiting for someone to get back with me today, and I hit up a couple favorite sites and hit the mother load! (at least for me)

First is from the Freakonomics blog. It's an excellent blog to follow! Here is one on the effects of government attempts to influence eating behaviors by increasing taxes on soft drinks. The short of that part is that it does cut down on the number of soft drinks consumed, but has the unintended effect of increasing the total calories consumed!

It also covers a lot of very cool stuff on some related topics. Go read it for yourself: The Rational War on Fat

Also from the Freakonomics blog comes the reminder that the weirdest people on earth might be us! You know all those little psychology, perception, and economics tests like seeing how long a line is when it has different angled arrows at each end? Well, turns out that what we (as in western, first world people) consider normal really isn't all that normal.
We Hold These Truths To Be Universal

And then to satisfy the techie bit of me, here's a bit of info on the Stuxnet virus. Apparently it has been as effective in slowing down the Iranian nuclear program as a military missile strike would have been!

Welcome to the future of warfare! Stuxnet Apparently As Effective As a Military Strike

I feel like such a kid!

C has packed me lunches pretty regularly, and it is very, very nice to have the lunch at work! Yesterday we just got our shipment of food from the coop we are a part of, and so today's lunch had lots of goodies - fruit cup, yougurt, beef jerky, cheese sticks!

I'm already eating all my favorites!

Down so far: yougurt, fruit cup, several beef jerky sticks, and a cheese stick.

Left to go: several more cheese sticks, one more beef jerky, and the main meal of a pasta and vegetables dish.

I feel like I ought to be going around to the other cubes and asking if they're interested in trading their chocolate milk for a fruit cup or something!

Thank you honey!!

Pogue on Amazon

Wow! I had no idea that product reviews on Amazon could be so hilarious!!

Here is his full article: Amazon Provides a Dose of Humor

And just a quick excerpt from one of the funny reviews he mentions, this one for Tuscan Whole Milk 1 Gallon:

My husband and I (both of us have college degrees, mind you, his in Engineering) could not figure out how to assemble this. No instructions, no diagrams, not even a lousy cheap Allen wrench. So basically, weeks after purchase, we’re using it as a one gallon paper weight. I haven’t gotten any response from Tuscan.

And they get better and better!

The Pioneer Anomaly

It is the subject of a lot of speculation, and is used as support for plenty of fringe (and plain cuckoo) physics theories, as well as some ideas that have born fruit (though not explained the anomaly).

'What is the Pioneer Anomaly', you may ask. Well, I'm glad you asked. It is an unexplained slowing down of the Pioneer spacecraft (and others) as it is zooming off out of our solar system and into interstellar space. There are thousands of things that are affecting its speed, ranging from gravitational pulls from planets to the pressure of the sun's light. When all those thousands of things are taken into account, the craft appears to be slowing down just a little bit.

There have been thousands of papers on the subject and it seems that another is coming out pretty soon. What makes this one different or worthy of note? Well, it's not positing strange changes to physics, but rather a deeper investigation into one of the possible slowing forces which had been previously dismissed - heat radiation.

So, if you're interested, check out the article, The Pioneer Anomaly, a 30-Year-Old Cosmic Mystery, May Be Resolved At Last.

I suspect that article title has been used before for other explanations put forward, but I have higher hopes for the papers this article is talking about because they aren't quite as sensational of explanations. It would be really cool to see MOND or some other major change to basic physics be demonstrated, but I tend to put more likelihood in the more incremental changes that come along being the explanation rather than a sudden Einstein-like moment of revolution.

Christmas Presents

Since Jeremiah won't be with us over Christmas, we went ahead and gave him his Christmas presents early. We had been thinking just some Star Wars Legos - they're a very safe bet to be a smash hit with him, though with as many as he already has they are seeming rather monotonous to me.

So, we branched out just a little. We went with a Star Wars Miniatures game. With a Starter pack and two booster packs (all gotten at some impressive discounts which certainly affected our decision to get them in the first place) we have 20 models with their stat cards, and two maps.

Jeremiah loved them! You get to put together a squad from various sides to fight against the other sides. You have a map with squares drawn on, and the characters can move around and shoot and attack.

All of which is generally guaranteed to make it an instant success in Jeremiah's eyes. We very much lucked out and got a Yoda, extremely rare, model in one of the booster packs (they're randomized) and the starter pack gave us Obi Wan and Count Dooku. The game and rules are simpler than Warhammer or Necromunda, and we've had three highly successful games so far, and are looking forward to many more.

I can highly recommend the game to anyone who has a little Grognard in the making (especially if they're a Star Wars fan).

Just a bit of bragging

It is a lot of fun to see how TGM is growing and becoming more capable. This is just a minor thing, but it's so cool to see!

C was cleaning up the living room yesterday and there was a book laying on the floor which is supposed to go in a bookshelf near the kitchen. The book is part of a collection of books all the same size and look.

C handed the book to TGM and asked her to go put it with the rest of the books.

Now, our living room has a LOT of books in it. (not all of which are neatly shelved in our bookcases) Also, at the time, a small clothes-drying rack was in front of the bookshelf where TGM's book was supposed to go.

With only that quick request, TGM carried the book out of the living room, over to the other shelf in another room, managed to pull out the drying rack, and then shelved the book in with the rest of the books!

At 16 months! It's nothing out of the ordinary for a baby to be gaining these skills and abilities to carry out multi-step tasks in distant locations, BUT IT IS STILL SO MUCH FUN TO SEE HAPPEN!!!

Boxing and Tonfa, and yeah, some other stuff

Yesterday AP and I went over to an LA Boxing center nearby (relatively) to sample their offer of a free class. It was entirely a heavy bag workout which they advertise to burn 1000 calories in an hour.

I can believe it. That's roughly the same as running 8 miles in an hour, a good clip. AP and I pounded away at the bags along with four others, and by the end of the class I could barely hold my left arm up to head height. Jab! Jab jab! Jab cross! Jab cross hook! Jab cross hook cross!

(notice all those jabs and hooks? those were all left hand, and when it wasn't jabbing it was covering your head. a VERY tired left arm!)

The instructor kept the tempo way up, occasionally taking very short breaks for water. I am severely tempted - it's $60 per month and you can take all the classes you want. If I can get in there more than once a week, I think it would be worth it.

But, that starts affecting the training AP and I are doing twice a week in the mornings. Today was weapons training - tonfa. Fairly intuitive to use, but we were outside wearing warm gloves with limited grip. I really had to hold tightly to control the things against his attacks, and my forearms are pretty much shot right now. I can see a little tremor in my left pinky finger if I try to hold it out straight.

That's a GOOD sign! Well exhausted muscles.

Some of that "other stuff" involves a bunch of REALLY cute pictures of TGM. We put up our Christmas tree this weekend and TGM was very cute and quite helpful.

For some reason she latched onto the word "baby" when we said one of the ornaments was of baby Jesus. She learned the sign right away for baby and does it VERY cutely - crosses her arms nearly hugging herself and twists her whole body side to side! Cuteness to the max!

If you want to check them out, head over to Facebook. Here's a sampler, though.

Birthday present

It came a bit late because the company decided to screw up the order, but I got my birthday present from Jeremiah!



Very, very cool! C put together the photo collage for him, and he (well, his mom for him) ordered the mousepad. It's at work as we speak, giving me a much better surface for using my mouse!

Thank you Jeremiah! I love it!

New Favorite Books

I can't pick. Repairman Jack, Monster Hunters, or Grand Central Arena.

I finished Repairman Jack's latest release, Fatal Error, over Thansgiving and it was excellent, but not as good as some of the others. HOWEVER, as part of the series, it completely rocks! The whole series has really grabbed me in and won't let go. The series is by F. Paul Wilson and is probably classified as Supernatural Horror. It's only moderate on the horror part, though the drama and tension levels in some of the books probably qualify as horror - I very rarely feel sick to my stomach as a book builds the tension, but this series does that for me regularly.

Monster Hunters is a series by an apparently up-coming writer Larry Correia, and MHI and now the follow-up MHI Vendetta really nail the turbo-charged adventure genre with tons of blow-away-the-monsters action, amped to 11. In the first one, he goes a little bit overboard on the gun descriptions (Larry is a certified gun-nut) but not as crazily as some other authors do (Tom Clancy, I'm looking at YOU) and the story blasts along at lightning pace.

Grand Central Arena is the latest one that my brother got me hooked on - a big one by Ryk E. Spoor. (I REALLY hope that's a publishing pseudonym!) I absolutely loved his first published book, Digital Knight, and I should have followed up on this one too, but I read the beginning and it didn't grab me (because I thought the whole book was about the topic of the beginning). As it is, the universe Spoor builds in Grand Central Arena is absolutely awesome! I won't ruin it for anyone beyond this: an artificially constructed universe/dimension containing an accurate scale model of the universe down to the individual planets around the stars! Gotta love that sort of world to play in!

Personal Data

This post is mainly a reference for myself in calculating how many Joules (or calories or Calories) are expended to lift a mass a certain amount (here on Earth).

1 Calorie is 1000 calories is 4200 Joules.
1 J can lift 0.1 kg 1 meter
1 Calorie can lift 420 kg 1 meter (about 926 lbs).

Lifting 1 lb for 1 meter requires 0.00108 Calories.

Most of my lifts are about half a meter (just estimating).
Going up my five flights of stairs is about 20 meters.

To calculate the number of Calories needed to lift masses, multiply the weight of the mass times the number of meters moved. Multiply the total by 0.00108.

My exercise today has used 29.6 Calories.

The jar of applesauce I had for lunch had 540 Calories.

Just Jumping on the Bandwagon

I don't typically post politics stuff on here, but this one I decided to put up. I was moderately impressed by the recording last week of a guy who refused to have an "enhanced pat-down" when he refused to go through the full-body scanner. A lot of hastles, but I wasn't as concerned about the hastles because I saw them mostly as the product of a confused and rather moronic bureaucracy. The principal of being required to have someone fondle you or look at naked images of you in order to fly is of some more weight than the bureaucratic bungling.

What did impress me was what I found as I looked further into what happens with the TSA's screening. Hands inside the underwear groping around, requirements to display breasts, aggressive groping (to the point of causing accute pain) of genitals and breasts, bursting a bladder bag onto the wearer even after being warned several times, and having a kid (6 to 9 years old?) take his shirt off for a patdown.

The great and horrible irony of this is that this year has more people driving compared to flying than ever before, and if any of that is due to reluctance to go through the enhanced security, the security could wind up being responsible for the deaths of more people (through more traffic accidents) than they might have ever saved.

I am very glad we are driving for Thanksgiving this year, and am really, really hoping we don't have to go through any enhanced pat-downs when we do have to fly. Decisions, decisions - let them pat me down and get on to family on time, or refuse and possibly get refused and blow our entire holiday and family time?

I know! I'll take the great American third option! Let it happen and then sue the TSA for million for sexual assault! :-D

(I suspect there would be a few thousand people ahead of me in line)

My "exciting" stuff

TGM slept through the night! (or not, I woke up this morning to find that C had made a 2 AM trip to get TGM back to sleep) Still, it was pretty cool to wake up at 6:45 and realize that TGM wasn't awake too!

Yes, that qualifies as "exciting" for me.

Paintball yesterday! Had a ton of fun at Nick's place for paintball an there was a group of 20 there! That certainly adds a different flavor to the game from my normal experience of eight players. On the down-side of things, I didn't come away with hardly any welts - only one little red mark on my right shoulder. On the up-side of things, I didn't get many welts because I was HOT!

That's not so much a reflection on my own skill, but rather on that of my team - we all stuck together, moving forward as a spread-out and mutually supporting group. It was marvelous to be a part of. I just happened to be the most aggressive on my team on my half of the field, so I tended to be the one who was moving forward under the cover fire of my team, so I racked up the kills.

Today is my only day of work this week! (at least the work that I get paid for) Tomorrow I'm heading out to cut wood again. If anyone in my area knows of anyone who could use some help with heating this winter and uses wood at all, let me know. I think we'll have more than the people we already know about can use.

This weekend we're going to be able to go to my niece and nephew's dedication! A couple scheduling things came together and it seems like the entire family will be there all on the right day.

And, then a bit of news stuff that I find exciting:
Baby Black Hole Spotted Being Born Very, very cool!

Engineered Bacteria Can Fill Cracks in Aging Concrete You've got to read all the things they've engineered the bacteria to do!

Early Orthodontic Treatments

Getting Paid to Eat Dinner

Yes, that is what we are doing. We are getting paid to have dinner tonight. We're getting paid $0.45 to be precise.

The pasta sauce - 5 cents paid.
The pasta - free and a 50 cent coupon got us 50 cents back!
Pie for dessert - free.

Oh yeah! C is a wonder worker!

Ballet Magnificat

For anyone who might be interested, I thought it was well worth it. Ballet Magnificat is an excellent touring ballet troupe that is dedicated, as they put it, "to presenting the good news of Jesus Christ to the whole world."

The ballet skill and production was excellent, especially considering they were performing in a gymnasium! They have a Nutcracker production that I dearly wish we could attend, but it's all the way down in Mississippi. I suspect that their production (using the Nutcracker music and general flow) is up to rivaling the much more famous ballet troupes.

Some of their choreography was absolutely stunning, as was some of their imagery used. If anyone has the chance I would highly recommend it!

Many thanks to SS and SG who babysat TGM for us so we could attend on the spur of the moment!

Favorite Author (at the moment)

Timothy Zahn!!

I've gone through a few of his books over the last couple months, and I've found that he writes fantastic mysteries! And just to make them even more uber awesomer they're sci-fi too!

Night Train to Rigel
The best "train mystery" I've read since Murder on the Orient Express. And not only that, but there is an entire series with this character, though the later ones move away from the "train mystery who-done-it" genre a bit more.

Along the same lines is Icarus Hunt, which is also very much a who-done-it mystery, though it's certainly has a bit more adventure in it than Agatha Christy or Dorothy Sayers put into their books.

MANY years ago I read Zahn's Star Wars Thrawn Trilogy and I think they are better than the original books, and I would vastly prefer to see these books made into movies than the prequals which actually got produced.

However, my favorite author may be changing soon to F. Paul Wilson. He latest in the Repairman Jack series has just come out, Fatal Error, and when I read it, my favorite author (of the month/week/day) will probably change again.

Despite the rain, it's a GOOD day

Partly because TGM nearly slept through the night last night. She woke up at some point during the night, but C was able to get her back to sleep in the crib. Thank you, honey! It's a rainy, blegh day out there, but I'm feeling pretty good!

How about a couple news items? Why? Just because.

Broken Taboo: A Major Journal Publishes Evidence of ESP I obviously can't see the study itself, but it sounds like it did a pretty good job. I am a bit suspicious of the picture-beautiful test's validity in detecting ESP, but the picture-location test sounds pretty solid.

Libraries reinvent themselves as they struggle to remain relevant in the digital age I particularly enjoyed some quotes in there by a former president of the ALA: "The argument that all these young people would turn up to play video games and think, 'Oh by the way, I must borrow that book by Dostoyevsky' — it seems ludicrous to me." I'm not sure that is really the argument being made, but it's still a funny quote!

That's about all for today. Just a quick bit of fluff.

Geocentrism Part 5

And yes, Part 5, and final segment, has been posted with a wrap up of suggestions to the conference.

Basically the summation is to put on a more comprehensible production. I'm not sure that is entirely feasible. A LOT of their reasoning required a heavy glossing over of details, hand-waving, and things like that. There's only so much that sort of stuff can be made comprehensible to others without becoming blatantly and obviously ridiculous. (right now the disorganization hides some of the nonsense)

But, anyway, on to something else.

I ran across something online that I thought was a good question. It wasn't something I had noticed before, because Noah's Flood has never been something I have studied to exhausting, er, exhaustive detail.

Genesis 8:7-12. It is Noah sending out the birds after the Ark has gone aground. The hills around him are starting to show their peaks, and after 40 days he sends out a raven. It flies around (it doesn't say exactly how many days) and the water recedes and dries up from the land. After that, it says Noah then sends out a dove but it can't find anywhere to land because water covers all the land.

What's up with that? The water had receded down so that the land was once again all dry. Then suddenly the water has again flooded over all the land. Then seven days later a dove goes out and the water has apparently receded again and an olive tree has had time to grow up and produce a leaf in those seven days.

The question of how that could work out was put forward to a writer for AiG and so far the guy has danced around replying, only saying that it is "complex". Individuals who write for AiG aren't supermen or anything, so it's not like all of AiG is stumped just because one of their writers doesn't know the answer, but it doesn't look likely to have a decent reply, and I would be really interested to find one.

I've done a bit of Internet research and haven't found anything addressing this question, so I'll put it forward to those few who read my blog - anything coming to mind how Gen 8:7-12 can make sense?

Geocentrism Part 4

***HEAD EXPLOSION***

Wow, I got my answer to the question "Why aren't other planets, stars, and galaxies flying off instead of staying in their orbits around earth while traveling thousands to trillions of times faster than the speed of light?"

Apparently that's just not a problem for the "omnipotent aether plenum". That's your first clue that cuckoos are flying thick and fast.

Then comes the explanation.

What is the "inverse" of nothing? Infinity! (I suspect he meant "opposite", not "inverse".)

Therefore God is the "inverse" of nothing. Got that?

Ok, now E=mc^2 means that omnipotent equals infinite density. (I'll bet you didn't know that, did you?)

Thus the plenum is infinitely dense. (ahhh, it all makes sense! ... or not quite)

But how can things move through something that is infinitely dense, you may ask, you dense ignoramuses, you. Well, obviously that's not a problem because as everyone knows, motion through an infinitely dense plenum is possible if the plenum is uncreated and the movement is cyclical. (duh!)

And then you need to take into account the "Planck particle" (the what?) that is the "firmament" of the Bible. (ohhhh, I see ....)

The plenum is God's power and is infinite, and so we need the Planck particle to protect us from that infinite power. (so that's why my socks go missing!)

So voila! As has been clearly demonstrated, science firmly proves that geocentrism is true.

The series by Dr. Wood who attended the conference on geocentrism and has been good enough to share with us is on his blog, toddcwood.blogspot.com, and his part 4 of the series is found here.

Waking up at night

TGM seems to have gotten into the habit of waking up at night, usually around 12:30 to 1:00 in the morning. We're hoping it is a phase she leaves quickly. We went through that phase before (thankfully it was quite short) when she was much younger, and there is zero desire to go through it again.

This time there's a twist, though. I can't get her to sleep again. It has to be C to put her back to sleep. I can pat her all I want, but she won't quiet down, but if C walks into the room TGM will calm down just by having C there.

Ahh, the power of mommy.

Last night was a bit extra frustrating though for a few reasons. I gave it a shot, but wasn't having any success until C came in and stood next to me where TGM could see her. Then it was all better. TGM was satisfied. TGM was happy. TGM was not going back to sleep.

After 10 minutes, we thought she might be asleep, but 10 seconds after my hand left her (a process I took several minutes to cautiously achieve) she woke back up. I tried again. No luck. C tried several times. No luck.

We eventually caved and C nursed her. No luck. We finally had to go through her entire bedtime routine, complete with two books read to her and goodnight prayers before she settled down to sleep. At 1:30 in the morning.

This too shall pass.

My mother

My mom is very important to me.

I love her very much.

I even sometimes call her.

Like today, I gave her a call to wish her a happy birthday.

Today is not her birthday.

Oops.

Geocentrism Part 3

Hanging out with the Geocentrists, Part 3

This one is more about history than anything else. It sounds like a lot of bits of history were glossed over, fuzzed, tweaked, and otherwise fiddled with. And, then toss in the positions of the main speaker as an RCC and his view that the Magisterium can never be wrong, no matter what.

Geocentrism Part 2

Yesterday was a post about a Geocentrism conference, and here's the second part. Hanging Out With the Geocentrists, Part 2

I'm afraid my question from yesterday became even more severely a problem. Apparently one of the speakers stated that the entire universe rotates around the Earth every day. I can't imagine where there could be any possible support for that, but apparently the majority of the speakers weren't obvious lunatics and had at least some sort of explanation for things.

However, just to point out the immediate issue with that claim, let's consider one of the Alpha Centauri stars which are about 4 light years away. With Earth at the center, and a 4 ly radius, that is a 25 light year circumference path which those start take if they are orbiting the Earth every day, which means those stars must be traveling over 9000 times the speed of light!!! The figures get even more ridiculous as stars and galaxies even more distant are considered.

How can he possibly explain this?

Beyond just the speed issue, there is also centrifugal force. (nobody get all hinky on me, I know that centrifugal force isn't really a force in itself, yadda, yadda, yadda) As a weight on a string is swung around your head, faster and faster, the force that pulls the weight away from the center becomes greater and greater. If you keep swinging that weight around faster and faster, the force gets greater and greater until eventually the string would break, and the weight would go flying off in a straight line from the position when the string broke.

So, what keeps the Alpha Centauri from flying off? That is such a ridiculously obvious question that I can't imagine they haven't had to deal with it in some way. I just can't imagine how they could deal with it.

Geocentrism

I have caught a couple chuckles from various sources about a geocentrism conference that just recently happened. I was curious to know how it turned out, and it looks like a blog author I follow attended!

Hanging out with the Geocentrists, Part 1

One of the more interesting things I learned is that the modern geocentrist movement doesn't have everything in the solar system orbiting the Earth, instead the other planets orbit the Sun, and the sun orbits the Earth.

That still opens up a massive problem to me - orbits are no longer even vaguely circular, and there must be massive forces which are at work keeping them in the paths we see instead of being slung outward by the gravitational changes that would be happening were the Sun really orbiting the Earth.

For example, Jupiter would be tugged in drastically different directions as the sun moves from one side of its orbit around Earth to the other, and yet we don't see those changes in acceleration. Picture it like this laid out on a piece of paper - Jupiter is WAY out from the Earth in the "up" direction rotating clockwise while the Sun is to the "left" of Earth, also rotating clockwise. The sun would be tugging Jupiter "backwards to the left", slowing its orbit and tugging it "inward". Six months later, the sun would be on the opposite side of Earth, and Jupiter wouldn't have moved much in relation to the earth in just that six months, so we can envision it in pretty much the same place. Now, the Sun's gravity would be pulling it "forward to the right, accelerating Jupiter's orbit.

I won't describe all the different things that would happen, but suffice it to say that there is no possible way that Jupiter could stay in orbit around the Sun if the Sun had a 150 million kilometer radius orbit around Earth.

Dr. Wood said they had a lot of different explanations ready (not all of them comprehensible), and I would love to hear their explanation for my question.

Good comment on 1 Cor 8:9-13

Nothing particularly earth-shattering, but I thought he put it together very nicely.

Good Theology Rightly Applied (1 Corinthians 8:9–13)

Hyperbole? Never!!!

I have a question that may appear somewhat out of the blue. I'm wondering if any readers have comments.

What might be a word other than hyperbole that fits this phrase? Or, is the phrase indeed a hyperbole?

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, 'Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.' And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'What does this mean?'
Acts 2:5-11

The specific phrase I'm looking at is in the first verse, "every nation under heaven". Now, I would not have called that hyperbole since hyperbole is an overstatement to make something seem more extreme than it is. Maybe that's what Luke was trying to do - make it seem bigger than it was. I don't think so though, especially in light of what he puts shortly after - he lists out the groupings of "nations" which describes his "every nation under heaven" phrasing.

So, to me, it doesn't seem that what he says is really hyperbole, but I can't come up with a term that really fits what I think he was doing - a common turn of phrase that wasn't intended to exaggerate but rather to communicate that there were a lot of nations there.

Is there a concise term which means that? The closest I'm thinking of is something like "figure of speech". Is there a better one?

The reason I bring this up is that I read an article in "Acts & Facts" (publication of the Institute for Creation Research) where they apparently take offense at the idea that "hyperbole" can be used in a historical account in the Bible, and so they try to prove that it is a literally precise and accurate statement which would hold up to a scientific counting and comparison of every "nation" on Earth.

How that ties back into my question about the term "hyperbole" is thus: I think it is the term "hyperbole" and its connotations which cause a reaction of such a bizarre interpretation. I suspect that if they looked at the the "every nation under heaven" phrase and approached it as a commonly used turn of phrase that isn't intended to be taken literally and isn't intended to exaggerate, they wouldn't have nearly so extreme a reaction.

I think the label used is creating an adverse reaction. So, my question - is there a term that fits that phrasing better than "hyperbole" that wouldn't evince such an adverse reaction?

The labeling aspect is only one thing, though. Ignoring that, I have to shake my head at the bizarre reasoning and linkings used which is supposed to show that "every nation under heaven" is a scientifically accurate phrase describing the gathering in Jerusalem. But, dealing with that part is just beating up on a defenseless target.

W00T on the car!

God is good, All the time! All the time, God is good! Now that's true even when we're going through hard times, but it's easier to cheer that out when the good times are here.

This is one of those good times!

C had a car fire, perhapse some have heard. She and TGM were safe. It happened shortly (30 seconds?) before she got to her destination, and when she called 911, the responding firetruck was pulling up before she had gotten TGM all the way out of the car! The fire stayed relatively small, and they put it out quickly.

Still, the repairs were going to cost close to $1000!!!! (the alternator had failed and started the fire, so it, some casing, and a couple sets of wires around it needed to be replaced)

However! We found out that the alternator, which had been replaced earlier this spring, was still under warranty and they would cover everything - parts and labor!!

Happy dance! Happy dance!

So, we are happy to throw a celebration and thank God since we were just blessed with considerably more than recovering a single lost coin!

Good training!

Yesterday was another training day which AP lead, again working on gun defenses. We used a real pistol this time instead of the hard rubber one, and it made quite a difference - it has a lot more little variations in shape, weight, etc, which make it tougher to handle smoothly.

We finally moved up to having it loaded so we could have a more realistic training and it was so much fun! My ears are still ringing and I have powder burns on my cheek from it going off as I twisted it out of his hand. I didn't get shot any, but there were a couple close calls, and I got a bit of a nick on my ankle when a stone in the ground splattered off shards. All in all, an awesome training!

After that we worked on defense against someone with a rifle-type gun. My favorite thing which I got from that was that many times when you've taken the guy down or hit him and then take away the gun, you are usually in a great position for jabbing the gun right back into him, hard, or coming around for a butt stroke with the gun.

(Ok, ok, that second paragraph was made up.)

Coolest part which would only happen in the movies - AP showed me how to do that really cool one-handed disassembly of a gun barrel.

1) Step in and grab the attacker's wrist/forearm as you smash his face/throat with your elbow. (head butt gets bonus points, but be careful)

2) As you step back, grab the gun's barrel and press-toggle the button and release on the sides.

3) Continue stepping back, sliding the barrel off of the pistol.

4) LOOK REALLY FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!!

Halloween weekend

I will try my hardest to get some pictures up on here of costumes. I promise. Until then, you'll have to suffice with the verbal description.

TGM was a bumblebee, and Jeremiah was a ninja, complete with nunchucks. Saturday evening we went to a Trunk or Treat at a nearby church, and both Jeremiah and TGM loaded up with candy. What is a "Trunk or Treat"? There were about 20 vehicles decorated up with their trunks/backs opened up and handing out candy. There were also some games, food, prizes, and puppets. A very nice set up - safe and contained, yet with enough candy and festivities to be fun.

Sunday didn't start out so well for TGM - about 5:00 she woke up with some dry heaves. After a bit of nursing, she had two more bouts of throwing up, and some more heaving. But, by the time Jeremiah and I headed off for church she seemed to be doing better. It was either the fastest virus I've ever heard of, or maybe she ate something that didn't agree with her, but neither of us can figure out what it may have been.

After church, Jer and I headed out to a corn maze at a farm not too far away and had a blast out there for a couple hours. The favorite (as measured by time spent) was a huge jumping pillow about 80 feet long and 30 feet wide. A very close competitor was the Pumpkin Cannon and the Corn Gun - lots and lots of fun!

After Jer left, I headed over to the P's house which they had done up VERY well! The kids seemed to be a bit sparse this year compared to what I remember from last year, and I wonder if it might have been due to the Halloween parade in town. Still, there were some fun costumes and AP's daughter, dressed as a princess, was in full-blown royalty mode as she handed out candy to those who came asking.

Did anyone have a "problem" with people coming without a costume? We had at least a dozen kids without costumes come walking around asking for candy. The common excuse was that they were "serial killers". Groan. That might have been clever the first year some kids used it, but it has long since gone OLD! No candy for them!

There was one that I didn't get at first - I thought it was a no costume girl. When asked though, she said she was Snookie! Well, I guess it beats "serial killer".

Car trouble

Looks like we might be looking at some big repairs - C called me to let me know that her car had a small engine fire! About a minute before she arrived at her destination, she smelled something and thought someone must have been burning something.

She arrived and when she stopped the car, she noticed some smoke from the engine. Popped the hood, and there were some small flames.

She called 911 and by the time she finished getting TGM out of the back seat, the fire department was pulling onto the street.

No word yet on what the cost will be for repairs, or if insurance might cover it. But, I am very thankful, and praising God for his numerous mercies!

Karate, babies, and cthulhu

Today was another training day with AP, this time with me leading the training. Lots and lots of basics, with kicking having a focus. Then we did some one-step style of training, but a bit more fluid. Lots of close in work.

Last time we trained was his turn to lead, and we worked almost the whole time on gun defense. Hint to attackers - stay at least 5 feet away, and preferably 10 feet away if you're using a gun on someone. Anything inside 5 feet gets you within striking distance and by the time you get into touching range, you'd be better off with a knife.

Last night was a rough night with TGM. About 1:00 she woke up screaming crying and refused to be comforted, wailing at full-tilt for at least 10 minutes even with C and I holding her and walking her. Eventually she did slow her crying down enough that she was willing to nurse a bit, and she eventually went down. A couple hours later - awake again.

When I was training with AP, he mentioned that his daughter (just a few days older than TGM) was up several times last night too with lots and lots of crying. He suspects teething pains.

I suspect that it was a cthulhic creature from outside space and time which invaded our universe, and the psychic disturbance was felt by babies all over the Local Group of galaxies. Thankfully, the cthulhic monster came out into inter-galactic space on the far side of NGC-3109 and didn't think to bring a method of propulsion, so he'll be floating around out there for few billion years, or until some poor schmuck doing deep exploration runs into it and gives it a way to feed off the billions of beings living in NGC-3109. That still won't affect us since NGC-3109 is 4.2 million light years away and receding. Just thought you would like to know.

Marriage in a Recession

I don't know if anyone else has heard this, but a few articles have made the news rounds over the last couple months about how more and more people are putting off marriage because of the tough economic times.

Well ... Maybe not.

Are the bots taking over?

One of the interesting things which is happening in financial trading circles is the Rise of the Machines - automated trading programs designed to perform trades at very high speeds based on fleeting opportunities. However, as bots become more common there are some side effects:

Many bots can see the same opportunity and jump on it all at the same time, generating some really big effects. Bots can enter a cascade effect, sort of like a human-driven stock panic or bank run, only much, much faster. And they can communicate to each other, not necessarily directly, but with their actions and reactions to trades being placed.

Woot.com isn't a typical sort of ... anything. But it's certainly not a typical news source. But, here they have a cool article on these bots, somewhat tongue in cheek, but still impressive:

There was an instance where this actually did take place several months ago on May 6th - in intra-day trading, the DJIA suddenly plunged several hundred points (6%) in the matter of just a few minutes, and then rebounded nearly as quickly.

Any guesses as to where Skynet may have its inception?

Happy 23rd birthday to me!

Yup, I'm getting old. Old enough to be getting those "old people" cards, you know, the ones that say things like

"It's your birthday, and I want you to remember just one thing ..... Yeah, just one thing. Anything! Go ahead, see if you can!"

Hardy, har, har.

I still have another year to go before I hit 40! I'm not old yet!

And to prove it, I could send you a picture of my toenails.

I attended a young girl's birthday yesterday and got my toenails all done up nice and pretty with lots of reds, pinks, and purples.

Ha! That would prove that I'm still young! Right?

Just a tidbit of data

The U.S. needs to add about 150,000 jobs a month to keep up with natural growth in the labor force and start to push down the jobless rate, economists calculate. - Marketwatch article

I sometimes have wondered how new jobless claims can be so high for so long - it seems like pretty soon at these rates would eventually account for everyone in the country. Right?

Well, three years of that level "only" adds up to 16 million. And with over 300 million people in the USA, there are still a lot of people who can file for jobless claims for the first time. Especially when there are nearly 150,000 new job seekers entering the market every month. And even more especially when there are situations where people can file "first time" jobless claims more than once, depending on state regulations.

No real point. Just something that caught my eye.

Quick workout at work

I did just a quick workout at work and thought I would take a shot at calculating how many Calories (big C) were needed to lift the weights I lifted. Note, that isn't the number of Calories actually burnt, but rather the number of Calories of energy needed to lift the weights a given distance.

I assigned each lift a 1 meter distance. Things like lat pull-downs and flies were probably close to a meter, but curls were probably short. However, there was also energy being expended in resistance keeping the weights from falling back down to the floor at 9.8m/s/s, so for ease of estimation, I just used a 1 meter average for most lifts. Squats only got assigned a 0.5 meter distance.

All in all, 13.1666535 Calories (55299.9447 Joules) of energy would be needed to lift the weights the distance I lifted them. I won't break down all the weights and number of reps, but that is the equivalent of lifting 1000 lbs nearly about 13.8 meters straight up. (yes, I know I'm using pounds and meters which sounds weird)

Just to depress everyone, a single Starburst has about 10 Calories in it.

Which, in its own way is pretty impressive to consider that a single Starburst candy has enough chemical energy in it to lift 1000 pounds over 40 feet in the air.

So, you gonna go ahead and eat that Starburst considering you would need to lift 1000 pounds 40 feet to burn it off?

:-)

Making Out Like A Bandit

Yup, at our clogging performance, Jeremiah managed to make out like a bandit! While were were dancing, Jer went around to all the various booths that offer free stuff. The festival wasn't so much a craft show as it was a place where businesses came to set up booths to advertise - mostly things like cable companies, banks, county services, and places like that. Almost all of those places offer free doodads to attract people over to their booth.

Jer got one of our reusable shopping bags and took it around. About 15 minutes after we finished our last clogging performance, Jeremiah got back with the bag stuffed FULL of stuff! Quite a bit of candy (including a string of 10+ lollipops), lots of pencils and pens and erasers. Some balls. A alien balloon. And a really fancy pen and letter-opener set.

Yup, a very nice set. Velvet cushions inside the really nice holding box. Gold-colored solid metal for the letter opener, nice, solid pen. Yeah. Wow.

Wow 1 because a place was offering such a nice hand-out. I should probably pay attention to the name embossed on the pen.

Wow 2 because he picked it up and they let him. An eight year old boy isn't the demographic to which you want to hand fancy pen and letter opener sets.

Coming up - the Fall Festival. Everything is free there, with lots of candy, food, games, rides, and shows. He's gonna love it!

Hebrews 11: 39-40

NIV
(39) These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. (40) God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

ESV
(39) And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, (40) since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.

My dear put this into an email. I'm not sure why she picked this verse. The last bit of it jumped out at me - the emphasis which is put upon the value of community among those who seek God.

It's not like this was the one and only reason the old heroes of the faith didn't see the final fulfillment of the promises made, but it is listed as part of the reason - that their relationship with God not be different than ours - that we be made perfect all together, not separate from each other, each through unique means.

Take that to an extreme, and each person might have a separate relationship with God - saved in some unique fashion other than through faith in Christ God. Could that have been done? I guess, but God didn't want that, and so he provided a way that all mankind could come to him AND would still have a unified relationship with each other.

There are certainly more direct statements in the Bible about the unity and community of believers, but I hadn't noticed that one before.

And since I cannot do anything at work at the moment, I'm spending a couple minutes on odds and ends.

Life News

I was planning on a minor rant about the various reactions to Hawking's latest book The Grand Design, how the publisher's blurb is so provocatively phrased, and how everyone in the Christian side of the blogosphere seems to be flipping out over it, and how after actually READING most of the book (something all of the outraged attack bloggers neglected to do) I found that the cover's description and the publicist descriptions are WILDLY different than the contents of the book, and there is nothing outrageous and nothing that is designed to be a definitive proof that science has disproved God or anything like that.

But I changed my mind. I'm not going to rant on that topic. :^)

Instead it is time for a bit of family news that might be of more interest to the relatives who read this.

First of all, and probably of most interest to you: TGM!!

She is doing very well - about normal on the height measurements and just a bit on the slim side of things. A bit like her parents, I guess. She has taken more steps several times, but still prefers to scoot and crawl around. She has lots of signs she is using, and is taking off on her potty training.

Quick example: C took her over to the bank and while doing a transaction with the teller, C felt TGM tug on her and start signing "potty". C couldn't interrupt things at the moment and so told TGM to hold on for a bit. TGM squirmed and made some whining noises and signed potty a couple more times. Finally C finished up and took her to the bathroom, expecting to find a fully diaper.

Nope! Dry diaper, and TGM used the bathroom when set down on the adult-sized toilet. What a girl!!!!

Jeremiah has had his 8th birthday now (though he very nearly missed attending his own birthday party because he was getting in trouble all day the day before). However, he is now on the seventh heaven with lots of gifts and a party with friends. A Nintendo DS and four games were quite the smash hit for him!

C & I are still very much in love and happily doing all sorts of lovely and ordinary things like clogging, cooking meals, spending time with friends, going to church, teaching Sunday School and kids Bible study, and slowly moving along a half dozen projects on the house. It's not particularly glamorous, perhaps, but we do it together and life is good.

My work looks like it might be shifting a bit. I was on an R&D project most of this summer, but it lost its funding (perhaps), so I might be moving over to another project. I suspect I won't be going back to the R&D project if it does lose funding and I to shift projects, but it certainly was a lot of fun while it lasted! The continual fight for funding (and it may lose this round) makes it a bit too uncertain for my tastes.

Let's see. Mom is doing very well from what the doctors can tell, and is doing very well regardless of what the doctors can or can't see. (which is nothing, which is a good thing when talking of cancer!) God is good.

Why aren't we dead?!?!?

Check out this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw

It's showing the asteroids we have detected over the last 30 years. The green ones are the safe ones in that they don't really come anywhere near the earth.

Eventually you start seeing a few red ones - ones that cross earth's orbit. Then you start seeing some yellow ones - ones that come within striking distance of Earth.

I realize space is a phenomenally large place beyond our practical, day-to-day comprehension, but seeing it all compressed into the video is really cool!

Ninja Church

Jeremiah invited us to go to his ninja church. It's a "Christian-like church, not some other gods-like church".

We sat down in the living room for a full service, complete with prayer at the beginning, songs (which he made up on the spot - he sang a line and we repeated afterward), a sermon which he gave which was pretty darned good, and then prayer requests afterwards!!

It was awesome! I don't know if he'll be called to be a pastor or not, but he certainly has a good start on it!

She's just too cute!

I am up in Jer's room (second floor) and I leaned out the window to talk to C on the back patio. TGM was sitting on a blanket while C was out there. When I started talking she was looking around for me with obvious puzzlement. For a full minute we talked while TGM looked all around trying to see where I was.

Finally C laid her on her back to look up. Finally! Big grin!! Wave!!! Wiggle back and forth with excitement!

Our 5 year anniversary is today!

Or at least the five year mark of when I first asked my wife out on a date.

It was late after a clogging class, and we were both heading out to our cars. We had a conversation going and I honestly can't remember how I managed to bring up the topic, but the long and short of it was that I finally managed to cough up some words along the lines of "Are you interested in going out for a date?"

And the rest is history! Very happy history.

My first ocean trip

I've been to the ocean before, but never for an extended period of time. This year the family-in-law's get together took place in the Outer Banks, thanks to the wonderful suggestion of StG.

Lots and lots of good times were had by all. I got five books read. Jer caught Ghost Crabs on the beach and made sand pits and played in the ocean and and and. Lots of fun! The whole family split the cost of the beach house, so it was relatively cheap individually compared to staying for a week at a hotel or something like that.

StG, Sam and I all spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to body surf the waves. The waves weren't great for it, but we could periodically catch a good wave and manage fifty feet. Lots of fun!

Jer didn't have quite the same sort of fun in the surf and waves since they were big enough to crash directly into his face and chest, making it more than a bit tough for him to stay upright. But he found a LOT of great shell fragments and spent an amazing amount of time playing tag with the incoming waves.

Apparently I had tried that (sort of) when I was a kid. However, grandpa sabotaged me by .... oh never mind. I can't share that story in public.

Ah, but we're back home now (actually, we've been back for two weeks, but I'm just now getting around to this) and vacation is now gone with the last of my peeling skin, relegated to memories and pictures.

TGM had her birthday while we were there, and on the night before her birthday she walked! It was evening but she had been sugared up (thanks to me!) and spent fifteen minutes toddling from aunt to aunt while they sat in a circle around her and everyone cheered her on! Finally though, she was done, and instead of taking the four or five steps across to Aunt L, turned very deliberately, and walked a solid six or seven steps over to Mommy and crawled up in her lap into a little ball.

Yay!!! (and we did get lots of pictures and videos of her doing it)

Since then she took maybe two unsupported steps while my mom and dad were here and took another two or three steps at clogging one night. She seems to be perfectly happy with her crawl/scoot and has no inclination to change.

After we got back, we had VBS, but that'll be a post of it's own, I think.

Facebook and the Watchtower

Facebook is my blog's enemy. For example, most everyone in my Facebook circles (or in my wife's circles) knows that my mom was diagnosed with cancer, but I've never made it over to write up a post on my blog about it.

That was just one example, but pretty representative. (and my mom is doing quite well - God is walking with her and is healing her through the various procedures.)

I have a vague memory of thinking a month ago that I would start posting here more frequently since it's easier to put longer thoughts here than on the Facebook status area. But, alas and alack, that seemed to fail. But (again), hope springs eternal, so here I go again.

That's the "Facebook" part of the title. Here's the "Watchtower" part.

About two weeks ago, we were handed a couple handouts from some high school or college age people while we were at the store. They went into the recycling bin, but I flipped through them before I tossed them in. It was interesting to see how they were virtually indistinguishable from common Christian pamphlets - there was nothing of the gospel of Christ in them, but were almost completely filled by self-help and social/political concerns.

Obviously there was nothing in them about Jesus actually being truly God since they don't believe that, but there wasn't even anything dealing with salvation in anything other than live-a-better-life-so-your-life-will-be-better sort of junk.

Like I said, it was virtually indistinguishable from most Christian pamphlets I run across. I did note a couple carefully phrased statements about Jesus which avoided implying that Jesus was one with God, but if you weren't looking for that, one would be unable to tell that they weren't Christian pamphlets.

That's a VERY sad state of affairs.

I did get a kick out of a particular part, though again it was a somewhat sad "kick". They had a "Reader Question" section, one of which was a question "Will the earth always produce enough to sustain life?"

By "life" the article definitely referred to human life on the scale we have now and foresee into the future. They stressed that modern famines are typically not caused by a lack of food in the world, but rather the distribution of that food, often caused by politics. Then they had to use a Bible verse to back themselves up. Here's what they said - Genesis 8:22.

What does it say? "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, ... will never cease." They use that to say "Thus, just as surely as we know that the sun will shine each day, we can be confident that the earth will never cease to produce what is needed to sustain life."

Wow! No, that's not what it says, even if you use their own apparent "literal" reading. It doesn't say that the seedtime and harvest will always be sufficient to feed mankind, just that they will continue. And never mind that their literal reading is completely missing the point of the passage - it is immediately after the Flood and rainbow promise from God that He would never again destroy the earth by water.

That context does seem to change what the verse means, just a touch. But never mind that - they are taking the Bible "literally"!

Lest this be taken as a slam against the Watchtower publication and the group which supports it, remember that I said their pamphlet was pretty much indistinguishable from Christian publications. I'm slamming on the far too common tendency for Christians to take the Bible "literally" and completely miss the point of what is being said.

Common example: using bits and pieces of the Psalms to support specific details of Creation theories. (I'm looking at you whoever first claimed that "spread the heavens like a tent" means God used a white hole-like mechanism to create the universe - "spreading" matter! That has no more support for it than claims about "pillars of heaven" meaning the Bible says there are pillars holding up the sky.)

But, thankfully, the Church also has many members in it who eschew silly "literal" readings like those. God is good and I love His Church, it's just that every once and a while it's hard to swallow what some of my brothers and sisters spout off.

End of year "school"

Yesterday when I taught Sunday School, I got a bit of a look at what some of the kids are going through for this end of the year time at school.

Sounds nice! Most of them said they hadn't done anything since finishing their SOL tests - watching movies, having long recesses, just hanging around at class, going on some field trips, having homework assigned but never needing to be turned in, etc.

I've heard it said that the schools in this area are really good public schools - high academic standards and all that.

Chopping off the last three or four weeks of school doesn't seem to mesh with that. At least for me.

Jeremiah's school at least isn't quite that bad. They have homework they're assigning and checking back in, and no movies that I've heard of. They have had quite a few special projects like planting flower gardens and doing some field trips. Still, it's better than what the other kids are describing. And, yeah, it's beautiful weather out, so if you're going to do any sort of outside projects during the school year, now is the time to do them.

Still, hearing about the other kids and what their schools are doing makes me cringe.

Wonder of Creation: Profaning God's Creation

Profaning God's Creation

The Wonder of Creation site is site that produces Christian devotional materials. This particular devotional is looking at Genesis from a slightly different angle. I haven't read the book from which the research was done, but the research result is that Genesis 1 was written as part of a temple dedication - as God dedicated the universe he made to His purpose, so too is a man-made temple dedicated to His purpose. The primary goal of Genesis 1 would be to convey that God made the universe holy to Himself, functioning according to His will, not necessarily to give detailed account of the physical mechanism with which He made it.

This would give a slightly different approach to viewing nature around us - it is holy to God. If we destroy it and/or ruin it, we are profaning that which is holy.

That is the general thrust of the article linked above. The part which especially caught my eye was a verse they mentioned toward the end, one I have read but never particularly noted: Revelation 11:18. (whole chapter here: Revelation 11)

.... The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great— and for destroying those who destroy the earth.

Note the "and for destroying those who destroy the earth."

Now, considering the VERY poetic and symbolic nature of the entire set of chapters around here, I think it's a bit of a stretch to consider this to be specifically aimed at "polluters" in the modern sense of ecological polluters (which would have been a nonsensical concept to readers 2000 years ago). It's much more general and other verses in Revelation also refer to the earth being corrupted/destroyed by sin.

However, when it is considered that the universe and earth are holy to the Lord, those who destroy the earth through polluting actions would certainly fall in this category.

Anyway, it was something that caught my eye in a way I hadn't viewed something before.

And since I haven't blogging in an embarrassingly long time (it has been so long that even my own mother has stopped reading!) I figured I should probably start getting back into the posting habit.

Library court case, Death, and Life

Because I'm married to a librarian, I've developed a bit more interest in things involving libraries than I may have otherwise. Here is a court case involving Internet filtering at a library. The library had a filter on, and the lawsuit was challenging their decision to filter.

I won't spoil the decision for you, but I happen to agree with what the decision stated, and I thought their reasoning was pretty interesting, and refreshingly straightforward. This decision was handed down by the Washington State Supreme Court. Here is the link to a summary of the decision, written by a friend of mine at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, one Michael Reitz by name, on the Supreme Court of Washington Blog.

On a different topic, the Internet Monk passed away a month ago, and his site and blog has been kept up by a very able "Chaplain Mike". He has written a very good post about a recent hospice visit to a family whose father was comatose and had never accepted Christ. The man's daughter (at least) is a Christian and asked some questions. Mike put up the questions and some very good discussion on them. Check it out, it's worth the read.

And for those of you who are familiar with Michael Spencer as the Internet Monk, you might know that he wrote a book before he died, but it isn't yet available for sale. The first chapter is available now, and you can read it here: Mere Churchianity.

My first marathon

Yup, 26 miles went by as I jogged and walked along. My sister was visiting and she wanted to run the W&OD trail from here out to it's end, about 12 one-way according to its trail-side markers we passed. She has been running for over a year now, mainly as training for her dog sled races. Most people, when dogsledding in the local races, try to run as much as possible to take the load off their dogs. She does quite well in these races, thanks partly to the fact that she has become a very good runner, and so is not as much of a drag on her dogs as other racers.

She has done several 10-mile runs back up in PA, and the trails and roads there are constantly up and down. She was looking forward to doing some running here where the land is ralatively flat. Our home is about 1/2 a mile from where we get on the trail, which is almost at the 33 mile marker. The trail ends at the 45 mile marker. So that was going to be about 25 miles total. As it turned out, there was a MAJOR detour along the trail that had us go at least a 1/2 mile out of our way each way. And just for a change of pace, we did a few side paths that meandered around following the horse trails.

I've never done a run that long. The longest official races I've been in are 5Ks, and I semi-regularly ran 5-6 miles during college. I haven't gone running longer than a mile at a shot for 6 months.

SO OF COURSE I DECIDED TO GO RUN A MARATHON COLD TURKEY!

We took off at 7:10 in the morning and got back about 1:20. In our defense, we weren't exactly trying for a particular time, and so took several breaks at different points - drink breaks, bathroom breaks, stretching breaks.

Oh, wait, I forgot to mention. I didn't stretch at all before starting.

Anyway, just over 6 hours. Bleh.

To make myself feel better, I pretend that I could have had a faster 5 miles in the beginning I had a faster jog than my sister (thanks to my longer legs) but I held back. (our jogging/walking speeds had evened out by the end, Margaret may have even had the speed advantage on those last 5 miles)

I also studiously ignore the fact that if she hadn't been with me I certainly would have taken more walking breaks during the second half, and might have called in C to pick me up in the car around mile 18.

But, we both persevered through to the end, and were met by C about a 1/2 mile from home, pushing TGM along and bringing MUCH appreciated bottles of drink. We had each taken a bottle of water with us and had refilled it along the way, but on the return trip we went through our bottles much more quickly and wound up running the last 4 or 5 miles without anything to drink.

Oh it felt good coming back home to sit down!

So we ran a marathon, and both of us felt pretty good afterward. Margaret's knee was bothering her a bit, especially going down hills, and the tendons at the back of my knees were pretty sore. My muscles feel like they had a good workout - just a little sore to give a reminder that they did something.

All in all, I had fun, even if doing a full marathon without any sort of training, stretching, or even a decent pair of running shoes is a pretty dumb thing to do.

Maybe I'll try it again in a couple weeks!

Lumberjack Extraordinaire

Yes, you might as well call my Paul Bunyan. All I lack is a giant Blue Ox following me around. (and maybe about 40 feet of height, and a massive axe, and ... well, ok, maybe the comparison isn't completely precise)

Saturday was our work day at Mary's. Our clogging group does a work day each spring at her house in thanks for all she does at clogging.

I got to play with chainsaws all day! The first to receive my tender ministrations was a giant limb which had fallen - thirty feet long, over two feet thick at the base, and mostly hollow. That was followed by chopping up several limbs which had fallen from a thoroughly dead tree, not as large individually, but what they lacked in size they made up for in quantity.

That was a marvelous little warm-up, but then came the main attraction! A big, dead tree had been dropping limbs for a couple years. (the ones mentioned above) It was about two feet thick at the base, and around sixty feet tall! It was at least a hundred feet from the house, so we didn't have to worry about that, but we didn't want it falling on a couple other trees.

I must admit it was a bit nerve-wracking when the tree was starting to creak, but didn't show which way it was falling yet. I had cut out a very nice notch in the direction I wanted it to fall, and fortunately the remaining limbs were in that general direction too. Still, lots of fun when I was making the last couple cuts while it was creaking away.

The top of the tree fell about twenty feet off from where I was hoping, but it was well within the safe area. All was good!

Of course, then I had to cut the whole thing up.

All in all, I had a chainsaw in my hands from around 9:20 in the morning until 7:30 at night, with a half hour break for lunch. My back muscles are sore.

I had so much fun!!!

Malazan Book of the Wheel of Time

Yes, you may all genuflect upon my awesomeness as I work my way through, not one but two of the largest fantasy series out there!

Malazan, Book of the Fallen clocking in at 10 books and counting, with at least 7,000 pages.

and

Wheel of Time clocking in at 13 books and counting, with at least 10,000 pages.

You may all look on in awe at my undertaking. (or you can shake your head and put in a call to the people with the nice white coats to bring a padded van)

I'm only on the third of the Malazan books, and I've read 12 of the planned 15 books in the WoT series. The latest of its books came out a few months ago, and because of the four year gap since the last book in the series (the author, Robert Jordan, died and the series is being continued by Brandon Sanderson), I am working my way through the preceding books again because I've forgotten everything but the most general facts.

My first exposure to the Wheel of Time series was in a little Waldenbooks shop where I spent my hour lunch breaks working through the first book. The Malazan series was a random pick-up at our local library a month or two back.

The two series couldn't be more different in many regards (aside from their massive size, of course).

The Malazan series very specifically eschews any form of expository speeches given by characters to educate the reader. This gives the reader a total immersion introduction to the world - it's like getting picked up in your nightclothes and dumped in a jungle in Borneo where no one speaks English and you need to catch your own food. The world is cohesive, fascinating, deep, and more confusing than I can express. However, if you go into it expecting that, you'll probably be able to handle it pretty well. It took me a couple hundred pages before I finally realized no one was going to be explaining to me the where, why, when in a tortuously long exposition infodump.

The Wheel of Time is ....... well, it's not like that. There is exposition. There is more exposition. Then there's another bit. And then yet more. Not everything is given out in their long teaching speeches to each other, but it can't be denied that there is a LOT of exposition. On the other hand, the characters are giving THEIR view and THEIR knowledge of past events/legents, and that information isn't always correct. A key theme in the books is the mutability of legends, tales, and history across peoples and times. Nonetheless, the infodumps are pretty obvious. (Oh, and NO ONE ever seems to die, so as the series continues, you get a staggeringly large cast of characters)

Of course, they aren't as bad as the Sword of Truth series. Now THOSE are long bits of exposition. I think one of them lasted for seven or eight pages, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, just an update for anyone who is working on those series. For anyone else who needs a summary update for the Wheel of Time series, check out this set of summaries: The Wheel of Time Re-Read.

Don't Use Midas in Leesburg

I'm sure they aren't as incometent as they appear to be since that would mean they would be killing themselves in accidents every five minutes. Theoretically they must have some level of competence or else they wouldn't be in business.

I certainly can't see it though!

They're the shop that worked on my car, rotating the tires, immediately after which a wheel fell off while C was driving.

When C had dropped off the car she told them we thought it was the fuel pump which was causing the problem. After testing, they replied the fuel pump was fine, but a sensor needed to be replaced. Ok.

I (rather stupidly) took my car back to them when it again failed to start. This time they looked at it and said the fuel pump was bad. Gaaahhh!

So I got a price quote and nearly choked. They wanted to charge me over $550 for ONLY the part! I checked with the auto parts stores here in town and they were selling the EXACT SAME BRAND for only $230! That's what, a 130% markup!?!?!?

I called Midas back. Sure, they would be willing install a part which I bought. They would only charge me an extra $70 to do so!!!!

I had enough. I called another shop (LAS) and asked them. They wanted to charge $290 for the part, but weren't going to charge any extra if I wanted to buy my own part. Great! They even had a towing service to get the car transported over. I called Midas to let them know I was sending a tow truck. No problem, Midas said. That was on Monday.

I got a call Monday afternoon. Midas wouldn't let them take the car! I owed them for the testing of the fuel pump! They didn't charge me for it last time! Why this time?!? Whatever. I just wanted my car away from them at this point. I paid and the guy said he would put in the call to have the tow truck come back to get my car.

Tuesday I called LAS to check up. They hadn't heard anything further from Midas! I was well and truly steamed at this point, not at LAS, but at Midas. With apologies, I asked LAS to go pick up the car.

An hour later LAS called back. Midas said that I had the keys, so they couldn't open up the car to load it onto their tow truck!! I called Midas back and was almost yelling at the guy (felt bad for him since he wasn't the specific guy screwing things up). Apparently the guy I paid over the phone on Monday and who had neglected to call the tow truck after he said he would, somehow got things screwed up. They thought I had picked up the keys when I paid!!!

No I didn't pick up the keys! I paid over the phone!

The guy on the phone went looking for the keys. Five minutes of hold time, during which there is a repeating ad playing over the phone lauding Midas' quality of service. He comes back. Apparently the keys and paperwork were laying NEXT TO the tow truck box and not in it! That was enough to screw everything up and send the tow truck packing because "the owner has the keys"!

So I gave LAS another call and with many apologies asked them if they could send over their tow truck again.

...

Words fail me to adequately express my opinion of Midas.

Status report on the Twilight showing Friday night: success!

We had eight girls over at the house and reports indicate that everyone enjoyed themselves. Jeremiah and I ducked out and went to the bookstore and bowling. He did quite well, not quite ready to take the bumpers off, but still really well. He even beat me one of our games. I can also offer a bit of fun advice to the adults bowling with kids. Try using one of the light 8 or 6 pound balls. You can REALLY hurl them down the alley - it's very satisfying even if the ball does bounce off the pins even when going 30 miles per hour.

We returned to a house in chaos - the movie was over and eight girls were running rampant. Jer and I had escaped by the skin of our teeth! Whew! Emo Ed had done his work on the female tween population of our house, but they were soon back to their homes where their parents would have to deal with them.

However, the residual radiation left behind drove Jeremiah and I (along with baby T) out to do some hiking along the AT. C remained behind to get some projects done without us being there to get in the way. The day was low-seventies, clear skies, wonderful sunshine, crisp air, and an absolute pleasure for our hiking. I had T in a pack and Jer was running along the trail. A bit of Subway for sustenance and the day was perfect!

The evening saw us off to a clogging performance at a family reunion. It was a big one and the family was Irish. The Irish family was celebrating the reunion close to St. Patrick's Day, and so it was celebrated in proper Irish fashion - tipsy while singing Irish folk songs!

We had a great time, and Jeremiah had a great time too playing with all the kids there.

Sunday brought a children's service, followed by a game of Necromunda with Jeremiah. His gang managed to wipe out most of the zombies which were attacking, and I foresee a mighty victory for his gang in one more turn. (He had to leave before the last turn, so we took pictures so we can restore the game next time.) I had intended the game to be a lot more challenging for him, but he succeeded in making a freakishly difficult shot to kill their leader (rolled 6,6,5 to make a shot at his extreme long range at a target behind heavy cover) and so the zombies started moving somewhat haphazardly instead of in a coordinated fashion. He was chopping them up piecemeal.

After that was a lazy day of reading, doing a couple light errands, and snuggling with the Beautiful One after the Cute One went to sleep.

Now - it's back to work, waiting for some new software to install. The day is grey and wet. Was the weekend really as good as it seems in my memory, or are current circumstances modifying my memories?

Freakonomics on Environmental Movement

The Freakonomics blog on the NY Times is by a collection of writers, intended to follow the vein of the popular book of the same name. For the most part it does pretty well in pulling in interesting stories.

Here's one that might get a few environmental tails in a twist - what's the future of environmentally effective changes? Dense urban living.

Why?

There isn't as much land being turned into suburban sprawl. The commutes are shorter so less fuel/energy is used in commuting. Fewer building materials per person in apartments and townehomes than in single-family homes. Denser commercial building means less land used for businesses.

While building "green" homes and businesses is possibly somewhat useful, and creating "green" vehicles might cut down on energy consumption for transportation, these are changes that only affect the outer margins of energy and land use. To seriously affect things, the entire culture would need to change from sprawling suburban style to a denser urban style.

So, where should the environmental movement focus in accomplishing significant change? In building lots of attractive urban areas.

The full story: Green Building: LEEDing Us Where?

Adventures in Life

Possibly readers may have caught the close-call C had with the car tire. A day or two later I took the car in to investigate starting troubles it was having, and that went off without a hitch - whew!

On the house front, it looks like C's brother will be taking the room that my brother used to live in! Woot! He theoretically lives at an apartment near where he works, but since he spends most of his time out our direction with SS, he decided he prefered to live out here, so he's moving in this weekend!

Still on the house front, but not as good of news, the wasps are still coming in from somewhere. I had cut a chunk out of our closet wall because of a drip coming in, and there were wasps appearing in our room. We assumed they were coming in through that hole, but I put plastic and tape up over the entire hole - no ways through - and more wasps still showed up. I took a quick look and saw one other place they might be coming in - where the cable cords come in - and I'm planning on filling that hole this evening. Hopefully that will take care of of them.

On the job front, I'm enjoying my new project. Perl is the world; the world is Perl. I just now (as in five minutes ago) discovered a bit of an issue with the info in the database, but other than that, the project has been cranking along pretty well.

Still on the job front, but not as good of news, the commute is longer. It's only marginally further as the crow flies, but I have to work through some areas with more traffic. It's a nice, small-ish project that looks like it will proceed to success and join in with a larger project.

I'm not sure what "front" this would qualify under, but I just recently watched the first Twilight movie. The movie is about two hours long and I think I watched it in about an hour, not counting the pauses to take care of T. DEFINITELY a young, teenage, girl's flick! I wound up fast-forwarding through rather large chunks of it where the angsty conversations began to overwhelm me. The psychopathic, murdering bad guy was strictly a 2D character who didn't come in until over half way through the movie and had strictly minimal screen time. He was also the most interesting character, by far.

Why did I subject myself to it? We're having a group of the teen girls from youth group over to our house next weekend to watch the movie. Jeremiah and I are headed out bowling, but I wanted to have an idea of what the movie is like. C has to be there, though, and suffer through it! Hahahahahahahaha!

I suddenly have some feelings of camaraderie with those who imagine horrible ways for Edward to die, or for Bella to die, or for just everybody in the story to die. By the time Eddy walks up to her and starts a conversation:

Edward: I only said it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be.
Isabella: What does that mean?
Edward: It means if you're smart... you'll stay away from me.

I was having fond fantasies of plunging a stake through Emo Ed's heart myself!

Oh well. Like I said I won't have to sit through the whole movie with a bunch of young, barely-teen girls, all drooling over the brooding vampire! Ha!

Confession

I have to confess. My blog post from yesterday was slightly inaccurate.

As in, I didn't actually whack myself with my nunchucks. I took some BBQ sauce and smeared a little on my eyebrow and put a bandaid over it.

Whew! I'm glad I got that off my conscience. The nunchucks are seriously cool though!

Sorta New Job and Nunchucks

I'm still in the same company, but I shifted to a different project. Same type of position, no upgrades in my rating or anything like that. However, I am learning a whole new set of skills, this time in open source intelligence. I'll still be doing a little bit of geospatial work, but not much.

On Thursday my friends at work took me out to lunch! And not only that, but they had gotten me several going away gifts!

You guys are the best!

First they gave me a bad with a nice card and stuff in it.
Ibuprofin.
First Aid kit.
Cold Pack.
Bandages pack.
(do you see a trend there?)

I admit to being a bit puzzled as I was pulling them out of the bag, but I tried not to let it show. I'm known for my martial arts there and I was guessing they were a joke on maybe getting hurt in a fight or something. (Ha! Like someone would be able to even touch me! Ha! I sneer in the attacker's general direction!)

However, they then pulled out the last gift and it all became clear!

A pair of nunchucks! Real ones with hardwood and a chain!

I was still in the restaurant so I couldn't wave them around in there, so I promised them I would give them a demo when we were outside.

I was wearing my leather jacket when I started spinning them around. Great for protecting my body, but my sleeves were definitely catching the spinning 'chucks. Hmmm, maybe this wasn't such a good idea.


BH took a picture with her phone when we got back to the office, and there it is.

Clogging Our Feet Off!

This last weekend was our clogging group's first ever hosted workshop! Hours and hours and hours of clogging with instructors from all over the country as well as local. It was a blast!

The reason we put it on was that the local clogging workshop that is normally around this time got canceled. That was a workshop that our group always attended very heavily and we hated missing out on the opportunity so much that our fearless clogging leaders decided to host our own!

Scotty Bilz, Joel Harrison, and Jane Treadwell (I realize most of you won't know them, but in clogging circles they are very well known as top-tier instructors) came from out of state and we got half a dozen more instructors from locally in-state. This area has a lot of cloggers in it and since there aren't any other clogging workshops locally any time soon, we got a bumper turn out; I think the final numbers for the clogging workshop were almost 200 attendees!

[edit] I forgot Kathy Moore! I'll try to excuse my oversight by saying I didn't take any of her classes. Thanks honey![/edit]

C&I hosted one of the instructors. We weren't sure when she was coming in, but we wanted to have dinner prepared just in case she arrived before dinner time. We had some steaks and thought this would be a good opportunity to use them. In one of our emails we asked what she likes for dinner/breakfast.

She wrote back that she's a gluten-free vegan!!

Hmmm, maybe the steaks won't work out so well! As it turned out she wasn't going to be arriving before dinner anyway, so it wasn't an issue. Whew!

We took T to the clogging and there were always LOTS of people offering to hold her. She didn't sleep as much as she normally does, but she did get a couple naps in.

In one instance I held her during a clogging class and she was quite content for the first 15 minutes. For the next 15 minutes she was dozing off, but occasionally still poking her head up from my arms. For the last 20 minutes she was out like a light and didn't do so much as twitch!

This is, of course, while there is loud music going on, while I am doing full-tilt clogging, with the instructor talking loudly over the music, and with 30 other people in a confined space all tapping and stomping loudly with metal taps on a hardwood floor. Quiet it was not!

And yes, it made for some very cute pictures! C was clogging in the same class, so she couldn't take pictures, but other people did take lots of pictures and gathered around the door looking in. I'll get some pictures up eventually.

I think we've pretty well recovered by this point, but Sunday was a tired day for us. Clogging had started at 9:00 and it didn't end until 9:00 in the evening. There were breaks for lunch and dinner, but it was still a LOT of exercise and stomping feet.

And yes mom, I will try to get some pictures up as soon as possible!

A Webpage My Lovely Wife Will Enjoy

The Most Amazing Libraries In The World

Gorgeous pictures!

More remodeling work

Mom, Dad. I'm not sure we're going to have a bathroom for you guys this weekend. Sorry.

Actually, we will, but it probably won't be the upstairs bathroom. It's sort of been torn apart, or at least the floor has been torn apart.

It all started with our washing machine - it started going out of balance and draining very slowly. At least that's what the little error codes said. But, we couldn't get to it because the toilet that is in that room sticks out far enough that we can't get either the dryer or washer out more than an inch or two before they hit the toilet.

I had visions of pulling out the toilet, but my wife (who is much more clever than I) measured the downstairs toilet and the upstairs one. It turns out the upstairs toilet is much shorter than the downstairs one! If we swap the toilets, we can still get the dryer and washer out even when the toilet is still sitting there! Bravo!

So, I pulled both toilets out. The toilet bases are different. Our pastor and a friend come over and both say that once the new wax rings are on it'll be fine and it won't matter. Whew!

Well, now that we have the toilets out, the upstairs bathroom has been waiting to get new tiles put in, so how about we do that? Execellent! We'll kill two birds with one stone! I go in and pull up part of the tiles.

Hmmmm, the flooring underneath is pretty icky, at least in one area. How about we pull up just that board and replace it with cement board? Yeah, that shouldn't take too long!

Oh, wait. The cement board is quite a bit thinner than the other boards, and that wouldn't work out for putting in new tiles. Ok, I guess we'll rip up the entire bathroom floor and replace it all.

So, that's what we did last night, with the help of RP. All the old boards are pulled up. All the cement boards have been cut and put in. We are ready to screw down the cement boards and patch in the joint cracks. Then it'll be time to put in the new tiles. Then we can install the toilets - swapping the upstairs one with the downstairs one.

Lots of work, but at least now we'll be able to have a repair person come in and be able to access our washer....

Hey! What do you know! The washer hasn't been having any problems for the last half-dozen loads!

My Back Should Look Like A Bowflex Commercial Or Something

During our first big snowstorm, now two weeks ago, I pulled a little muscle in my back - in between my spine and my right shoulder blade.

For the first day or two it didn't do much, but just in time for the second big snow storm, it started to act up and get sore. Then I proceeded to do lots of shoveling dealing with the second snowfall.

I'm telling you - my back ought to look like it could be a model for one of those weight machine commercials! Why?

Because I use that muscle for every single motion my body makes! It ought to look like Arnold Schwartz-ensomthing gave me his back muscles! Turning my head, rolling over, moving my arms while driving, twisting my torso, lifting things, sitting straight, sitting slumped, lifting my hand to mouth while eating, and obviously shoveling - that little muscle gets used for absolutely everything!!!!

On an up beat

I got to go climbing on top of an icy, snowy roof in the middle of the night in a blowing, cold wind!!! Woo hoo!!

Unfortunately it wasn't for a happy reason. Some friends' house suddenly went *CRACK* and developed a (thankfully small) crack in their ceiling. AP ran up to start shoveling off the snow and his wife gave us a call asking for some help to get it shoveled off more quickly.

So we got to spend and hour or two talking while we shoveled off the roof. It was a good way to spend the evening!

I really abhor Quiznos

I think I've blogged once or twice about Quiznos (I'm too lazy to go look up to see if I actually did) and may have even mentioned that I had resolved to never bother with them again. Quiznos is MUCH more expensive than Subway, Quiznos sandwiches are smaller than Subway's, and Quiznos doesn't have nearly the selection of topings that Subway has. Taste-wise they're about the same, but Quiznos doesn't have the range of breads that Subway has.

All in all, Subway is far superior to Quiznos.

But! I got a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for Quiznos and thought I would use it at the store in Leesburg. Even with the more expensive and smaller sandwiches, the free sub from Quiznos would make up for Subway, right?

Ha!

I get in there and the guy is as slow as molasses. Three or four minutes per sandwich. I ask him to put on all the extra toppings he can, but he doesn't because he said they're all around the side for me to get myself. So, I go over and start picking up the yellow peppers, pickles, and some jalapenos. I ask for green peppers. They don't have them. I asked for olives. They're out of them. I ask for onions. Oh, they're behind the counter. So I ask him to open up mine and add in onions.

Wait, wait, wait. Ok. Finally done.

I give him the coupon.

He stares at it for a while.

I go over to get some sauce and dressing for the subs.

"We don't accept this."

What? I hurry back over. "What do you mean you don't accept it? I just got it!"

"We don't participate in coupons here."

"What do you mean you don't take coupons here?!? This is a Quiznos coupon, this is a Quiznos, right?"

"We don't participate. You see, the coupon says 'In participating stores only.' We don't participate."

I was starting to get steamed. I was hungry and looking forward to dinner! C at home was making soup, but it wasn't going to be ready for another hour or so. We wanted to get the subs, and have the soup when it was finally done, on the side.

"How on earth can I tell if you guys are a participating store? I live in Leesburg! I got this coupon! How can I not use this coupon here in the Leesburg store?!?!?"

"You need to tell me when you come in that you have a coupon. I can tell you then that we don't accept coupons."

I stared at him aghast. "So what can you do?"

"I can give you a $1 discount on one of the sandwiches."

$%#^&*$#!@#$^!&$%#%@!! (No, I didn't start swearing at the guy, but that's what was going off in my head - each one of those sandwiches was $2 more than Subway's sandwiches!!!)

I wad up the coupon and throw it down and walk out.

"Fine," I hear behind me. "Get out. We don't want you here anyway!"

Well, I'm glad he doesn't want me in there because he won't be disappointed. Yes, my resolve has been once again set - stay away from Quiznos!