Olsen was an All-American at Utah State and a first-round draft pick of the Los Angles Rams in 1962.
The burley giant from northern Utah joined Deacon Jones, Lamar Lundy and Rosey Grier on the Rams’ storied “Fearsome Foursome” defensive line known for either stopping or knocking backward whatever offenses it faced. The Rams set an NFL record for the fewest yards allowed during a 14-game season in 1968.
Olsen was rookie of the year for the Rams in 1962 and is still the Rams’ all-time leader in career tackles with 915. He was named to 14 consecutive Pro Bowls, a string that started his rookie year.
I was too young to watch him play football, but I was old enough to watch him on Little House on the Prairie. Man, I loved that show, though one has to wonder who sold their soul to the devil to have such disaster after disaster strike the little town of Walnut Grove.
He played the character of Jonathan Garvey, a gentle giant of a man and devoted husband and father. So many good memories watching Little House. Laugh all you want. I don’t care.
Anyway….
My brother-in-law, Jon, has this great idea. By great I mean it could/should NEVER be actually carried out, but it’s an interesting premise. His idea is to start the Charles Ingalls Ministry.
In Little House, whenever a man wasn’t taking care of his family, was drinking or causing trouble, Pa would take a few men, usually Mr. Garvey, and pay the man a visit. A few fits to the face or hickory whacks to the knee and/or back and the man would straighten up, stop drinking and become a devoted husband, father and church go-er. The episode would usually end with the church singing a hymn and the camera panning to the man, with his family, who had a come to Jesus moment with Charles Ingalls.
So the Charles Ingalls Ministry would take the same approach. He and I would show up and ask a few questions and urge the fellow to straighten up and fly right….if not, then a bit of Pa Ingalls would be in order.
Like I said, it’s fun to think about, but entirely flawed
Dianna goes to our church and she gave her testimony last month. I’ve seen hundreds of testimonies, but hers was different. She made a bunch of poster board sized signs chronicling her life. When it came time for her to talk, she didn’t talk, she played music and walked around holding each sign up, one by one. It was very powerful.
We usually record our church messages for our pod cast, but with her testimony, there wasn’t anything to record, so I took her signs and made this video. While I think it is still powerful and moving, nothing beats having seen this in person.
Time for some local politics here at WunderKraut.com.
A local County sent out an RFP for engineering services at the request of one of the cities in the County. The scope was to do detailed engineering studies to change the FEMA flood maps. There are a total of 88 houses affected by the new maps, 60 of which are in the City.
So the County sent out RFP’s. Our firm submitted on it, but came in 2nd in the evaluation. It happens. You win some, you lose some.
The rubber hit the road the other night when the question of how to fund the $74,400 project came up. The County scraped together half of the funds and then went to the City to get the other half.
Leesburg Mayor Jim Quinn, who told the Council Tuesday “some of the houses (affected) are in Leesburg, but all of them are in Lee County,” said Wednesday the Council’s action was not meant as a swipe at the county.
It’s funny that when it’s time to divvy up Sales Tax funds, the cities are all about getting their fair share since they are their own thing and all. Then when the hat is passed for a project which overwhelmingly benefits the City, they want to pretend that they aren’t a city but just citizens of the County.
Bummer that they aren’t funding the project. Even though we didn’t get selected, it is a very needed and worthwhile project for the City and the County.
Hopefully, they will reconsider and come up with the funds.
It seems the Turks have a fondness for debating the merits of Concrete Roads vs Asphalt Roads, noble people the Turks. Visitor 301,711 to my humble blog entered in through a link from this Turkish forum
Anyway, they keep linking to the definitive blog post on the matter…mine…found here.
I re-read it today.
Thing of beauty.
The best part was the Marshmallow Creme vs Vanilla Creme epic battle which erupted in the comments.
I do believe that the issue was settled once and for all once Peep Cthulhu showed up on the scene.
I was listening to NPR’s Performance Today while on the way to the bank yesterday. Most of the show was dedicated to Frédéric Chopin, on his 200th birthday. They had Rob Kapilow on who asked, “What makes him great?”.
I learned a bunch about music from just listening to the interview. I realized that I miss a bunch when I listen to classical music. I guess its just easier to enjoy the music, but often times there is a ton of stuff going on in the background.
Take the time and listen to the interview. Of course I had to buy some Chopin, including this delightful piece:
Nate and I were chatting the other day about which superpowers we would want. Both of us would want to fly, be invisible and have super strength. We differed in that he wants X-Ray vision and I want to be able to walk through walls.
I know others have done this, but I finally go the nerve up to try it.
Also, you should know a few things about me. There are three things I do when I am stressed: I cook, I clean and I spend money….
So, enter this week and what happened to my niece. Also factor in I just got paid. Yeah, you get the picture.
We went to Wal-Mart the other night and I bought a charcoal starter. I have been wanting one of these for a long time and just never got around to getting one. I really wanted to cook a turkey on my Webber and I figured I would need the starter to keep the coals going. To my dismay, all the turkeys were frozen and I wanted to cook something that night. But I lucked up and found a double package of whole frying chickens.
When we got home, I took out one yard bird, washed and dried it and plopped it on a pan.
I love me some yard bird
Now came the critical part. What beer to use? I read a few websites prior to leaving for the store. Some advocated for stouts and others didn’t state a preference. The choice was easy to make. I needed something in a six pack. Why? Well, because due to my diet, my beer consumption has dropped off to zero. Anything larger than a six pack would sit for months on end in the fridge and I need all the space I can get in there.
My selection at Wal-Mart was limited to exactly one: Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.
It fit the bill. It was in a six pack and it was cheap.
Ah, good old cheap beer. Brings back memories of buying Natural Lite from college kids when I was on Spring Break in high school. Also, I like to be able to chew the last sip of my beer.
Yummy
Once the yard bird was thoroughly dried, I lubed her up with some olive oil and then patter her with some dry rub. Since this was the spur of the moment, I didn’t have time to prepare my own rub, so I cheated and bought pre-made stuff (Don’t knock it, it was good)
Sexy hand, no?
After a good rub down, I sat her up on my opened beer can. I made sure to drink half of it and then to remove the top with a can opener.
Does this beer make my butt look fat?
In the midst of preparing the bird, I stared the fire. I must say, I really like this charcoal starter. It worked great.
Purdy
I set up the coals for indirect heat and put the bird in the middle.
I added additional coals about an hour into the cooking. All in all, I cooked her for 2 hours.
Oh man was it ever so tasty! Wow. I plan on doing this again in the future….like tonight. After all I have one more bird and a few more beers.
Olivia was in a lot of pain last night and this morning her stomach is distended. The doctor has decided to insert an NG tube (Nasogastric intubation).
It is hoped this will reduce the pain and distension in her stomach.
I was able to see her yesterday. It’s a rough thing for anyone to go through. I can’t imagine being 7 and going through what she has been through. The trauma of the injury itself would be enough for anyone to handle, but now the colostomy bag and the NG tube and the pain.
This just really sucks.
But, I know that the Lord can heal her and remove the pain. Please keep praying.
Jen’s sister’s 7 year old daughter, my niece, fell and impaled herself on a toy late yesterday afternoon. They rushed her to the hospital and she lost a lot of blood. They determined that she had a 5 cm laceration in her bowel.
So, they moved her to a children’s hospital in Macon (3 hours north of them and 2 hours north of us) where they operated on her late last night till early today to repair the laceration. She is on a colostomy bag and there is a very high chance of infection.
That’s all I know right now. Jen left last night to be with her sister and I have the kids. The doctor stressed that she is not out of the woods yet due to the threat of infection.
Hong Kong dieters warned over swallowing parasitic worms
But does it work? Look, I’m not saying it’s a good idea or that I would ever try it, hey pass me another “gummi”…
How bad can it be. It would sort of be like having a pet. Everyone needs companionship. Am I right?
The weight loss remedies use the eggs of Ascaris worms – giant intestinal roundworms which grow up to 15in in length in a host’s intestine and lay up to 200,000 more eggs a day inside the body.
Only 15 inches? Bah, that’s nothing. I once had a tapeworm so large that after they removed it, they were able to write the entire Bible on it, like they do with rice. True story.
He urged people to consult doctors before dieting and said the only healthy and effective means of weight loss was to eat less and take regular exercise.
Lies! Lies I tell you! Also, shut up you health Nazi!
Clinics and websites in the former British colony offer a bizarre variety of questionable weight loss methods including sweat-inducing body suits, fat-dissolving injections and even flammable paraffin wraps to literally burn off belly fat.
Ah, I love the smell of paraffin and burnt flesh in the morning…Smells like….Thursday.
Via Geekologie – which you need to be reading EVERY day. I’m talking to you, you and YOU, yes you, the one standing behind Darth Vader. I’ve got my eyes on you…
This day of the week is brought to you by John Lennon
I must say, John Lennon intrigues me. He always has. It’s a shame his life was cut short. I often wonder though, if he would have made really crappy music in the 80’s like everyone else….
One of my favorites – Yer Blues.
Checkout the lineup for this live performance. Wow.
BTW, gotta love YouTubes feature to allow you to start the video at a specific spot. I saved you 68 seconds of a very weird conversation between Mick Jagger and John Lennon and got you straight to the rock and roll. You’re welcome
I really liked the movie. In fact, I tend to enjoy movies like this. Lots of rapid dialogue.
I really thought Ellen Page did a wonderful acting job. The best acting was when she told her Dad and Stepmom that she was pregnant. I can’t remember the Dad’s comment, but he made a comment that just ripped her heart out and she showed that emotion perfect.
I can’t believe that 5 years ago I started into this whole blogging adventure. There have been many changes in the format and content of this site. That and the fact that I tried to quit two times.
Anyway, it all started February 4, 2005. Actually, truth be told, it started around February of 2004, but that was when I was running WunderKraut.com as a sound file site, with occasional political commentary. For a taste of what the original site looked like, go here.
In honor of my little sites 5th birthday, I have put together the best posts from each of the 5 years. Also check out my YouTube page and our trip to China to get Mei.
2009
November 8, 2009 – California Trip – my trip out west to California, complete with visit to Ken’s ranch.
September 8, 2009 – Baptism – Nathan, my oldest, gets baptized.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The above should be familiar to anyone my age or older…do they still require you to memorize this in school? It is the Preamble to our Constitution.
I think many times we forget what the Constitution actually says and doesn’t say. We seem to project things onto it as a way of defending our position one way or another. But the fact is, the Constitution is a very short document and deals with more restrictions on the government than anything. Reading the Preamble, it all makes sense now. I have been reading the Federalist Papers (its taking me quite some time) and the various items I have highlighted in the Preamble were things that the Founders were very concerned about and wrote extensively about. To me, the Preamble states the actual intent of our Founders…not some interpretive intent…if they were here and were asked what they meant the Constitution to be, they would point at the Preamble.
Why bring this up when talking about healthcare? I’ll answer that with another quote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness
The amazing words of the Declaration of Independence.
I bring both items up because they are the bedrock of our form of government. As I stated earlier, oftentimes we think our government has other purposes. One of the things I see happen all the time is people confusing their right to PURSUE happiness vs their perceived right TO happiness. There is a BIG difference. Government was not set up to give you happiness, but rather to allow you to be free to pursue happiness.
Let’s move onto the actual healthcare part of this essay.
The first question that needs to be answered is: Does government have a role in healthcare?
I think that Liberal and Conservatives can all find common ground here.
I am open to the idea of government having a role in healthcare. At the very least I feel that we should take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. I refer to certain cases such as: Downs Syndrome, childhood cancers, severe mental handicaps, cystic fibrosis, and a whole host of other afflictions affecting those who are unable to provide for themselves.
To me, having the government subsidize care for these types of individuals goes along with “promoting the general Welfare” intent of our Constitution.
Next question: To what extent should the government have a role in healthcare?
Ah, here is the real issue.
The answer comes down to “It depends”…
It depends on how you view governments role in your life.
A Conservative believes that the government should have very little role. We believe that government should set reasonable rules and then get out of the way so that personal liberty and initiative can flourish. We see that the government does only a few things well and that micromanaging peoples lives is not one of those things.
You will notice that this belief in limited government is not tied to hating poor people, kids or minorities….even though we are accused of that all the time. No, we believe that men and women should be as free as possible from government regulation.
A Liberal will argue that the government should play a large role in healthcare and many other areas. From what I can gather from my Liberal friends and from extensive reading, this belief that government should have a large role in various issues, seems to come from the thought that 1) a country as rich as ours should be able to afford these things, 2) the system is not fair, so something should be done to help those who have been screwed over and 3) to control certain behaviors to promote a certain agenda/goal.
I am sure I will get many comments saying that, no, no, Liberals don’t believe that at all.
Really?
Lets look at some of the views from the Left. What have we heard from President Obama recently? He has been talking about “Fat Cat Bankers” and “Fat Cat Wall Street”. Why does he do this? Because to a Liberal, the system is not fair and needs to be corrected. Those “Fat Cats” make too much money, that isn’t fair given how people are suffering out there. So they try to bring down these “Fat Cats”.
Another great example is the environmental movement. The Left wants to control your lifestyle/behavior to save the planet. Another misconception about Conservatives is that we hate the earth and want to pillage and destroy it. Again, false. But there is a balance between good stewardship and controlling people. Don’t believe me about the Left wanting to control you? Two words: Compact Fluorescents. Congress has dictated, under the guise of saving electricity, that you MUST purchase compact fluorescent light bulbs. In the future, the good old incandescent light bulb will be banned. It doesnt matter if you like the new lights or not, you will be forced to buy them in the future.
So what is the answer when it comes to healthcare?
I don’t really know.
Here is what I do know.
The government should not control peoples lives. In the current healthcare bills in Congress, the government mandates that you HAVE to purchase insurance or face fines. The bill tells insurance companies what they have to cover. Again, it is not the governments role to force people to do something.
Allowing the government to control healthcare opens the door to all sorts of other government control in the name of “health”. People made fun of me when I was upset about the lawsuits against the tobacco companies because I warned it would lead to all sorts of lawsuits against other things, like McDonalds and sugary drinks. Well, the lawsuits may not have happened…yet…but the government sure wants to control those things. They want to ban soda machines in schools…why?..to help with obesity. If government takes control over healthcare, watch for other sorts of control about your diet and how much exercise you need.
Despite what you may think, providing healthcare to all individuals is expensive and we cannot afford to do it. The only way to pay for it is to raise taxes. Well you cant raise taxes on the bottom roughly 40% who PAY NO TAXES already. That’s ok, per the current administration, we can tax the “Fat Cats”…i.e. the wealthy. Yeah, well here is the thing, there are not enough of the “wealthy” to pay for this thing. That means the middle class will have to pick up the largest share of the burden.
Do the poor create jobs? Nope, they depend on jobs.
Does the middle class create jobs? Yes, all the time. People in the middle class start business that create jobs.
Do the wealthy create jobs? Absolutely!
So, raising taxes on the two segments of the economy which actually create jobs is going to help our economy how?
Then there is the giant bureaucracy that would have to be created to administer the healthcare to the people.
Have you ever been to the Social Security office? Ever been to the DMV? How about the Post Office…
I am curious, do you like going to places like that? I didn’t think so.
Like I said, the government is very good at certain things…minute details involving my health…not so much.
So if not the government, then who or what?
It has come down to this. We can argue all day about how much the government should be involved and we can agree on some of the finer points, but the details get messy. But we can’t just sit back and do nothing.
See, here is the thing, we have invented ourselves into a corner.
In the last 60 years, medical advances have made it possible to live WAY beyond what was common.
I am not saying this is bad or good. I am just stating a fact.
But this increase in life expectance has gotten us stuck in a corner.
Things that once killed you can now be cured or treated, thereby prolonging your life. Thank you Jesus!
But, this technology and knowledge comes at a huge price.
We have come to the point in our history where you can basically buy your life. Want to live? Pay up. Want the newest treatment? Pay up. Want the best for your Mom or Dad? Pay up.
And pay up we do.
Again, not saying good or bad, just saying.
As the costs have gone up, so has the issue of health insurance and providing coverage.
Do you pull the plug on Mom? If there is no money, then who pays for the continued coverage? Need that new cancer drug? If there is no money, then who pays for the magic pill?
Here we are. What do we do?
If you point at Europe, then I will point out their high unemployment, their high taxes, their underfunded health plans and the fact that people from across the world come to the U.S. for cutting edge healthcare.
But what do we do? Do we let people die in the streets because they can’t pay? Do we pull the plug once it is determined they cant pay? Do we tax ourselves into high unemployment and total government control?
Can anything be done?
The thing to keep in mind is that governments can only raise so much money before the people rebel. If you place too much strain on a government, it will collapse and the result will be MUCH worse than our current problems.
Jen and the kids are heading down to her sisters house for the day. They will have a great time!
I have to go into work for a few hours to finish up something. Not something I like to do, but it isn’t too bad.
Then I may go shopping and later I may start painting the room recently vacated by Madi and Mei.
Jen and I have been having lots of discussions about the house, mainly the kitchen. If you remember, last year we had the floor retiled and I painted the walls. However, the BIG ticket items still remain. Namely, replacing the cabinet doors, the hardware and the drawers. Right now the drawers do not have nice slide rail things….its just wood on wood. Then we need new countertops and backsplashes and finally we need to remove the oven and stove and replace it with an all in one unit. The wall of cabinets that is currently housing the oven would then be turned into a pantry. An honest to goodness pantry!
Here is what it looks like now:
Anyway, I figure that may cost $10k. Then there is the hall bathroom which needs to have the floor replaced. So add a bit more to that.
So, how to pay for it all? Yeah, that’s always the trick isn’t it.
At this point saving up for it would take oh, I don’t know, a year and a half….IF nothing else came up….I could use my yearly bonus to help, but that is never a sure thing and Jen wants to go to Disney before the kids go off to college.
Luckily I think we have a good solution. We have a loan that we will finish paying next March (2011) so the thought is we are currently paying a loan payment, so why not just get another loan for the improvements and knock it out at one time? This move would be budget neutral and would get the house “Sale Ready” if we decided to sell it.
Speaking of…It was around this time 8 years ago when we bought this house. I remember because Jen was BIG pregnant with Charlie and we were in the house about 2 months before he was born. Anyway, at the time I had this grand idea of a Five Year Plan.
The plan was to clean up the house and sell it after 5 years and buy a bigger one in a nicer area. Well, then we had another kid, then we had yet another kid….. The next thing we knew we had been here 7 years! Last year Jen and I talked about what to do and we decided that you know what, a bigger place would be nice but we don’t NEED a bigger place. So we decided to stay put for now.
But we would at least like the place to look nice if we are going to stay here….and if not…having the kitchen redone will definately help the house sell.
I know we live in a free country, but come on, there should be laws against this. I mean, nothing good can come from this:
International Clown Hall of Fame
*shakes head*
I read through their website, or as I like to call it “Clown Propaganda”. Chilling stuff man, chilling stuff.
Says their site:
Dedicated to the preservation and advancement of the “Art of Clowning.”
Um….there is an “Art of Clowning”? I thought it was just called being creepy. Didn’t know there was an art to that.
…this museum maintains a vast archive of clown artifacts and library
Artifacts forged by Lucifer himself! I imagine squirting flowers, buckets of confetti, horns, red noses, pentagrams, voodoo dolls…you know, typical stuff.
Learn about the different types of clowns and their contributions to “Let the Laughter Loose”
Hold on a second, there are different types of clowns?!?!? How can this be? I have seen one to many clown movies, so I understand that to “Let the Laughter Loose” is clown speak for kill everyone!
I vote we march on West Allis, Wisconsin with pitchforks and torches and demand that these clowns cease their clowning ways and rejoin civilization or be forced into Clown Re-Education Camps.
I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition on the way to work this morning. Why? Because our radio stations suck and I didn’t want to hear “Free Bird” for the millionth time…I really need to get satellite radio…
Anyway….
They had an interview with Shankar Vedantam, who according to NPR “is a science writer for The Washington Post and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University”. He has written a book called The Hidden Brain which deals with the fact that we have conscience and an unconscious parts of our brain. The topic caught my interest and it was a very interesting interview.
The basic premise is that no matter what your conscience brain decides, there is always the hidden brain at work. Meaning that you may lean towards certain political parties or types of work or anything, not necessarily because you reasoned it out in your conscience brain, but because of input from your unconscious brain.
To explain what the heck he was talking about, the interview turned to race.
From the time we are born, our hidden brain starts to make associations about the world around us. I am not a professional but I figure our brains do this to make things easier. If we can establish a pattern, then you do not have to remember as much, you just look for the pattern. Broad generalizations work well too. All these associations and generalizations happen behind the scenes and can influence the conscience brain.
This line of thought clicked with me and it really got me thinking.
We are raising our kids to be color blind. That is sometimes difficult to do in the Deep South because our children will run into lots of opportunities for them to form broad generalities and stereotypes. We have always been this way with our kids. Practically, we do not identify people by their skin color. If our kids, who are currently a minority at their public school, are telling us about their friends, we don’t ask if they are white or black. Sometimes they volunteer the information which usually comes out as them saying their friend is “brown”. Our oldest is 9 and I have begun to talk to him about the South and slavery and the Civil Rights movement. Nothing deep, just explaining that there was a time, not to long ago, where we treated people who were different from us very badly. Often times these conversations come up after some program at school. I want him to have the truth and my prayer is that he learns to avoid stereotyping people and to give everyone the same chance.
Now….here is where the premise of the book got interesting to me.
Let’s assume that you lived in a community with a small African American population, and lets assume that the small population was predominately upper middle class. Let’s also assume that there was a small Hispanic population that was predominately below the poverty line. A child being raised in such a community would begin to form certain associations. Namely that in his city, black people were the same as him and that Hispanic people were poor. This kid may have great parents who are teaching him that judging someone because of their race is stupid and that we should give everyone a fair chance. In his conscience brain, he KNOWS this….but his Hidden Brain is screaming “Yeah, but look around you!!!!!”
Here in our town, its about a 50-50 split between white and black. It may actually be a majority African American city now, I don’t know. In our town the majority of the people living in poverty are black. In our town the majority of crimes committed are committed by African Americans. That is the reality in which I am raising my kids.
Why is it this way? I believe it has NOTHING to do with a persons race, rather it is a product of opportunity and history (they have only had 40 years of “equality”) and more importantly the breakdown of the basic family unit. Then there is the U.S. governments war on poverty which has doomed millions to a life of dependence. In the inner city you have MULTIPLE generations living dependent on the government. You have little boys talking about what they are going to do when they go to prison…I am not joking…that was one of the saddest stories I have ever heard…
So there it is. There is the reality that my children see everyday and there are the basic truths we are trying to teach them that “all men are created equal”. Its a war for their minds. Ultimately, they will have to make up their own minds and I hope and pray that they make good choices.
At the end of the interview they talk about whether or not color blindness is in fact a good thing. It’s an interesting thought. I think that while we try to live color blind, as the kids get older I am finding that I am able to discuss race more openly with them. Such as telling them about poverty and dependence on the government and talking about why the African American community in our town is plagued with poverty and crime. It gives me the chance to point out that these issues have nothing to do with the actual color of a persons skin, but rather from a spirit of poverty, poor decisions, the lack of fathers, etc.
So we shall see. I may wait for this book to come to my local library and check it out. It is an interesting premise.
REPOST: Today is the 2 year anniversary of Mei joining our family. Some call it Gotcha! Day, we call it Mei Day!!! Thought I would repost what I wrote that day 2 years ago. Hard to believe it has been that long.
___________________
Original Post:
This is just a brief followup to my post about getting Mei. To recap, we flew to Nanchang today and were told we would get our babies today, not tomorrow. I am too tired to write how I feel and what all this means to me, but rest assured I am on the verge of tears. I can’t believe she is finally here.
Thank you for all your prayers and support. Continue to pray for us and our bonding time with our new daughter.
Here are some videos from today. I did not get the moment Jen was handed the baby as I was taking a picture.
Part I
Part II – about half way through. The first half is of another family (Moore’s). Then you see us.
Part III
Thank you Jesus. Man God is too good to me to have blessed me with four wonderful kids and a perfect wife. He has blessed me. I don’t deserve any of it, but He loves me enough to bless me.
The home computer rebuild is going very well. I settled on using ESET virus scanner. It had good reviews and I like that its not a giant like Norton or McAfee.
Some of the issues I was having were because Mediacom decided to have an outage. Silly me thought it was because of things I was doing.
For some reason my ATI video card driver started acting up once I installed a few of the Windows updates. So I had to uninstall and reinstall that.
Last night I was able to use SharePOD to bring our music over from the iPod.
Finally, I loaded up Carbonite and started downloading my back up files. I never did a full system back up, only the things I care about. That meant that all our pictures, movies and various goodies were backed up. 6,542 files later, I now have all the esentials on the computer.
The old hard drive was junked up with random programs I had used over the years, so it is nice to have a clean computer. The only thing I am going to install at this time is Pinnacle Studio so I can FINALLY work on the Christmas DVD….
Yeah, so the family desktop caught a virus. Its that dang Virus Scan 2009 or whatever that pops up to tell you that you have a bazillion infections and you need to buy their product. Oh, it also puts nice pr0n links on your desktop. Lovely little thing.
For whatever reason, it keeps slipping past my virus scanner. If I catch it, I can kill it before it installs, but this time it did it to either Jen or the kids and well, its dead Jim!
But on the plus side, I was running out of room on my hard drive and that hard drive was 4 years old, so it gave me an excuse to do a clean install on a new hard drive.
The biggest issue right now is getting Norton back on the computer. I swear, Norton has THE WORST website I have ever seen! No joke. It took me 30 minutes of hunting around the site to find a place to log into my account. That tends to be one of the first things people need to do you know…geesh.
Anyway, I found my license and yet trying to download it caused the site to time out. Sitting on hold for 40 minutes last night was no fun. I logged a service ticket today. Maybe I can get this thing resolved.
Once I get Norton back up and running, I will either hook up the old hard drive to get my data or use my Carbonite backup. I would rather get it from the hard drive as that would be faster, but not sure if it will work. The virus lives in the registry and is not attached to the files I need, so the risk is very low, but not sure I can get it to do what I want. We shall see.
Not having the desktop has cut into my writing time. I could use our laptop, but the “A” key has gone missing. Oh sure, you can still type an “a” but it takes a bunch of effort and really slows things down to a crawl. Who knew so many words have the letter “a” in them?
I had to purchase printer ink today because I had to print a report with lots of color pictures. I normally print to our copier for two reasons. The first is that it is MUCH quicker than my little desktop printer. The second is that the copier uses cheap toner while the desktop printer uses some exotic ink made from baby seals, uranium and the sap of a redwood tree. One particular 5,000 year old redwood tree, named Herman.
But…I needed color prints.
So, I ran down to the local office supply store and bought a new black and color cartridge. If you are thinking how much cheaper it is to just get the cartridges refilled, you are right, but that usually takes at least a day. I don’t have a day. I have TODAY.
After signing a second mortgage on Casa de WunderKraut, I finally had the ink in my hands.
This brought to mind a funny info graphic I saw last month. Via The Consumerist:
My buddy John took me hunting Saturday afternoon and I finally got a deer! Yay me!
Just a little doe, but it’s something.
She stepped out with another, smaller doe around 6pm. They both stopped at the edge of the power line easement we were hunting and looked right at me. I waited until they starting moving into the easement, then I put my gun up and lined them up. Just into the easement the bigger doe stopped, and then the little one stopped right in front of the big one. They were broadside to me and technically I could have shot both with one bullet, but I didn’t want to get greedy. So, I lined up on the bigger one and shot.
The shot was around 110 yards or so and it dropped the bigger doe right there. The smaller one ran off into the woods, stopped and looked at me. I chambered another round and hurried a shot, which missed.
There was still 20 minutes of shooting light left, so I was going to stay in the blind to see if anything else was going to come out, but I noticed the deer I shot was moving. Looking through the scope, I could see her moving her head and trying to stand up.
I didn’t want her to get up and run off and I didn’t want to cause undo suffering, so I gave up the hunt and walked over to her.
When I got to her, it was obvious what had happened. I had shot her in the spine and paralyzed her from the front shoulders back. She was trying to stand up with her two front legs. She was thrashing her head about when she saw me, but then she settled down and just looked at me. I felt bad for botching the shot, so I quickly put her out of her misery.
I hate making bad shots. I even talked myself through the shot, but I still hurried it and shot high. I usually shoot high and right. This shot appeared to be right on, just high. Oh well, at least my poor shot didn’t cost me a deer.
The season ends Friday, so I am going to go one more time Wednesday afternoon. I hope to take Nate and I hope to see something. More for his sake than mine.
I was on the internet before most of my friends and family. Mainly because I went to Georgia Tech and they gave us email addresses back in 1993. Or at least thats when I first started using one.
Anyway, back in the old days, I frequented several user groups dealing with realtime strategy games and military computer games. Back then I had a tag that went at the end of each one of my “posts”. I would change what the tag said from time to time and they were pretty random.
I did a search tonight and found some old user group postings that are still out there in cyber space. Some from 1994, but most from 1998 and 1999. Here we are 11 years from the oldest post and they are still out there for everyone to see. Let that be a lesson to you!
Anyway, here are some of the tags I used back then. Like I said, these are pretty random.
Save the whales! Collect the whole set.
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Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips
over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come – Matt Groening
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All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power – Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant
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The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life – George Carlin
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So many stupid people, do few comets
Sure Mister, I will let you kick me in the backside, if it hurts, you win…
Russia needs to develop “offensive strike systems” to preserve strategic balance with the United States, without producing its own missile defense, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.
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“If we want to retain the balance, we have to establish an exchange of information: Let the U.S. partners provide us information on [their] missile defense while we will give them information on [our] offensive weapons,” Putin said.
“Since we are not developing [our own] missile defense, there is a threat that our [U.S.] partners would feel totally secure having created an umbrella against our offensive systems,” he added. “Then our partners might do whatever they want; the aggressiveness in real politics and economics would increase because of the broken balance.”
I received an Explanation of Benefits in the mail yesterday for Madi, our 5 year old daughter. That last part is important to remember. She is 5 years old.
Anyway, the EOB said the claim was denied because:
Our records indicate your health plan does not include benefits for services related to pregnancy. Detailed information can be found in the Limitations and Exclusion section of your certificate booklet.
Ummm…yeah….about that….see point above…
So I called the insurance company and contrary to my conspiracy theory, this was an error on the doctor’s part. I am sure if they want to get paid they will correct this as soon as possible.
Just for the record Madi is NOT, I repeat, NOT pregnant.
We moved back to Albany, Georgia in 1983 when I was 10 years old.
This was the first time in my life that we had cable TV. As a result, this was also the first time I ever saw a video on MTV.
True story, MTV once played these things called “videos” 24/7. These “videos” were mini-movies, if you will, set to the song . Sometimes these “videos” would be interpretive/semi-cerebral, showcasing the bands deep, deep lyrics. Other times these “videos” would be nothing more than concert footage of the band rocking the house. More often than not, these “videos” would be nothing more than soft core pr0n…
But I digress…
Anyway, with cable and more importantly MTV, my musical exposure widened. Having a sister who was two years older than me helped as well. The music she listened to became the music I listened to.
When I was around 13 years old, my parents bought me a portable cassette player. It was small compared to my sisters boom box, but I loved it anyway. I had desk next to my bed and it on sat there, playing tunes whenever I was in my room.
I would sit on my bed playing solitaire for hours and hours with Aerosmith blasting.
I think it was for my 15th birthday, Mom got me an actual stereo system. I had two BIG speakers and a good receiver. It was at this point when I discovered The Beastie Boys and their debut album Licensed to Ill:
Paul Revere was my favorite:
These songs had a TON of bass in them. When no one was home, I would turn the bass to 10 and crank the volume. You could feel the bass hitting you in the chest. Once I got a car, I transferred the bass to it…which is why I can’t hear very well today. Let that be a lesson to you kids.
I always wanted to play guitar. So, when I was alone, which happened often from age 14 on, I would grab my sisters Bon Jovi Slippery When Wet album, a broom handle and proceed to give the concert of my life! Man I was thrashing on that ax!!!!
Embarrassing, but true.
Around this same time (wow 1987 was a big year for me musically), one of my sisters friends tossed me a Pink Floyd tape. It was Wish You Were Here and immediately fell in love with Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Wow…to this day, I have a dream of learning to play that song.
Amazing guitar starts at minute 1:46. Click here for the rest of the song….silly YouTube 10 minute rule.
I know its not as fast or technical as some of the greats out there, but it is still an amazing song. You can feel the guitar. Almost like they are their own set of lyrics.
On a side note, I got to see Floyd live in 1994 during the Division Bell tour. What an amazing show. If you ever get a chance to see them live please do. See this post.
In addition to listening to rock music, Mozart was in constant rotation in my room. Mainly when I was doing my homework. My favorite being Piano Concerto No. 21
As the 80’s drew to a close, I was thoroughly into the 80’s hair band scene. Yes, it was cheesy, but you know what, it was fun. I know there are some purists out there who scoff at the 80’s hair band days, but I don’t care. I had a great time and I still love listening to the 80’s at 8 on our local classic rock station.
Times were a changin’ though and my musical tastes were about to change as well.
One of the things I was planning on purchasing was a guitar amp. I have a POS electric that was given to me many years ago. About 6 months ago I pulled it out, knocked the dust off and restrung it. The only thing missing was the amp.
So….I went to the music store looking for an amp last night. I found one that was ok, but not what I wanted. However, I did fall in love with a guitar…..
Its an Ibanez ART100. Its nothing to fancy, just a middle of the road priced electric…but it is so pretty and it played so nice.
Maybe it’s because I have been fretting on the old POS with a WIDE neck, but playing this guitar was just amazing. Felt good in my hands. It felt like my hands were faster. Kind of like when you were a kid and you got new shoes, you felt you could run faster.
Anyway, since this was a splurge purchase, I put it on layaway. Come January, this baby will be in my hands.
There are deer everywhere on the property, but we just can’t seem to peg when they are moving and where. I know they cross the road, so I set up there…nothing…I know they rip up the big food plot, so I set up there…nothing….
Stupid deer and their over developed sense of self-preservation!
I am taking Nate with me today, so maybe today will be the day and he can see his daddy shoot the big one!
We shall see.
Here are some aerials of the land. The first shows the basic layout. The access road coming in is on a ridge with planted pines on either side of the road. Just past where we park the trucks, the land falls off sharply until you get to the open field. Then it falls gradually to the creek which is the east boundary.
The open field looks deceptive. It was clear-cut last year, so yes, it is “open” but only in the sense that the trees are not standing.
In the second photo I have hatched out the areas we can’t even get to because its like a bomb went off. The brush is head high now with tons of briars and they left a bunch of timber on the ground. Plus, it’s pretty wet most of the year. In short…the accessible portion of the “open” area is not as you would imagine. Next year we will clear a path to the creek and work to open up access to some more of the area. As info, I will be hunting the ground blind today as shown in the second picture.
As info, it is one mile from the road at the western boundary to the creek at the eastern boundary. It’s about 3,000 feet from where we park down to where we hunt. Going downhill is easy…coming up…not so much. Remember, we don’t have hills here so 100′ of elevation change in 3,000 feet is a big hill to me
I was sitting around watching TV the other night just spacing out when I had an idea for a series of posts.
I love music. I always have. Luckily, my Mom and Dad loved music too and from an early age, many of my memories revolve around the music that was playing in our house.
So, what I have decided to do is to write a series of posts covering various time periods of my life and what the musical influences were at that time.
The Beginning:
Dad had a very nice stereo system. Everywhere we moved, he always had it placed in a prominent spot so we could listen to some tunes. He and Mom would put on a record in the evenings to relax while my sister and I played with our toys. It was sort of a family night tradition. Dad had a great record collection and he would fastidiously clean each record prior to putting it on the turntable. In my mind I can see him pull out his cleaning kit and brush and carefully clean each one.
Even today, my taste in music is still closely linked to those early years. Basically we listened to Rock, Vocal Rock and Classical music. The Rock was defined by bands like the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Bob Dylan. Vocal rock was defined by bands like Simon and Garfunkel; Peter, Paul and Mary; and The Mommas and the Poppas. We also had a slew of classical records by Mozart and Bach and any number of other great composers. Then there was Dad strange fascination with Tijuana Brass. Yeah, I don’t get it either.
A great memory I have as a child is of the 1812 Overture:
My sister and I would dance around to it and when it came time for the cannon shots, we would jump up like frogs. Even today when I hear it, I have a sudden urge to get down on all fours in preparation of leaping up when the cannons go off.
One of my favorite Classical records was a Mozart one that had Eine Kleine Nichtmusik on it. Such a great composition:
Another record that we listened to was the travesty against classical music that was and is Hooked On Classics:
I’m not sure what possessed someone to take timeless music and put it to a techno/disco beat…Anyway, back then, I loved it! It did serve the purpose of increasing my love of Classical music as I became acquainted with various composers. Albeit, the bastardized versions of their songs.
For whatever reason, it seemed to be mandatory that if you were white and living in the suburbs, you HAD to own this record.
This was the first record where I actually memorized EVERY song. I even did little “air guitar” concerts with a broom handle.
Funny thought, for some reason when I was young, say under 10, I thought that ALL older bands no longer existed because they were dead or something. So imagine my surprise when Fleetwood Mac made a mini-resurgence in the 80’s.
Another iconic record that was in constant rotation at our house was The Eagles Greatest Hits:
That record had some great songs on it.
When Mom was in charge of the turntable, we were sure to gets lots of Simon and Garfunkel and Peter, Paul and Mary. She also loved the Carpenters and would sing along to Karen Carpenter. Moms voice sounds just like hers.
So there it is, my musical foundation. It was a very good foundation because I was exposed to so many different types of music. I still love rock, vocals and classical music. My tastes would change throughout the years, but those early years are wonderful memories in my mind.
I have a little write up on the side bar called “Why WunderKraut” that gives the reason for the name of this website and how the name sort of stuck to me.
Basically, I made up the name for a computer game in the mid 1990’s, my buddies thought it was funny and the name stuck as my gaming handle and well…here we are.
I came across something the other day while digging through Christmas decorations that was a blast from the past. It was a box with a name and address on it. I looked at it a few times before it dawned on me why the box was significant.
After using the name “Wonder Krout” in a game, my buddy mailed me some computer parts and he addressed it to WunderKraut….I adopted the correct spelling after this….
Netflix is rapidly becoming the America Online of the new century.
Seriously, it seems you can’t go to a website without getting a popup add for the darn thing. They even get around the popup blocker.
Full disclosure, we use the Netflix service and really enjoy the large DVD catalog and the convenience of having them mailed to my house. No late fees and the monthly cost is very reasonable.
This post has not been paid for by Netflix. Although, if they wanted to pay me, I would not be ashamed to take their money…
Let me go on record right up front that I hate Notre Dame. I always have and always will.
Why?
No real reason. It’s just one of those irrational hatreds like hating garden gnomes, pink flamingos and the French.
So, every Saturday during football season, my eyes scan the ticker at the bottom of the screen in hopes of seeing the Irish lose another game. Everyone needs a hobby I guess.
But….
Today, they fired Charlie Weis as their football coach. Sports Illustrated has a good article on the issues with Notre Dame. In the end I feel a bit sorry for ol’ Charlie, but not to bad. After all money may not buy happiness but having a ton of it when you lose your job sure helps with the transition.
Notre Dame job is death trap
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When they do, they’ll see a man who hit South Bend with all the bravado of a man at the height of his profession — three Super Bowl rings in four years; universal reverence for his role in developing Tom Brady from sixth-round draft pick to future Hall of Famer — only to leave five years later sufficiently scorned and humbled, literally slinking away into the night after his last game against Stanford.
UPDATE: The bums…geesh way to NOT play defense…seriously… Also, what’s with calling three 30 yard pass plays with 1:20 and 1 timeout left????? AND….why couldn’t the Tech receiver catch a simple first down pass while standing all alone….
There was an aroma of burnt chicken nuggets in the air Wednesday morning after trailer filled with chicken nugget dust caught fire.
— But to all those nugget lovers out there, don’t worry, the burnt load was not edible and was on its way to be disposed of.
Whatever you believe about reforming the health care system, you need to read this. Take a step back and think about what this means for you and your children.
Think about this.
The left says: You are crazy to claim your so-called freedoms are being taken away, and you are a lunatic to scream about an overly powerful state which will use violent coercion (no one goes to jail without the threat of violence if he doesn’t, after all) to enforce its notions of the “economic good.”
And with the next breath the left says: By the way, you shall either buy health care insurance or we will throw you in prison for two or three years.
I’m paranoid? Really? I am not fretting here about some remote and unlikely possibility. We are not speaking here of “slippery slopes” or in terms of “what comes next?”
We are instead objecting to a black-letter law spelled out for all to see in the very first piece of legislation you’re proposing.
Right out of the box. The state here — Pelosi, Reid, Obama — are claiming that they can imprison people for behavior that has never before even been hinted as being a crime, on the theory that such behavior constitutes unpatriotic economic behavior which is detrimental to the state’s balance sheets.
UPDATE: Well, good news and bad…the good news is that my CT Scan was normal, nothing showed up as being wrong. The bad news is that means I just dropped a bunch of money to STILL not know what is causing the pain in my side…my guess is they will want to do a colonoscopy. Boy! Won’t THAT be fun!
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I survived my CT scan MRI this morning.
It was kind of a strange experience, but it wasn’t to terribly bad.
I had to drink something 45 minutes before my appointment to help highlight things. For once the stuff a doctor gave me to drink actually had no taste at all. The best part was I was able to mix it with a Coke, so it went down nice and smooth.
After I finished all the initial paper work and signed all the forms that say that you understand you could die and that you won’t sue us, a nice lady took me back to the room. She was very friendly and did a good job explaining things to me.
She had me finish my drink and then it was time to get on the gurney and head into the machine.
In order to get a good picture, even more contrast was needed, so she hooked an IV up to my left arm. I hate IV’s. I really don’t like needles in general, but I think IV’s are the worst.
Maybe it’s because I had a bad experience with one when I had my wisdom teeth taken out.
About 10 years ago (almost exactly) I had to go see the oral surgeon to get my wisdom teeth taken out. They hooked an IV up to me and it hurt like a son of a…I was complaining about the IV as they gave me the anesthetic. In fact, my last words had something to do about how bad the darn IV hurt. Anyway, when I came to after the surgery, the first words out of my mouth had something to do with the blankety-blank IV…and on and on I went. Apparently, one of the side effects of the anesthetic is cursing. Who knew? The nurse later told my wife that sometimes people come out fighting and other times they come out crying. Guess what? I came out doing both.
I would curse and curse and then start sobbing…then curse again…then complain about the IV…then curse again….then sob some more…then exclaim that “I don’t understand”…then cry again. When Jen was coming down the hallway, she heard me and prayed it wasn’t me. To her dismay, it was me and I was a wreck. I don’t remember much about the whole thing, but the nurse and Jen filled me in later…
So, yeah, I don’t like IV’s.
I liked the nurse doing my CT scan MRI because she was honest with me. She mentioned the waiver I had filled out and asked if I had read it. Of course not. Well, it appears that the dye they inject into the IV can kill you. Seriously, your throat could swell up and you won’t be able to breathe.
Well, isn’t that comforting?
But, she said, that probably wouldn’t happen to me. I asked what would happen if it DID happen to me and she calmly explained that she would call 911….great….
At least she was honest. She also got the IV in the first time. No digging around for her. She said the dye would make me feel warm all over and that I would feel it in the back of my throat and it might even cause a burning sensation.
Oh, and one more thing, it will feel like you have just wet your pants…but you haven’t and that’s normal…
They took a few preliminary measurements and had me keep my hands raised back over/behind my head.
Then it was time for the dye and the actual imaging.
She wasn’t joking. I did feel warm all over and I felt it mostly in my throat. I felt it slowly go throughout my body and about the time it reached my groin, no joke, I thought I had just wet myself. Thankfully, it was just a feeling…this time…
What followed next was about ten minutes of breathing, then not breathing while the machine moved me in and out taking pictures of my abdomen and pelvis. Then that was it. Not to bad.
The machine was not too bad. It wasn’t one of those new fangled open air MRI’s but it wasn’t a cave either.
It looked a lot like this one:
It felt weird going into the thing. One moment I felt like I was stepping through Star Gate and about to enter a parallel universe and the next I felt like I was being inserted into a giant donut. Your mileage may vary.
They said my doctor should have my results today and I hope to hear back from her soon so we can finally figure this thing out.
Yeah so I am still having that mystery pain in my left side. It doesn’t hurt all the time, but lately when it does hurt, it really hurts.
To that end, I tried to get a CT scan about a month ago but since I was within the pre-existing conditions window, my insurance had to run a pre-existing conditions review. No big deal…..
The breakdown appears to have been on my doctor’s side. They claimed they mailed things, but my insurance never got it. I would usually believe my doctor, but they didn’t seem to have a record of the request and it took some effort for them to figure out that they sent something…or didn’t.
Long story short, I have my CT scan scheduled for Thursday morning. Hopefully, they will be able to figure out what is going on and then fix it.
If they give me any cool pictures of my guts, I will be sure to post them here!!!
Well, well, well…I had a GREAT time in California last week! As promised, I have lots of pictures after the jump. Make sure you check them out.
The reason for heading out west was to attend a church conference up in Redding, CA. The conference ran from Monday night through Wednesday night. Since I don’t get out west much, I decided to leave extra early to take in some sites and to be able to attend Sunday services at the church.
I flew to San Francisco on Friday and headed up 101 across the Golden Gate Bridge.
I love bridges and I have watched shows on the building of the Golden Gate for years, so it was surreal to be on the bridge. The scenic overlook is worth the extra bit of traffic navigation, but as you can see, the views are amazing.
After crossing the bridge, I headed north on 101 until crossing the bay over to Richmond. From there, it was north on I-80 and I-5 to Redding.
Meeting Ken in the morning. He promised firearms and possibly live targets. I hope he’s talking about animals……..why do I have a vision of The Naked Prey in my head…..
Heading out to California in the morning. I will be gone for a week in Redding, CA for a church conference and some site seeing. I will see what time I have for posting.
If anything, some pictures will be tossed up!
The highlight will be meeting Ken. If I don’t come back, I blame him.
For some odd reason today’s spam contained nothing but lines from poems written by Bret Harte (1836-1902).
Some of the lines were from a poem called “A Newport Romance”, including this gem:
But I swear that the air just now was fraught
With the odor of mignonette!
The other comes from a poem called “What the Bullet Sang”. I liked this one and I’m not what you would call a big fan of poetry:
O joy of creation
To be!
O rapture to fly
And be free!
Be the battle lost or won,
Though its smoke shall hide the sun,
I shall find my love,–the one
Born for me!
I shall know him where he stands,
All alone,
With the power in his hands
Not o’erthrown;
I shall know him by his face,
By his godlike front and grace;
I shall hold him for a space,
All my own!
It is he–O my love!
So bold!
It is I–all thy love
Foretold!
It is I. O love! what bliss!
Dost thou answer to my kiss?
O sweetheart! what is this
Lieth there so cold?
Went deer hunting last weekend. Only saw two deer and I shot and missed one of them. Took Nathan hunting Tuesday evening and we didnt see a thing.
Work is hectic. Trying to finish one project up and another project is imploding on itself. *sigh*
Came down with a sinus infection Tuesday night. Today is the coughing but feeling a little better day.
I am cutting the grass for the last time this season this afternoon. It is always a wonderful feeling to put the mower away for the next 6 to 7 months!
We are going clothes shopping tomorrow. Normally this would not be something I would be very stoked about, but this time its to buy me some new threads because I have lost enough weight to make it a necessity.
On the weight loss front, Jen and I have lost a bunch of weight. I may even post a before picture and where I am now…which is half way to my goal…Only 25 more pounds.
I am now at my wedding day weight, but I dont look like I did then. Namely because back then I was lifting weights regularly and so the weight was up in my shoulders and chest….not its all around my belly. Gravity sucks.
We did go on a mini-vacation to the beach last week. Had a great time and I will post pictures later.
Charlie lost a tooth Monday night and the Tooth fairy left him $3.
I gave my testimony at church Sunday. If you ever wanted to know how I got to where I am, here’s your chance. You can get the podcast here or you can go here to directly download the mp3 file.
Today’s update is brought to you by your company’s safety team:
Somehow this always happened to him. It struck him as odd that most of the calls he missed, he never heard the phone ring. Even though it was right next to him.
“Maybe they called while I was on the phone”, he pondered, “No, because then it would have made that annoying little beep while I was on the other line and I don’t remember that.”
*Sigh*
“I guess I’ll have to check my messages.”
To most people, checking their messages was a routine sort of thing, something most of us do hundreds of times without much thought, but to Charlie, it was an incredible inconvenience, especially since he got his new phone.
First you had to dial into the mailbox program thing and since the phone had a touch screen, when prompted to enter the password, you were forced to hold the phone in the palm of your hand, as flat as possible. This was so the “intelligent” software of the phone would kick in and turn the screen on. Once the screen was on, you had to hit another button to have access to the dial pad. After tricking the phone into letting you dial in your password, other hurdles still existed. Inevitably he probably had forgotten to delete some old message and of course the phone wanted to start with the skipped message from 2 months ago by some government bureaucrat droning on and on about some project he knew would never happen. Sure there were ways to navigate around such technological issues, but that would require reading the manual and he couldn’t remember where he put it after he unpacked his phone.
It’s not so much that Charlie was a technophobe, it’s more that technology had a vendetta against him.
No, really, technology determined a long time ago to make an example out of Charlie for some, as yet unknown, reason. He would often speak of his long running battle with technology and his utter bewilderment as to why he had been chosen to carry the scarlet letter, marking him as technologically cursed.
Growing up, he never had cool high tech toys. He never owned a computer or a Nintendo. Their one TV was some ancient RCA, vacuum tube monster. When they got cable when he was 10 years old, at least it came with a cable box with digital numbers. That was a giant technological leap forward as far as he was concerned. Granted, the cable box did not have a remote control, but at least it was something digital. Since the good old “Radiation King” emitted so much heat, placing the cable box on top of it was an invitation to a house fire, so it was placed on the bottom shelf of the rickety circa 1970 TV stand. It was the perfect height for causing permanent damage to your spine if you planned on extended channel surfing activities. Charlie found the perfect solution, he could stand beside the TV and use his big toe to change the channels. In this way he could flip for hours, albeit while receiving a near lethal dose of radiation.
Maybe that was when technology swore a blood oath to destroy him.
Charlie checked his phone again. 4:30. Almost time to go home.
He shook his head.
“It’s too late to check my messages today. Knowing my luck, it will be someone who HAS to talk to me today. I’ve got too much to do at home”
That was a lie.
Sure the front yard needed to be mowed, but that could always wait another day. His big plans for the night revolved around ordering Chinese food and playing Call of Duty.
Thinking of Mongolian Chicken with vegetables closed the deal for him. He would worry about the message in the morning.
I got stuck behind a lady writing a check at Wal-mart. It wasn’t just that she was writing a check, that was bad enough in itself, but she apparently split the bill up three ways. So once her check writing was finally complete, she handed the lady 2 $20’s and then pulled out her debit/credit card. I know, I know, we’ve all been there, well sans the check, but come on!
It brought back a great post by good old Jeff at the now defunct The Shape of Days. I posted about it here. To bad his blog is not longer with us, because the part I quoted was just one of many funny parts.
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REPOST BEGINS HERE
My last rant about banks prompted my monkey brain to remember a very funny post by Jeff over at The Shape of Days regarding his experience trying to buy something at a computer store. The entire post is hilarious and closely mirrors every experience I have at your local big box computer store. You really need to go read it.(editors note: Jeff’s site is no longer up and running…lets observe a moment of silence for yet another fallen blog)
But the part that my brain remembered had to do with people who still insist on writing checks to purchase things at stores. Oh sure, I still send a few checks a month to pay bills, but I can’t remember the last time I wrote a check at a store.
Says Jeff:
With item finally in hand, you navigate the labyrinth of aisles and intersections to reach the front, where out of sixteen, count ’em, sixteen check-out registers, precisely one is in operation. And that one’s in use. By a little old lady who wants to buy a wireless router, though God knows why. And yes, you guessed it. She wants to pay with a check.
A word about checks for those of you in the audience who were born after man descended from the trees and developed a taste for day-old gazelle hindquarter on the barren grasslands of Mother Africa: A check used to be a piece of paper that was exchanged in lieu of money. We know this because we’ve found prehistoric checks in the fossil record, buried deep beneath the sedimentary rock that we make middle-school kids go look at as their teacher tries to wow them with the breathless pronouncement that once … this was all a sea. The last known use of a check, or cheque as it was known then, was in a transaction between prolific 18th-century New England religious leader Cotton Mather and his wainwright, a Boston resident named Surcease Weatherborough. Mather hired Weatherborough to repair a wagon wheel for him, paying him with a scrap of parchment endorsed by the Bank of the Old North Church promising the delivery of two bushels of barley and the virtue of any one of Mather’s six daughters except Charity who had been promised to a wealthy son of the Revere family nigh on three summers past, payable next Tuesday or such time as permitting. No actual checks have been used in the conduct of commerce since that time.
The point I’m trying to make here is that nobody uses checks. Okay? Nobody.
This is a very cool idea. If you have loved ones or know of people who died in the Vietnam War, this would be a wonderful tribute to them,
The organizers of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Federal Express are issuing a nationwide “call for photos” to help document the stories of those lost in the war.
The images will be compiled and displayed at an education center near the Vietnam Wall on the National Mall.
I saw this last week and chuckled a bit. On the TV show Wife Swap…yeah, I’ve never heard of it either and it turns out it’s not what you’re thinking…anyway, the new Mom/wife shows up at the house and begins to toss out all the junk food. The little boy can’t take it and when she tosses bacon in the trash, he exclaims “Bacon is good for me!”
Like I said, I chuckled a bit, but now I have to post on it because someone made a dance remix.
UPDATE: Wow! One heck of a game! Tech won, but only just!
Heading to Atlanta to watch Georgia Tech beat up on Clemson. It’s going to be on ESPN so I guess I won’t do anything to draw to much attention to myself…
Madi fell and fractured her elbow late Sunday. Today she got a cast/splint thing on her left arm. I will post her x-ray tonight. I know how much you guys love the details.
I was out exercising…yeah I know, hard to believe…and she came out so happy. Isn’t that how it always happens? I mean, one second the kid is laughing and joking and then it all goes horribly wrong. Anyway, like I said, I was out front exercising and she hopped on her scooter and was going very slow…I mean very slow…when she hit a tiny dent in the concrete, which stopped her wheels dead in their tracks, which caused her to fall. She fell straight down on her left elbow.
Poor thing. We go back in a week for them to look at it again.
UPDATE: Well, I’ve lost 12 pounds and my blood pressure is a very respectable 123/78, but I may be pregnant…I have an ultra sound scheduled for next Thursday.
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Heading to the doctor for a physical…though I am afraid the doctor is going to tell me there is nothing they can do…about my back hair and my strangely fast growing ear hair…
Have you ever been eating beef jerky and wished that it had some sort of energy kick to it? Happens to me ALL the time. Well friend, you are in luck. Now there is such a product:
Two of the councilmen got into a heated exchange about a new fire truck that was on the agenda.
One councilman from the northern part of the community was complaining to the councilman from the southern part of the county that because his district is more rural, they get overlooked when it’s time to spend money on roads, equipment and what not.
The other councilman defended himself by explaining that 90% of the tax revenue comes from the southern district and had the greatest need for the new fire truck. The northern councilman was very upset that his district would be getting an old fire truck while the southern district got the new one.
That was all fine and dandy. It’s what happens in a community that has large urban and rural areas. There is bound to be disagreement on where to allocate resources, with the rural areas probably feeling neglected.
BUT….
The councilman from the northern district got frustrated and let his real feelings slip. This is what he actually said in an open council meeting in front of God and the press. It was so stunning, I jotted it down right then:
When I was a kid we rode the school bus and when we wore them out we gave them to the black kids.
That’s how you are treating me. You don’t want to give us a new engine, you want to wear them out in the south and send them north.
For those of you not from the south and are not hip to the hidden codes from down here, allow me to translate. What this guy meant and what he almost, ALMOST said was: “You’re treating me like a n***er!”
No, he didn’t say those words, but it was what he meant. I was stunned and offended. Jen asked me if anyone called him on it, but sadly no, no one said anything.
When I run across things like that, I am always shocked that people still feel and think that way. Come on people, it’s 2009 for goodness sakes.
I just put my head down and hoped he would shut up. Thankfully, he abandoned that line of thought and the meeting continued.
We were going to be out of town this weekend, but, well, it didn’t quite work out.
Two of the kids were going to a friends house and another was going to stay with my Mom. That left Jen and I having only the baby for the weekend. This was great because we were heading to Dothan, AL for a church conference and the baby could go to the nursery.
Bummer for us and Charlie, but Charlie woke up Friday with a fever. Jen ran him to the doctor where he tested negative for flu (swine flu is in town and going around the schools) and he tested negative for strep throat.
But…
It meant that we both couldn’t go to the conference. So we did what we usually do in these cases. We tag team.
I left out Friday afternoon and attended the Friday night and Saturday morning meeting. Then I drove home, tagged Jen and she drove over for the Saturday night and Sunday morning meetings. While it isn’t optimal, it beats not going at all.
Charlie missed yesterday as well, but he is back to school today.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention, but our new entertainment center showed up Friday. Take a look:
Yes, that’s the Wii up top…hey, had to hook up the essential equipment.
I have been meaning to do a post about local hot dog eating establishments across Albany ever since I did the infamous “How To Eat A Burrito” post.
Today I finally did it. Let me tell you, it was a sacrifice of love for you, my loyal reader(s?). See, I am on a diet and well, I had to break said diet to bring you the 411 on all the hot dog goodness in my town.
Shall we begin? Awesome.
There are three main hot dog eatitoriums in Albany: Jimmie’s Hot Dogs, Lil Red Dog House and Hot Dog King.
Read the rest of the review after the jump…come on…you know you want to…don’t make me beg…ok, just a bit… (more…)
(1) First is the “plain sense” reading: JBJ has literally seen one million faces, and of the one million faces he has seen, he has rocked all of them. This is probably the most audacious interpretation of the statement, as it posits a 1:1 faces seen to faces [seen and] rocked ratio. For this to be true, every face belonging to the set “faces seen by Jon Bon Jovi” also belongs to the set “faces rocked by Jon Bon Jovi.”
This is what happens when a train runs a signal. Wow!
Back in my railroad days, I road a few trains. One of the things you always did was to call out the signals as you passed them. Helped make sure everyone on the crew saw them. The train with the camera was in the right. The other one ran a signal.
Ever feel that maybe you missed your calling in life? Yeah, lately I feel that I should have gotten a job as a computer program Beta tester. Why? Because it seems that I am able to kill programs by doing, well, the very thing it was designed to do….*sigh*
I have a sudden and unexplained love for all things Beach Boys. Spent good money buying lots of songs off iTunes. Now I am subjecting my kids to them….
I set up and ran a 118 basin HEC-HMS model at work and it actually ran without errors the first time! Yeah, I know, I’m scared too. Hold me.
Have I mentioned we are going camping this fall? I can’t wait! We are going down to the Gulf Coast to Grayton Beach State Park. The only thing about going in early October is the threat of hurricanes. Keep your fingers crossed.
I bought a bike last spring. I rode it a good bit last spring and summer, but it has been parked for some time now. How long? Well, let’s just say that a small vine has grown around the front wheel and by small I mean I may be able to swing on it.
I really like the name Trinity for a girl…but the stupid Matrix movies ruined any thought of that….well, that and the fact that we are not having any more kids…at least thats the plan.
I have been rather apathetic about writing lately. Not sure why. I have lots to say. How about I promise to write something interestingamusing legible each day? Deal? Deal.
With that thought, here is a list of topics that are currently taking up space in my head:
By the way…we watched Revolutionary Road last night. It had my favorite girl Kate Winslet in it along side Leonardo DiCaprio. We both love them and think they are very good actors. The movie was depressing as anything and was very tragic, but the acting! Wow! They were both wonderful!
I love my job, but sometimes you find yourself spouting off things like this from the User Manual for HEC-HMS:
If this value is left blank, it will be automatically calculated as 0.2 times the potential retention [Ia=0.2*S], which is calculated from the curve number [S=(1000-10*CN)/CN]
Back in the day, Wizbang had a weekly round up of blogger submitted posts that were the worst of the worst from that week. Being self submitted meant that the person hosting the round up for the week could make fun of them without fear of hurting feelings. It was all in good fun. Trust me, it is very difficult to be entertaining every day. That means a blogger is bound to toss up a post that honestly isn’t worth the 1’s and 0’s it’s written on.
Since I stumbled upon this old post from August of 2005(!), I figured I would re-read it. I think I was funny! The sad part is that a good half of the links in the post do not exist anymore. In some cases the blogs still do, but the post in question doesn’t. It’s always sad to find that blogs have disappeared for the internets. Just click through the blogroll of a large website and you will see what I mean.
It’s quickly becoming a blogging ghost town out there.
What are your weaknesses?
27. “I get angry easily and I went to jail for domestic violence. But I won’t get mad at you.”
— Do you have any questions?
12. “If this doesn’t work out can I call you to go out sometime?”
— Use three adjectives to describe yourself
34. “I hate questions like this.”
But to me, the funniest one of the whole list is this one:
When have you demonstrated leadership skills?
31. “Well my best example would be in the world of online video gaming. I pretty much run the show; it takes a lot to do that.”
You may remember some time back that I was looking for a new phone.
Well, I still don’t know that I want to jump into the iPhone/Blackberry/Palm smart phone market just yet. I don’t know why, but since I am sticking with Verizon, I have to work with what they have, and to be honest, I just didn’t want the new Blackberry Tour. Maybe the next generation of the Blackberry Storm will be my entry to this market, but as it stands today, I’m just not ready.
So….
I went with the in between option. Not a full functioning smart phone, but better than my current little flip phone. I have decided on the LG enV® TOUCH.
The reason I chose this phone is that I really didnt like the feel of the other touch screens in regards to the QWERTY keyboard. Typing by touching the screen did not seem very easy to me. It may have over time, but since this is a transition phone, why not get a standard QWERTY keyboard. That is why I like this phone; it flips open so you can use the full keyboard. That and I have had good luck with LG phones. The other touch screen things are nice and all, but since I am not getting the full internet package, it’s just eye candy at this point.
Maybe when I upgrade in a year and a half, Verizon will have better smart phones. Maybe the Storm II will rock! Maybe they will start to carry the Palm line. Maybe an iPhone. Who knows.
In response to all the talk about turning in law abiding Americans to the White House for daring to express themselves (see here and here), I feel this picture perfectly sums up this administrations position:
My brother-in-law and his wife made a trip to Atlanta to get her Mac fixed. We decided to tag along.
The kids had never been to Stone Mountain before so we figured we would stop there, but first we stopped in Columbus, GA to see my Dad at the new National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning.
Dad works there on the weekends and he gave us a tour of the first section of the museum called “The Last 100 Yards”. This section tells the story of the American infantryman from the Revolution through the current conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each war is marked by a scene from one important battle. It was amazing to hear him describe the scenes and how the American infantryman has evolved over the history of our great country. After this section we toured around the rest of the museum. If you are in Columbus, go check it out.
Well, we finally made it through all 11 original Star Trek movies. Thank you NetFlix.
We really did enjoy watching them all in order. You kind of grew attached to the various crews, both the original and the Next Generation.
I did grow tired of the various messages in the movies. Such as:
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home – we killed all the whales, yet an alien probe has been sent to destroy earth if it can’t talk to the darn whales. Lots of evil 20th century lines. (movie came out in 1986 – think Save The Whales t-shirts and bumper stickers)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country – The Klingon’s military industrial complex has destroyed their ozone layer and they are all going to die!!11!!1!! (movie came out in 1991 – think our own ozone hole, which oddly enough we don’t hear anything about any more…wonder why that is)
Star Trek: Insurrection – The Ba’ku have shunned technology. Technology is evil!!! Just because you have superior technology, does not make you a superior race/planet/country.
In the end, my favorite was Star Trek: First Contact. I really like the way Picard had to deal with the borg. He actually had real emotion, real hate. His scene where he explains that he wants to make them pay:
Lily Sloane: Jean Luc, blow up the damn ship!
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: No! Noooooooooo!
[Smashes glass and model ships with his phaser] Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I will not sacrifice the Enterprise. We’ve made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And *I* will make them pay for what they’ve done.
Now it’s onto the Firefly series. We watched our first episode last night. Very enjoyable.
To “celebrate” this “achievement”, WunderKraut.com has obtained the original photos from the “moon landings”. As we all know, NASA doctored the photos and staged the entire “landing” in the New Mexico desert.
Last week I picked Madi up from pre-school and took her on a lunch date. Life has been so busy lately and she needed some time away from the other kids.
She chose to eat at the Mall and to get Chinese food
After lunch we went shopping for a dress for her. My goodness that girl can shop. How at 5 years old she knows how to do this is beyond me. We would go into a store and she would walk around and pull things out and put them back, the whole time muttering to herself “That is pretty. I don’t like that. That is too big”. It was so much fun to watch her work. After a few minutes, she would announce that what she was looking for was not to be found at this particular store and that we should try another one.
It was good to spend time with her. She always makes me smile.
The WunderFamily is heading up to Tennessee this weekend. Get ready for an 8 hour drive with 4 kids!!! It won’t be that bad
We are meeting up with several of the families we traveled to China with. It will be so good to see everyone, especially the little girls! I can’t wait to see all the China babies. They have all grown so much since that very cold January of last year.
Saturday is a fun filled day as the place we are going is having a China adoption day. Lots of crafts, food and fun. The big event that day will be watching Cirque De Chine which is a Chinese acrobat group. That should be fun.
Sunday will be spent hanging out with our friends and finding something to do. Monday is the trip home.
Needless to say, Jen is busy at home getting everything ready. Packing for a family of 6 takes longer than you would think.
Looking ahead to late fall, I realized that I still have an abundance of venison in the freezer. I don’t want any of the tasty Bambi bits to go to waste, so I’m stepping up my efforts to ingest every scrap.
To that end, I fried up some cubed steak last night. It was wonderful, as you will see in the pictures, but I’m left wondering if there are better ways to prepare this cut of meat. Any ideas?
Onto the pictures:
I used two packages of cubed steak. I have no idea how much is in each package, but after rinsing and drying, this is what I had to work with:
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.
—
In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the ‘Californian large’, extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan
Ladies and gentlemen, er, we’ve just lost the picture, but, uh, what we’ve seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over — ‘conquered’, if you will — by a master race of giant space ants. It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to…toil in their underground sugar caves.
The immortal words of Kent Brockman from [1F13] Deep Space Homer
Well, well, well, I can’t believe it’s July already.
That means only one more month till school starts back *groan* That means getting up early, homework and studying. Just think we only have 16 more years of this…
I have found that we have been way to busy this summer. It seems like we’ve had something going on every weekend. This makes it difficult to keep up with my yard. Luckily, it didn’t rain much after the first week in June. But still, I could bale hay in the back and side yards.
My garden is doing well. My regular tomato plants died due to a fungal disease. Man, I hope that isn’t how I go out…Mr. WunderKraut died from a strange fungal disease. It would be like dying from athlete’s foot. Anyway. I spent a good part of the day Saturday working in the garden. I pulled EVERY SINGLE weed in the entire garden. I mean, I pulled them, roots and all. Then I put down a good thick layer of wheat straw mulch. So you can imagine my surprise when the next morning I found weeds growing in the garden. It took 24 hours, but there they were, standing about 2 inches high. How is that possible?
I am due for a new cell phone. We are with Verizon and have been very happy with them, but I want an iPhone…but AT&T service stinks down here. It really does. Plus all my friends and family are on Verizon, so free calls. Since no iPhone, I’ve been looking at various other smart phones. I don’t know, I may just end up getting one of the new Blackberry’s and be done with it. Do you have an opinion?
And lastly, I really like Heinz ketchup. All other ketchups taste nasty to me.
I am in the midst of reading two books right now. It isn’t like me to read multiple books at the same time, but my reading of choice has forced it on me.
First off I am reading the Federalist Papers:
Wow. I am only 100 pages into it, but wow. I tell you what the framers of our Constitution understood what they were doing. They thought it all out. Oddly enough, they didn’t mention all the super secret “rights” that modern day judges read into the thing.
*sigh*
Anyway, it is an amazing book, but it is hard reading. Very intellectual stuff and I want to really understand what they are trying to say.
So….when my brain hurts, I turn to my Father’s Day present:
Those of you that know me already know I love history and World War 2 in particular, so this book will come as no surprise. However, you probably don’t know the odd fascination I have with all things mundane and routine.
What I mean is that I do enjoy reading about battles, massive campaigns, amazing Generals, and strategic planning, but there is something that interests me even more than that.
I have an odd fascination for the day to day lives of soldiers in war. How did they eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, etc. When they fought, how did they fight. I don’t mean that Division A or Regiment X or Company B took such and such objective. I want to know HOW they fought. How did the move in combat? What formations did they use? How did they adjust to meet the enemy? How did a tank unit deploy for battle? What did it look like? How do you aim a mortar? How did the men stay supplied? What did the average soldier carry into battle?
You get the point.
When I find books that deal with the minute details of combat, I buy it. So far this book is just what I was looking for.
My Dad probably notices this because when I ask about his service in Vietnam, I ask questions like: What was your first day in country like? When did they put you in the helicopter on an actual mission? How did you learn to shoot from the helicopter? Did you learn by “walking” your tracers or were there other ways? When you say you were shot down, what did that look like? What was going through your mind?
I guess it goes back to how I enjoy history. I enjoy the broad knowledge, but I really enjoy the personal stories.
So, if you have other books that deal in this subject, please point them out to me.
I bought the kids the Wii game LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga a few months ago. Since it’s an older game, it was only $20. At the register (Toys R Us), the lady asked if I wanted to buy the protection plan for the game. I automatically gave her my standard answer of no. But then I hesitated and asked about it. She explained that it covered the game for a year. If anything happened, even scratches, I would get a new game.
Wow! What a bargain!
Kids are rough on DVD’s, CD’s and video games. I love DVD’s and CD’s but let me tell you, VHS and cassette tapes could go through hell and back and still work. I’ve even cut a VHS tape and spliced it back together. Not so with DVD’s and CD’s. One bad scratch and it’s over!
So, as expected, the Star Wars game (very fun BTW) got a big old scratch and wouldn’t work in the Wii.
No problemo, I have my $3.99 protection plan!
I ran by Toys R Us and they explained that since it had been over 30 days since I purchased the game, I had to deal with the protection plan people and handed me a pamphlet on the coverage.
Looking back, that is where I went wrong. Should’ve asked for the pamphlet prior to purchasing the protection plan.
Why?
You guessed it, damages due to accidental handling (i.e. scratches) are not covered.
The lady lied to me. Well that is a strong word. She mislead me.
I am left to call Toys R Us to complain about how I was mislead.
But ultimately, it is my fault on two levels. The first is because I let the kids handle the game themselves and the second because I didn’t ask to see details on the plan.
While looking into my question about text editors and word processors in my previous post, I ran across this awesome quote:
A text editor is to a word processor what a scalpel is to a giant heavy complicated sword which crashes constantly, uses a proprietary file format, and costs $300.
I am thinking about writing again. Something bigger than this blog.
However, I have a slight problem….
Here’s the deal, Word sucks. Oh sure I use it everyday for work. I write letters and reports all the time with it and it works wonderfully. But I can’t imagine writing a book with Word.
Ever notice strange symbols in some blog posts, especially old ones? Yeah, well, I tend to write a post here in the WordPress post editor thing, then I cut and paste it to Word to check for spelling issues. Shocking I know. Then I cut/paste it back to the editor and hit publish.
That process works fine as long as I dont use ‘, ” or … because those seem to be special Microsoft Word encoded or something, in Word anyway…WordPress doesn’t know what it’s looking at and turns them into:
they’re
that’s
“moderatesâ€
The odd thing is that WordPress doesn’t turn them into those odd characters until some time later. Not sure why it takes time. So, I am very careful to only change spelling errors in Word. Any punctuation changes I make in the WordPress editor.
Here’s my question: If I am going to be writing a 400 page book, or even just archiving my best posts, what should I use? I want something that is stripped down enough that it can be opened by anything in the future. So, I guess I need something a step above Notepad.
Yeah, so there was this class I had to take while in engineering school called Engineering Economy. It was a class full of present worth’s, future worth’s, P given F’s and F given P’s…all sorts of things that make a college student fall asleep.
Turns out I actually needed to learn that stuff…sort of…
Who knew?
Anyway, I was trying to calculate the value of something x number of years out starting with a given value and a given rate. I know how to do it by hand (spreadsheet) but see, the thing is, I’m lazy. I know there is a formula and that my calculator has it as a pre-programmed input, but who needs that when you have the internet. A few Google clicks later and I had my answer. The same goes with an amortization schedule for a home loan. Oh sure, I can generate one myself, I even wrote a FORTRAN program to do it for me (long time ago kids), but why use my brain?
I felt bad after being so lazy, so I looked up the formula:
Where F is the future value, P is the present value, i is the rate and n is the number of years.
Yep it works.
Also, I found a cool homework assignment that had a great summary and where I found the above equation. Reading through it brought back all sorts of latent memories…man I should have paid more attention in the class. One problem in particular demonstrates why they called this Engineering Economy and it also shows that this stuff is actually useful:
Exercise 2: Your engineering firm needs a rapid prototyping machine. The company gives you two options. In Option 1 you purchase the machine outright for $50,000, pay a maintenance contract of $1,000 per year, and expect to be able to resell the machine after 10 years at a salvage value of $10,000. In Option 2, you lease the machine at $7,000 per year and pay no maintenance, but receive no salvage. Assume that you will be able to take in $8,000 per year in income from this machine. Also assume that an additional option is not to buy the machine at all, but to put the money in the bank at 5% interest. Which option will be best for the firm?
I bet Ken will solve this for me…
Heh, just read this in the homework:
There was a time when every bit of that made sense to me. My poor dying brain…
Ever wake up feeling depressed for no real reason?
That happened to me Monday morning and it’s been a struggle since then for me to climb out of the hole.
It probably had to do with the fact that Jen and I had a wonderful weekend alone with not a care in the world and Monday morning rolled around and reality hit.
It aggravates me when I let circumstances dictate my mood. Coming home in a not fun mood sets the tone for the rest of the house. The kids only want to play with me and I can’t shake out of my mood. I hate it. Last night was better and I am determined to have a wonderful evening with the kids.
Life is full of choices and I strongly believe that I have a choice when I wake up if I am going be full of joy or down in the dumps. Choices require self control which is another quality I sometimes struggle with.
Gal 5:22 NIV – But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Gal 5:23 NIV – gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
So, with the Holy Spirit living inside of me I have a powerful weapon which allows me to make good choices (self-control) and to have joy in my heart (umm…joy…duh).
But I do have a dirty little secret…Until last week, I had never, EVER seen a Star Trek movie…
There…I said it.
Nope.
Never seen one.
Never watched an entire TV episode either.
As a kid I really liked the first 2 Star Wars movies. Why only the first 2? Because even as a 10 year old kid I still knew Return of the Jedi sucked. Anyway, while I liked the movies and had my fair share of action figures, I never got that into the movies.
Case in point, while in college I had to write a paper about how technology was used in the Star Wars universe. I hadn’t seen the movies since they were in theaters all those years ago, so I borrowed my roommates VHS tapes to re-watch them. Half jokingly, I inquired if in fact Darth Vader was Luke’s father. My roommate about had a stroke and exclaimed that this writing assignment was being wasted on someone like me.
At the same time, I viewed the Star Trek movies as cheesy Star Wars knock offs. I know they have nothing in common, but that has been my feeling about the series.
But all that changed with the release of the new Star Trek movie. The previews looked amazing and the reviews seem to be positive. Not one to jump on a bandwagon, I decided that before watching the new movie, I would sit down and watch all the pervious Star Trek movies.
With that decision, I loaded up our NetFlix queue with all 10 Star Trek movies. There are 10 movies? Who knew?
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek: Generations
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: Nemesis
The first one was terrible. It seemed like they were going for a 2001 A Space Odyssey look for this movie and it just bored me to tears. It was an interesting premise, but honestly, the movie could have been 30 minutes long if they had cut out the long, LONG, boring camera sequences of the Enterprise.
The second one wasn’t half bad. Another good story line and this time the director canned all the artsy sequences and the movie flowed much better.
The Search for Spock was pretty good as well. I like how they continue to build on the story line of the previous movie.
We watched Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Sunday and it is the first of what I fear will be a troubling trend. You know what? I enjoy going to movies because I like to escape from reality, from the news cycle…so movies that have blatant political messages really bother me. This is the movie where they go back in time to save the whales. This was all the rage back in the mid 1980’s. The movie was full of lines bemoaning the 20th century world and our lack of environmental thinking. Spare me.
We should get in the next two movies this week. Looking ahead on IMDB, it appears that there is at least one more political/environmental movie in which the Klingons lose their Ozone layer and face death. Boo Hoo.
It makes me want to rip open a box of 1980’s hairspray and have at it.
My comment filter has gotten much better over the years as I’ve continued to add spam words. The list would make you blush and is a mix of pharmaceuticals, tons of pr0n, gambling and a whole host of other terms which make me question the mental health of my fellow man.
This list also gives credence to what is known as Rule #34: if you can think of it, someone has already made a porn of it…no exceptions.
So, in summary. Spam is bad. It is evil. It is often times graphic, violent and disgusting.
And I’ve gotten over 6,000 spam comments in my years of running WunderKraut.com and that’s just the ones that actually got caught by my spam list. It doesn’t include the thousands of spam comments that have made it through the filter over the years.
I can honestly say that I am more in love with Jen today than I was the day I married her. It’s been an amazing 14 years. Full of ups and downs and tons of good memories.
My how times have changed since that day in June 14 years ago. We woke up this morning with a baby in the bed and a 5 year old on the floor next to our bed! I wouldn’t change things for the world.
I love you Baby! You are my best friend and you have my heart.
For a longer recounting of life with my amazing wife, see here.
Went to go see Dad yesterday in Columbus, Georgia.
Ft. Benning is about to open a new infantry museum and Dad is one of the volunteers. He really enjoys what he does and can’t wait till the whole museum opens up in a few weeks. We definitely plan on going back once it’s open to get the WunderDad tour!
Anyway, they have an IMAX theater at the museum and they were showing Monsters vs Aliens in 3D. We’ve seen the movie before, but not on the 5 story tall IMAX screen. It was amazing!
NOTE: This is a repost of something I wrote back in 2006 after reading a great book about Omaha Beach. Since today is the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings, I felt it was fitting to repost this.
As Mr. Bingley points out, let’s also not forget the brave men who won the Battle of Midway on the same day two years prior to Normandy.
Then there’s Patton’s famous speech as it was really given. Stop by and give it a read.
It is amazing that any of our guys made it off that beach alive. That battle is a testament to the spirit of America. The American military has always been wonderfully adaptive. Personal initiative is highly regarded and it showed on Omaha Beach June 6, 1944.
With Captains and Lieutenants dead and with the invasion plan in the tank, Sergeants, Privates and Navy and Coast Guard Coxswains improvised. They adapted to the conditions and ultimately won the day.
Amazing.
Balkoski puts the casualties at 4,700 men killed, wounded or missing. 4,700 men in one day. Strewn across less than 5 miles of beachfront.
Here is a portion of a letter written a few days after by Capt. Joseph Dawson, Commander, Company G, 116th Infantry, 1st Division:
What I’m trying to say is that justice can never be properly accorded to the magnificent fortitude and heroism of the fine American soldier and man. He is without peer, and these past few days have implanted in the hearts of all a realization of the true greatness of these men. I say this because I’ve had an honor never to be equaled in being part of a group that will ever stand as a symbol of greatness to all who witnessed or know how they measured up to the supreme test without faltering or wavering. I cannot say more for my heart forbears it, but God is my witness that the men of my company lived, fought, and died in true glory.
I am forever indebted to the brave men living and dead who have fought for this great country of ours.
Just thought I’d put up a random post about things I like and that bother me on the internet.
Adds
Pop-up adds are from the Devil. Luckily, the blockers have really cut down on the number that show up on my computer. Still, whoever thought of them should be beaten.
One type of add particularly bothers me. They are the adds for refinancing that have some dancing girl, ala the dancing baby from back in the “Ally McBeal” days. Really, come on, is that the best you can do? Seriously??? You think I’m going to trust a company with something as large as my mortgage when they advertise with a dancing girl on an animated add?
You know what? I think that dancing chick wants me to refinance my mortgage
Facebook
I like Facebook, I really do, but not for the reasons you may think. I don’t really keep up with my friends through it. If I am close to you, I will be seeing and talking to you in person. It may be how you stay in touch, and that is fine. I do for people far off, but that’s not the main reason. No, to me, the main benefit of Facebook is to satisfy my inner desire to see how people turned out. Not in some, “I’m better than you” way, more of a “I’m really glad you made it” sort of way. I ran across someone last night who I have not seen or heard from in 17 years. It was great to see and hear that she’s made it and is doing well. Honestly, we have nothing in common, save for memories, so the chances of getting reacquainted are just not great. After the initial “I thought you were dead” and “Wow, you did time in prison?” back and forth that is usually about it.
However….
The adds on Facebook drive me nuts. I’m not sure if they use some targeted add program that knows I am male or that I’m an engineer. But some of the adds are pretty ridiculous.
The current batch of adds that are bothering me are the “See who’s been searching your profile” ones. The first preys on fear, the second on sex…well preys on sex isn’t really a concept…how about uses sex?
Here is the first:
Dirty, old, crazy men are searching your profile!
Here is the second:
Hey there big boy
The second one cracks me up. What does an image looking up at a young, large chested woman have to do with finding out who is looking at my profile? Oh I see, MAYBE said young, large chested woman is searching for me!!!!!!!!!! I better click RIGHT NOW before she finds someone more hip and attractive than me!!!! *cough*
Viruses
Virus creators should also be rounded up and beaten. Though since I changed over to Norton from McAfee, things have gotten better. McAfee kept letting in the little Virus Scan 2009 bugger. That was a nasty little one. But I know how to get rid of it now.
20 years ago, I was but a lad of 16, yet I remember watching the TV. I remember seeing the video. I remember the crack down.
Watching CNN, I watched as a college student played chicken with a tank:
Then I watched in horror as sporadic and chaotic video emerged of screaming, running and gunfire once the Chinese government had enough.
19 years later, my wife and I would stand in Tiananmen Square:
It was hard for me to imagine what it must have been like. I whispered to our guide, asking him if this was the spot where it all happened. All he did was nod his head. There I was. It happened right where I was standing.
I love freedom. I believe it is something that is inside every human, the urge to be free, to express themselves, to live their lives free from fear and intimidation. Yet there are 1.5 billion Chinese people who do not know true freedom.
I can’t wait to go back to China in 8 years. See, we have decided that if Mei wants to, we will go back to China when she is 10 years old. This time we will be able to take our time and plan our journey through the vast expanse of China. My hope and desire is that real freedom will continue to come to the Chinese people. That their leaders will throw off the chains of fear and embrace all that is good about Chinese culture.
It is only 8 years away, yet I hope the change will be evident.
Unfortunately, today, the Chinese government is up to it’s old tricks again:
Chinese police aggressively deterred dissent on Thursday’s 20th anniversary of the crackdown on democracy activists in Tiananmen Square…
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The extraordinary security moves come after government censors shut down social networking and image-sharing Web sites such as Twitter and Flickr, and blacked out CNN and other foreign news channels each time they aired stories about Tiananmen.
Dissidents and families of crackdown victims were confined to their homes or forced to leave Beijing, part of sweeping efforts to prevent online debate or organized commemorations of the anniversary.
It’s been since July 14, 2005 since I last received hate mail. Wow…that was a LONG time ago. I feel so unloved.
Anyway, I got me some hate mail last week!
Here’s the set up: WunderKraut.com was once a sound site. Yep, that’s right. I originally started this website to show off my Simpsons sounds and various other sound files from some of my favorite movies. Back then I didn’t have the rabid following I now have *cough* so I submitted my site to various Sound Rings and other sound file referrer sites. When I changed over to blogging, sometime after the last ice age, I forgot all about the places that still had me listed as a sound site. I also forgot all my logins and passwords to correct the issue. My solution? Do nothing!!! You should try it sometimes, it is very freeing.
Here we are in the wonderfully futuristic year 2009 and someone tried to access my sound pages from one of the referrer sites I mentioned above. For some reason, this person was really, really, REALLY upset that the promised sound files are not to be found on this site. Actually, the dirty secret is that they still exist, I just don’t have a direct link to them anymore…
Shall we begin?
wunderkraut
do you even know what it means
why are listed on the top 50 wave list
while you do not have any waves
only stupid pics about some charlie kid or what ever
you fake german descendent
First off, I just love his refusal to capitalize the first word of a sentence. He is not one to be hemmed in by the “rules”.
Secondly, yes I know what “wunderkraut” means…sort of…from Babelfish it means “miracle herb”, but I’ve also heard it translated as “wonderful cabbage” and yes, euphemistically, I know it is slang for the ganja. That doesn’t matter to me. Go read my “Why WunderKraut” section.
And finally, I am not German, nor have I ever claimed to be, but I wouldn’t mind having a little bit of German blood in my family line. After all, my unhealthy love of sausage, sauerkraut and dark beer had to come from somewhere.
So to you Mr. Kees Holleman – Bedrijfsleider (manager in English) who apparently manages three websites, one of which translates as a “bric-a-brac shop”, I apologize for not having the sound files you requested readily available. However, I would appreciate it if you didn’t call pictures of my son Charlie, stupid.
That is all.
PS: Mr. Holleman appears to be Dutch. I guess he is still upset about Germans overrunning his country 70 years ago.
I had to attend a City Council meeting in Leesburg last night to talk about some FEMA mapping issues that they City is facing.
This all came up last Friday and has consumed my time since then. Basically it boils down to FEMA issuing new flood maps that have floodplains being extended into areas not previously in the floodplain. This means that 70+ residential properties will have to purchase flood insurance at an average cost of around $800 per year. The developer community is upset because this will lower the value of some of their lots and of other property they own within the city.
Since the areas in question are in an A Zone, there are no base flood elevations (BFE) available. In order to prove you are not in a floodplain, you need to have a BFE established. Unfortunately, FEMA requires a detailed study to develop a BFE. Detailed studies are not cheap.
I had a day to gather some information and put my head together with some of my coworkers to come up with a rough…and I do mean rough…cost range for doing the detailed study. There are 3 basins which would need to be studied and the City would come out ahead by doing them all at once. Economy of scale and all. We compared what we spent to do a similar study within the area and we determined that the engineering cost would be between $40,000 and $70,000. The unknown is the cost of field run survey. After meeting with a local surveyor, we decided that the total cost for the study would be between $75,000 and $100,000. My guess is that it would probably be much closer, if not lower than $75k. But that would only be known if we could spend more time developing and refining a scope, which we are not willing to do until the City decides if they are going to do the study or not.
With all that in mind, I was asked to attend the City Council meeting last night. All the big name developers attended as well. This thing is going to get very political as the City does not have the funds to do the study but the County does. However, the County has other plans for the money. This should be fun!
Mike Talley, an engineer with H&H Resources, gave the Council more bad news: A cost estimate of “from $75,000 to $100,000″ to complete a study of the city’s three basins.
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Asked by Council member Sidney Johnson where the county stands on the ruling, Planning and Engineering Director Bob Alexander said county officials had not seriously discussed the matter.
“The impact on the county is negligable [sic] ,” he noted.
But Quinn replied, “I think we should talk with the county about the possibility of using SPLOST (special-purpose local-option sales tax) funds for this study. This is part of the county.”
That last part about “this is part of the county” cracks me up. Local government is a wonderful thing to watch. You see everything you can imagine. Most of the time, not all of the time, County and City governments do not get along. So it’s always funny that when the City needs money from the County, they all of a sudden feel the need to remind the County that, Hey, we’re part of the County too!!!!
Jen told me about a funny conversation that my two boys had the other day.
The kids were watching Enchanted and at the end of the movie there is a kissing scene, after which, everyone lives happily ever after. It was after the kissing scene that Jen heard the following conversation between Charlie (7 years old) and Nathan (9 years old)
Charlie: *groan*
Nathan: You know when you get bigger you will have to do that
I was listening to NPR on the way to pick up dinner and This American Life was playing. I’ve heard bits and pieces of the show before and have always enjoyed the format: narration, interviews and music. A unique way to tell a story.
The last part of the program was written and narrated by contributing editor Sarah Vowell on the Marquis de Lafayette’s trip back to the United States in 1824 for a 13 month tour in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
I thoroughly enjoyed the piece and urge you to give it a listen. For some reason, America and more specifically, the men and women responsible for her founding, have been on my heart lately.
You can click here to go to the Chicago Public Radio website where you can listen to the entire broadcast which also has an interesting story of a man and his cloned bull. Scroll on over to minute 49:20 to listen to the part about Lafayette. Click the “Full Episode” button on the left side under the picture.
Or, you can listen to it here:
Two best parts. The first is a quote from Lafayette:
Within these sacred walls, by a council of wise and devoted patriots, was boldly declared the independence of these vast united states. Which has begun for the civilized world the era of a new and of the only true social order founded on the inalienable rights of man.
And the second is when General Pershing in World War I paid a visit to Lafayette’s grave and planted an American flag in his memory:
I am working with a program called HEC-RAS. It is the hydraulic modeling software that is used to map the 100-year floodplain. If any of you pay flood insurance you know what I’m talking about.
HEC-RAS was developed to take the place of HEC-2. HEC-2 is probably what the 100-year floodplain near you was modeled in. Unless your models have been updated recently. HEC-2 was born in the age of punch cards. The various data input parameters are still called “cards”. It was also born in the age of dot matrix printers and giant mainframe computers. The outputs that we work with (now on microfilm) were all printed out on 81/2×11 paper, portrait style. Some of the scanned copies even have the dark and light banding you would expect from the old green and white paper they used.
HEC-RAS is now a slick windows GUI program, but it still looks like its distant cousin HEC-2 in one respect: the output reports.
See here:
It produces pages and pages and pages and pages of data. Here is a text file output so you can see what I mean.
Because the report generates so much paper and what not, we try to limit the report or to take only the important parts, but sometimes we have to print out the entire thing.
The engineers who developed HEC-RAS apparently understand that their program produces so much paper. In fact, they even found a way to be humorous about the whole thing.
I know this because when you tell HEC-RAS to generate a report a little status bar comes up with an image of a tree in the right corner. As the report is generated, the tree is cut down. I took some screen shots of it:
First off, Happy Mothers Day to all you wonderful mothers out there. My goodness, where would we be without you guys…
We are having our Mom’s over for dinner tonight. I am in charge of the cooking and have decided on a big feast from my Southern Living Cookbook.
For starters, there is the 6.5 pound Boston Butt that I just stuck in the oven:
it was marinated in orange juice, brown sugar, oregano, garlic and onion powder, chili powder and some other spices. Oh man, does it smell good!
She is in the oven for 4 hours. I will update as I start cooking the other dishes which include: edamame succotash, cauliflower and leek puree, tomato Florentine and berry cobbler for afters!
The edamame succotash could have used a bit more seasoning, but it was good:
The tomato Florentine was probably the best, well, besides the meat.
The finished product!
Oh man the meat was very tender and juicy and the seasoning was to die for. I will definitely do it again.
If you were the Fire Chief of a mid sized town and one of your Assistant Chief’s used firefighters and equipment to help clean up said Assistant Chief’s Aunt and Uncle’s flooded property, what would you do?
You have three choices:
1. Ignore it – Hey, people needed help, who cares if they happened to be family members getting free clean up services….um…yeah….
2. Big slap on the wrist including temporary suspension – He’s a good guy, he just had a lapse in judgment. Maybe a few days off without pay will help him remember the rules next time
3. Fire him
The Fire Chief and the City decided to fire the man. Not knowing anything about the magnitude of the assistance he provided or anything about his past performance, this would seem to be maybe a bit harsh. But, it is possible this person has had other work related issues and this was the final straw.
I don’t know.
But, I can see that firing the guy is warranted. A bit harsh maybe, but totally within the legal rights of the City and the Fire Chief since what the guy did was in clear violation of City policy.
That’s all fine and dandy, but it seems his friends and family have decided to protest his firing.
“Regardless of who it is if there is a person that need help a fireman is supposed to help them, I don’t care who it is your mother, your brother, they are citizens that need your assistance, this is what they do all the time,” said Bishop John Burr, People Clergy Community Involvement.
Right……
Yes, if a house is on fire, it doesn’t matter if it belongs to the Chief’s Mom…you put it out. But cleaning up after flood damage? Sorry dude, that’s sort of like using the fire department to cut my grass….
Best part:
Jolivette’s supporters called for a new investigation into the firing, an apology from the city, and for Chief James Carswell to step down.
Now why would they want that? What possible reason could there be for the Chief to step down and for the City to apologize?
I suspect I will be updating this post with the “real” reason in a few days.
Our church intersession team was wandering around Albany’s oldest cemetery today trying to find the grave of Nelson Tift, the founder of Albany.
Jen called letting me know where she was and that they found another important grave. So I decided to do some quick web research to see if I could find out info on Tift’s grave which would be helpful to the team.
I didn’t find anything helpful and in the end they found it on their own.
But…
While perusing through some grave information from the cemetery I stumbled on this name:
A. W. Cosby
Mar. 15, 1839
Sept. 6, 1894
Co. E. 4th. Ga. C. S.A
Since it was such a detailed tombstone description, I was curious if I could track down any information on the regiment or Mr. Cosby.
It made me wonder all sorts of things like was he born in Albany? How did he end up in Albany? Did he fight for the duration of the Civil War or did he join later? Base on his birth date, I would assume he joined with the rest in 1861.
Looking at the unit history of the 4th Georgia Regiment I was stunned. The regiment fought in almost every major battle the Army of Northern Virginia participated in. The fact that any of the men survived from enlistment until the end of the war is amazing:
Near Seven Pines (skirmish) – June 15, 1862
Seven Days Battles – June 25 – July 1, 1862
Beaver Dam Creek – June 26, 1862
Gaines’ Mill – June 27, 1862
Malvern Hill – July 1, 1862
South Mountain – September 14, 1862
Antietan – September 17, 1862
Fredericksburg – December 13, 1862
Chancellorsville – May 11-14, 1863
Gettysburg – July 1-3, 1863
Bristoe Campaign – October 1863
Mine Run Campaign – November – December 1863
The Wilderness – May 5-6 1864
Spotsylvania Court House – May 8-21, 1864
North Anna – May 23-26, 1864
Cold Harbor – June 1-3, 1864
Lynchburg Campaign – May – June 1864
Monocacy – July 9, 1864
3rd Winchester – September 19, 1864
Fisher’s Hill – September 22, 1864
Cedar Creek – October 19, 1864
Petersburg Siege – May – June 1864 – April 1865
Fort Stedman – March 25, 1865
Appomattox Court House – April 9, 1865
And now this man is buried and forgotten in a cemetery in Albany, Georgia.
No doubt you’ve heard a lot about health insurance and reforming the whole insurance/medical business. Especially since Obama took office. So sit back and let’s talk about the issues.
The United States is the world leader when it comes to healthcare. Innovations in prescriptions drugs and medical procedures happen every day in this country. This is due to our free market system where it is in the interests of drug companies, doctors and hospitals to develop new and innovating drugs and procedures so that they will be able to profit from their labor. People flock to the U.S. from across the globe to receive the benefits of our health system.
These innovations and drugs aren’t cheap. It costs a lot of money for research and development. Money that must be recouped by the companies and turned into a profit. As costs have increased over the years, the ability for average citizens to afford medical coverage without health insurance has become impossible. So we have turned to insurance as a way to spread the risk and to be able to partake in the amazing medical breakthroughs that have happened over the past 50 years.
Health insurance is expensive. Let’s be honest, it costs a metric ton of dollars to insure a family with anything approaching decent coverage.
I am an engineer and so work in the professional and exciting world of the white collar worker. As with MOST white collar jobs, health insurance has always been one of the perks of my jobs. Some companies I’ve worked for have paid 100% of my insurance premium while most have paid a certain percentage while I paid the rest. My current employer graciously pays my entire premium. However, in today’s economy, there is no telling how much longer that will happen.
How expensive is insurance? Well, family coverage through a Blue Cross/Blue Shield policy costs my company $1,000 per month. Yes, $1,000 per month. Yes, you can get cheaper plans, but in order to do so you sacrifice by paying a higher deductible and getting crappy prescription drug coverage. As it stands, I have a co-pay and a fairly high deductible and my prescription drug plan pretty much sucks.
But as I mentioned earlier, I am fortunate in that my company currently covers this entire expense. I once worked for a company where I was having to pay out $7,200 per year for medical insurance. Yeah, my salary looked good on paper, but my take home pay…not so much.
So, I would say that I am fairly typical of most white collar workers out there.
The rest of the country?
It breaks down like this:
The wealthy can afford the pimped out, Cadillac insurance plan that even covers cosmetic surgery for their pet chihuahua and any out of pocket expenses are easily covered.
The middle class most likely consists of at least one worker in the family who has the option of purchasing insurance through their company. As discussed earlier, this cost can range from nothing to pretty darn expensive, especially for family coverage.
Lower income workers tend to work at unskilled jobs which typically do not offer insurance. Why? Because there is little to no incentive to keep unskilled workers. They are a dime a dozen, so there is very little reason for employers to offer perks to keep workers happy. Luckily for the lower income workers, the government has stepped in with Medicaid/Medicare to provide some level of medical insurance. This has expanded recently with State/Federally funded childrens health insurance. Here in Georgia it is called Peach Care. Eligibility is based on income and family size.
The politicians say we are in a healthcare crisis. Those with insurance are having to pay more and more and those at the lower end of the economic spectrum are losing insurance altogether. If this economic recession lasts longer, more and more companies will begin to eliminate insurance or charge employees more for it. This will mainly affect the mid to lower middle class as they wont be able to afford the additional premiums and will lack the funds required to purchase private insurance.
However, since these mid to lower middle class families make too much to qualify for government health insurance, they will be left in an Insurance No Mans Land.
Each year, health insurance premiums increase. Why is that? Well let me give you an example from my hometown.
In my town we have two hospitals: one for profit and one not for profit.
The not for profit hospital provides indigent care for quite a few surrounding counties. That means that they provide “free” care to people who cannot afford it. To recoup some of the costs, they receive reimbursements from Medicaid/Medicare/Peach Care. However, these reimbursements rarely come close to covering the cost of the care provided. In order to make up the difference, the hospital has to increase the costs to “paying” customers, i.e. people with insurance. Thus the $5 aspirin on your hospital bill. As these costs go up, medical insurance companies have to raise their premiums to help cover the added costs.
As the premiums go up, fewer companies will elect to provide insurance and fewer people will be able to afford the added costs. So now the hospital has fewer “paying” customers…so they have to raise their costs, which causes premiums to go up which causes people to drop insurance…you see the cycle.
This cycle has been going on for the past 30 years.
So what do we do?
As a Conservative, the first question that I feel needs to be answered is: Does government have a responsibility to provide medical care to its citizens?
My core values say no, the government has no business being in the insurance industry. People should make good choices in their lives and plan so that they will have the proper protections in place when they need it.
BUT
That will never work.
So I guess that my answer would have to be that yes, government has some minor responsibility to the poor and the elderly. Thus we have Medicaid/Medicare.
One idea making the most waves now is Obama and the Democrats plan for Universal Healthcare. Meaning everyone, regardless of income (*cough*) will be covered by insurance.
This will not work. It hasnt worked in other countries, yet the Left so desperately wants to be liked by Europe and the rest of the world that they are intent on providing Universal Healthcare. But it doesn’t work. Show me a country who’s health plan is not heavily in debt. Show me a country that doesn’t have long waiting lists. Show me a country that does not ration healthcare.
It sounds so appealing. Especially if you are in the category of not being able to afford insurance. After all it’s FREE!!! Um, yeah, about that. Remember when your Dad or Mom told you there are no free lunches, well, they were right. Nothing is free. Someone has to foot the bill for your “free” healthcare.
The problem is that far too many people in this country have no understanding of basic economic principles and since around 40% of them pay little to no taxes, they don’t care about what it costs. Give me my free healthcare!!!! Sock it to the rich. Make them pay for it. Make corporations pay for it. They have deep pockets. Make the drug makers provide free drugs! They have deeper pockets!!!
*sigh*
Here’s how it works. Poor people do not create jobs. Blue collar workers don’t create jobs. No, jobs are created by mid to upper middle class and the rich. They take their money or investors money and take a risk by backing a new company, starting a new company or developing a new product. This effort of theirs creates jobs. White collar and blue collar jobs. You know, jobs you and I do.
Why do they take the risk? It isn’t out of the goodness of their heart or that they just want to put people to work…nope, it’s because they want to make money. They want to make money so they can grow their business which leads to hiring more people and leads to more money being spent in the economy. More people working means that they spend their money on food, clothes and services, which in turns creates more jobs filling those needs.
If you are going to have universal healthcare you have to cover the close to 300 million citizens in this great country. How much is that going to cost? Some say at much as $1.2 TRILLION. Yes that is Trillion with a T.
How are you going to pay for it?
Close to 40% of Americans pay little to no taxes…can’t raise taxes on them, Democrats have already bought their vote. So that leaves the rest of us working stiffs to pick up the tab. So you will have to raise taxes on the middle class and the wealthy.
The very same people who create jobs in this country.
Any guesses on what will happen when the people who create jobs have less money?
You guessed it, they won’t hire as many people. Wages will stagnate. Unemployment will remain high. The cost of being successful will be substantially higher which will limit innovation and investment in new industries.
You may have universal healthcare, but you also may not have a job.
The other dirty little secret about universal healthcare is that the government will be forced to save money. How will they do this? They will limit care of critically ill infants and the elderly. Gee, you’ve lived 70 years, I just dont think spending money on cancer treatment is going meet the cost benefit analysis. Sorry, but here are some pain pills and a bed at Hospice. I’m sorry Mom and Dad, but junior has a heart defect. The chances of long term survivability plus the cost of long term care doesnt meet the cost benefit analysis. Enjoy the few hours you have left with him.
For the rest, we will have rationed care. Need a hip replacement? Get in line, it could take a few years. Need a knee replacement? You have to lose 30 pounds first. It goes on and on.
So no, universal healthcare is not the way to go.
What do we do?
To be honest, I don’t know. The only thing I DO KNOW is that the government has never and will never run anything efficiently. The last thing we need is some mindless government bureaucrat making life and death decisions. The taxes needed to fund universal healthcare or expanded government programs will stifle job growth and will harm the economy. But at the same time, there will be people who fall through the cracks and are left uninsured or underinsured.
What do you guys think? I am open to your thoughts and opinions.
The media scoffed at the idea that Obama was a leftist more intent on wealth distribution than sound economic policy. How much harm could he do?, they seemed to think.
—
Oh, it’s fun to nationalize things at first. You get to seize money and assets from big, unpopular “speculators” and give them to your voters.
And then what? What do you do five years down the road, when you desperately need capital but no one wants to loan it to you, because they have the quite-reasonable suspicion you’ll just end up taking their money again?
…socialism only works until you run out of other people’s money.
UPDATE: This whole thing reminds me of Kent Brockman from the Simpsons:
Kent Brockman: Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside?
Professor: Yes I would, Kent.
Original Post:
Geesh…
I am so tired of hearing about the dreaded Swine Flu!!! OMG!!! We are all going to die!!!! Quick, quarantine EVERYONE!!!11!!!! Don’t breath!!! Don’t exhale!! Stay away from people!!! Close the border!!!!!!!
In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.
“Let’s not lose track of the fact that the normal seasonal influenza is a huge public health problem that kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S. alone and hundreds of thousands around the world,” said Dr. Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist who studies swine flu at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine in Madison.
Guess what? The “Normal Flu”…you know, that one we DON’T freaking panic about…yeah well get a load of this:
CDC estimates that in the United States more than 200,000 people are hospitalized and about 36,000 people die from the flu and its complications every year.
That’s out of a population of a little over 300 million…so you have about a 1 in 8,300 chance of dying from the flu…the normal flu…
The DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that 37,313 people were killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2008
And somehow I am not afraid to hop in the car and head to the store.
So, unless this swine flu kicks it up a notch (thankfully, it’s not expected to) it is going to be another over hyped world killing sickness like West Nile, Bird Flu and SARS.
God will not permit this to happen! I will be allowed to fulfill my destiny!
#3
How can you shoot women or children?
Easy! Ya just don’t lead ‘em so much! Ain’t war hell?
#4
I’m Winston Wolfe. I solve problems.
#5
A boy, in the midwest of this land, will grow up in a home where your book will be on the shelf and spoken of often. He will grow up with these ideas in his head. He will grow into a great orator. He will speak and his words will be heard throughout this land and throughout the world. This boy will become leader of this country and begin a movement of great change. He will speak of you and your words and your book will be the seeds of many of his great thoughts. They will be the seeds of change
#6
Come on, boys! The way you’re lollygaggin’ around here with them picks and them shovels, you’d think it was a hundert an’ twenty degree. Can’t be more than a hundert an’ fourteen.
#7
That’s right, sir, you are the only person authorized to do so. And although I, uh, hate to judge before all the facts are in, it’s beginning to look like, uh, General Ripper exceeded his authority
#8
Hey, man, you don’t talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he’ll… uh… well, you’ll say “hello” to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you. He won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, “do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you”… I mean I’m no, I can’t… I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s… he’s a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas…
#9
Sir, I’m afraid you’ve gone mad with power…
Of course I have. You ever tried going mad without power? It’s boring. No one listens to you!
#10
All right! Who did it? Who did it? You are going to stand sweating at those battle stations until someone confesses! It’s an insult to the honor of this ship! The symbol of our cargo record has been destroyed and I’m going to find out who did it if it takes all night!
I was a busy bee around the house during my 2 month blogcation.
Let’s see, first I built a fence. I am pretty happy with it. Well, that is except for the two gates. While the gates themselves are great, hanging them so that the fence line flows…well, it didn’t work out too great.
BUT
I actually built something!
The reason for the little fence is because I have decided to get back into gardening. After the fence was built, I rented a tiller and tilled up the old garden location. This was the previous homeowner’s garden area and I only gardened there one year before letting it return to grass.
I’ve got green beans, field peas, tomatoes, peppers, squash and herbs currently growing. I am going to plant my see potatoes tonight. I’ll get a picture once things are up and running.
First: Landing on an aircraft carrier. Ok, let’s be honest, I’m not sure I could do this. I mean, every time I tried it in Jet Fighter II, I crashed. I’m just sayin’.
Second: A cool version of Stand By Me as performed by street musicians around the world.
It’s been a while since I posted about the WunderKids.
Everyone is doing great. Nathan is finishing up 2nd Grade, Charlie 1st Grade and Madi K-4.
Charlie turned 7 and Mei turned 2 in March.
Everyone is getting bigger and Nate is beginning to eat me out of house and home and he’s not quite 9 yet. Lord help me when he is a teenager!
My sister-in-law, Joanna, is an awesome photographer and she took some great pictures of the kids the other day. Thought I would share them. She is available for birthdays, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, funerals and any other special occasions.
Awesomely amazing pictures after the jump: (more…)
Sorry for the down time, but I feel it was necessary.
So, here we are. Now what are we going to do?
First off, there are a few cosmetic changes to the site. The first can be found on the right sidebar. Under Topics, I have a category called “The Best of WunderKraut”. Here I have carefully selected only be finest, hand picked Columbian posts for your reading pleasure. From time to time if lightning strikes or if I actually write a post deemed worthy enough to be enshrined in The Best of WunderKraut, I will add it to the list.
Secondly you will notice a drastically reduced archives.
I have been writing WunderKraut.com since February of 2005. You can imagine that in that time I have accumulated my fair share of posts. The old style for the archives had a very long listing of every month from the past 4 years. This took up a bunch of space and was a bit confusing. I found a wonderful WordPress plug-in that allowed the archives to be collapsible as you can see. But even that left me unfulfilled.
In the end I decided to “restart” the archives with the re-launch of WunderKraut.com. The reasons for this change can be found in my main motivation to reformat WunderKraut.com.
When I started WunderKraut.com I made a conscience decision to not share about my religious beliefs.
But, as time and my life went on, I found it harder and harder to square my private religious beliefs and with what I was writing on my blog. It wasn’t that I was writing anything that was heretical or that I was ashamed of, but it had more to do with what I wasn’t writing about.
Christmas of 2005 was a big event in my life in regards to my Christian faith. I will write about that night later, but just understand that in many ways my views on life and of God were forever changed. Later in March of 2006 Jen and I attended a parenting conference which further rocked our world. We were moving in new and exciting directions. Yet still, I kept it from my blog.
Things finally reached a breaking point between my and my blog in February of this year. I threw up my hands and quit. During the past few months I have been doing a lot of thinking and praying and I have made up my mind.
From now on all aspects of my life will be open to this blog. What that means is that you all will get to know a totally different side to WunderKraut.
This also means that I will be writing about my personal experiences with the Lord and how my life has changed. I will not be preachy or “religious”. No, I will simply attempt to put into words how my faith in Jesus Christ has changed my life and my family’s life.
So, this is the main reason why I changed my archive system. In a way, I am turning over a new leaf so I want my archives to reflect that, but at the same time what I’ve written over the years is still there for the reading. I am what I am due to the experiences I have written about in the past. I may not write about politics as much and I may not link to some of the things I linked to in the past but I am also not ashamed of what I’ve written.
I know that some of my readers have different beliefs or no beliefs at all, and that is ok. This is the truth that I know and that is all I can write about.
I have a few posts lined up to begin hitting as early as tonight. I hope you enjoy the shift and as always I welcome your comments, both for and against. If you’ve learned anything over the years, it should be that it is hard to hurt my feelings.
Yeah, so anyway, as you’ve noticed there hasn’t been a bunch of posting around here for the past few months.
This blog has hit another midlife crisis. I know…how many can one blog have…
So, I am currently considering a new direction for this blog. I don’t have it all sorted out in my head yet, but I can say that it will be very different. It will probably be much more personal, but we shall see.
Rest assured WunderKraut.com will rise from the ashes once I figure things out.
One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446)
Welcome to the new era of socialized medicine. A wonderful place where the old don’t get the treatment they need and the government decides what is best for you.
I’ve discovered another blog that loves bacon even more than I do, Geekologie. I keep stealing borrowing their bacon content, but darnit, none of you guys out there are tossing me bacon links.
So yea, the Super Bowl commercial worked. That and my brother-in-law told me about Hulu.com.
It’s a great site for old TV shows and clips.
Being the huge Simpsons fan that I am…well the old ones from say 8 years ago, today they just aren’t funny…anyway, being the fan that I am, I had to check out all the Simpsons clips.
Time for my all time favorite end of work/school song: Panama by Van Halen:
Wow…1984 seems like such a long, long time ago.
Funny story… I had a VW bug in high school that I had a nice stereo system and speakers installed. It was a hoppin’ little car. I remember leaving school on a Friday, windows rolled down and Panama blasting through the speakers! To my dismay, one of my classmates remembered it as well and come the next week, my car was broken into while parked in the school parking lot and my stereo was stolen…
Come to think of it, that wasn’t a funny story at all.
Have you tried Google Maps Street View yet? It’s pretty cool. For those who don’t know, Google sends camera vans all over taking street level photos that they incorporate into maps. So, when you click on it, it takes you to the street level and you see what you would see if standing on the ground.
For those worried about privacy, if you are on the web, nothing about you is private. Just type your name in Google and you will quickly find addresses, phone numbers and a bunch of other “private” information. Heck just searching for info on WunderKraut.com will give you whatever info you need. It took me less than a minute to find out my address, phone number and Yahoo email address. So, no, I don’t worry too much about privacy.
I was reading about the Large Hadron Collider and the impending end of the world over at FOXnews.com when I got to this part of the story…
Says FOXNews.com:
FoxNews.com can think of a few other things that didn’t seem possible once — the theory of continental drift, the fact that rocks fall from the sky, the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun, the idea that scientists could be horribly wrong.
I love it. It made me laugh out loud. I think all news stories should be written like blog posts. FOXNews.com is well on its way!
Today is the 1 year anniversary of when Mei became part of our family. I can’t believe it’s been a year already. Re-watching the videos brought back many memories and some tears.
Mei, I’m so glad you’re my daughter. The Lord has blessed me beyond measure.
__________________________________
Original Post:
This is just a brief followup to my post about getting Mei. To recap, we flew to Nanchang today and were told we would get our babies today, not tomorrow. I am too tired to write how I feel and what all this means to me, but rest assured I am on the verge of tears. I can’t believe she is finally here.
Thank you for all your prayers and support. Continue to pray for us and our bonding time with our new daughter.
Here are some videos from today. I did not get the moment Jen was handed the baby as I was taking a picture.
Part I
Part II – about half way through. The first half is of another family (Moore’s). Then you see us.
Part III
Thank you Jesus. Man God is too good to me to have blessed me with four wonderful kids and a perfect wife. He has blessed me. I don’t deserve any of it, but He loves me enough to bless me.
There is a large chunk of the world who blames Israel for anything and everything that is wrong in the Middle East.
The most recent Israeli action against Gaza as in response to Hamas continually firing rockets into Israel.
The press and the Left glosses over this basic fact and say that well, yes, Hamas shoots rockets, but that is because Israel has checkpoints, restricts movement, restricts food, medicine and jobs. See, Palestinians have no choice but to attack Israel.
Overlooked is the fact that the reason Israel has checkpoints, restricts movement, restricts food, medicine and jobs is because the Palestinians have this nasty habit of blowing up innocent Israeli civilians. When that happens, Israel closes the borders down.
So, here is my thought.
Let’s assume that Israel opens up the borders to the West Bank and Gaza. Let’s assume that Israel no longer restricts movement, jobs, food, medicine, equipment, etc. Let’s assume that Israel dismantles all settlements in the territories. Let’s assume that Israel pulls back to the 1967 borders. Let’s assume Israel recognizes the Palestinian State.
We good on our assumptions?
Great.
Now, raise your hand if you think that IF Israel did all the above that the Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran would stop firing rockets, killing civilians and calling for the destruction of Israel.
Really?
You understood the question right?
Wow.
If you raised your hand you are delusional and I question your capacity to function in the real world.
If Israel did all the above things, the normal groups would still attack Israel and call for it’s destruction. It’s why these groups exist. Their holy book tells them to do this.
The only way to stop the violence in the Middle East is to abolish the nation of Israel, deport all the Jews and divide the land up between the various parties.***
Anything short of that is just a temporary lull.
Therefore the world has a choice to make. Do they agree with the idea of Israel’s continued existence or not?
There is no third option.
Me? Israel has my full support.
*** The funny thing would be to watch as the various groups/countries fought over the land recently vacated by the Israelis. Having a 10th century mindset tends to keep you from getting along with your neighbors.
I can’t believe it’s been a year. Wow! What a year it’s been.
This time last year, we were in the air on the biggest trip of our lives. This time last year, China was having their worst weather in 100 years. This time last year, we had to leave our kids for 15 days. This time last year, we were a family of 5, now we are a family of 6.
In some ways it’s like we never went. It seems that Mei has always been here. It’s almost like a dream. I went to China? No, not me….
I just wanted to thank you guys once again for all your support. You guys are amazing. Here is a reminder of how much you helped us.
Go back and re-live the trip. I do it about once a month. See here.
People like Thomas Jefferson and even Alexander Hamilton would be spinning in their graves if they knew of policy such as social security. Nationalized health care. Congressional mandates on what kind of light bulbs we can use. A big, powerful central government that tells everyone how to live their lives while engaging in never-ending spending increases and spiraling levels of taxation was not what they had planned.
__________________________________________
Rob over at Say Anything sums up my feelings best in regards to the government/stimulus/jobs/etc…
In response to Obama saying “the first job of my administration is to put people back to work”:
… Obama’s assertion that his “duty” is to put people to work speaks to his basic misunderstanding of the appropriate role of government in a free society. The government doesn’t run the economy. The government doesn’t create jobs outside of those government employees necessary to perform the basic functions of government. The government exists to create an environment where a free market can flourish and create jobs and prosperity on its own.
That means law and order. Basic infrastructure. Things like that. Not “We’ll put people back to work.”
It has occurred to me that I haven’t been giving my blog the attention it needs/deserves.
It’s not from lack of desire. It’s more a function of the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day and I really like to sleep for 8 of those hours.
Jen and I have been going to a ministry school that our church is offering this year. So, Monday and Tuesday nights we have class from 6:30 till 9. Then there’s the required reading and assignments. It takes up a lot of our time, but we love it and have learned so much this year.
But I do have a few posts rattling around in my brain, including the quasi-controversial one I mentioned a month ago. I’ve just been sorting it out in my head and need to put it on paper now.
Jen and I have been catching up on our NetFlicks movies this week.
I love those movies. In fact we both have a love of British films. She cried both nights, I teared up last night. Oh man, if you haven’t seen them, find the time to watch them. Yes, they are long. Yes there’s lots and lots of dialog, but it is so worth it. I really liked the way the two directors framed the scenes where there are lots of people. The camera moves effortlessly through the crowd and you really get the feeling of being there.
The scene at the end of Sense and Sensibility when Elinor realizes that Edward is NOT married as she had thought and that he loves her deeply almost made me cry. Emma Thompson did an excellent job conveying the emotion of a woman trying to keep it all prim and proper, but losing it in a wonderful fit of ugly crying!
Make sure you watch the 1995 version with Emma Thompson and my girl Kate Winslet….
The scene that made me tear up in Pride & Prejudice was when Elizabeth goes to her father to explain that she does in fact love Mr. Darcy. Her dad, played by Donald Sutherland, doesn’t understand so she explains why she loves him. In the end he says:
Mr. Bennet: I cannot believe that anyone can deserve you… but it apppears I am overruled. So, I heartily give my consent.
Elizabeth Bennet: [kissing and hugging him] Thank you.
Mr. Bennet: I could not have parted with you, my Lizzie, to anyone less worthy.
Man, I teared up and got all emotional.
Why?
It made me think of my 2 daughters and how I probably feel the same way as Mr. Bennet, that it’s hard for me to believe that anyone can deserve them. I know the Lord has the perfect man for them, but I have a feeling it’s going to be very hard for me to see them as worthy of my beautiful daughters…
This looks even better than the last pork flavored goodness I linked a few weeks ago.
Why does this look better? Because it combines bacon AND sausage in one tasty treat!
This reminds me of a great Simpsons episode:
Homer: Are you saying you’re never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.
Taken from the great episode: “Lisa the Vegetarian” [3F03]
I had lunch today with a buddy of mine. As is customary, we headed to the local sushi joint:
A few too many tuna rolls and hibachi chicken later…I’m stuffed.
We have been friends since we were 10 years old. Just a few years have gone by.
When I was in 7th grade and he was in 8th grade, we would have arguments about who had the best peach fuzz mustache. We would talk about how cool it would be when we started to shave…
Little did I know that having a razor touch my face would awaken the Recessive Neanderthal Hair Gene (RNHG)…look, I’m an engineer, I like acronyms…Having a 5 o’clock shadow when you’re 15 gets old real quick.
As it stands now, thanks to the RNHG, I have more hair on my back, in my nose, in my ear and on my face than on my head. Yes, I’m growing a beard again…
I hope none of my kids inherit the RNHG. It may seem really cool to be shaving when you are 13, but trust me, you don’t want to open that can of worms.
I’m not sure they are calling it a tornado yet, but everything I’ve seen sure looks like one ran through town last night.
Around 4 in the morning, I woke up to the roar of a sustained wind. I swear it lasted for a minute. I hopped up out of bed and scouted around the inside of the house to make sure everyone was ok and everything was in its place. Then I went back to bed.
In the morning, I noticed that my side yard had a bunch of branches and other debris from the storm. There were also limbs in the main road. As I made my way to work, I realized that the rest of the town looked like it hadn’t been touched by the storm at all. It seemed to be localized around our house. I called my Mom and she heard the wind as well and lost power.
Then I got a call from Jen that a tree had hit part of the house we use as our church. Our church is less than 1/2 mile from my house. When I got there, it looked like a bomb had gone off. Trees had fallen to the left and the right of the house, but only one top of a pine tree fell and damaged the carport at the back of the house.
The cool thing is that most of the trees that were blown down were trees we wanted to get rid of anyway
Our local news had some shots of damage further away from our house, so I pulled up Google Earth and plotted the path of whatever hit us last night:
We are very thankful that no damage was done to our house and that the damage at the church is minimal. Also, it doesn’t appear that anyone was hurt. That’s always good.
We’ve had a very odd winter around here. It got cold really early for us, like all of November, but then it got really warm close to Christmas and it’s been like that off and on for the past few weeks.
A major drawback to the unseasonably warm weather is that we’ve got a bumper crop of mosquitoes.
The only became apparent when I decided to go hunting yesterday morning.
It was warm, mid 50’s, and foggy with no breeze. As a result, I almost got eaten alive.
The only parts of my body that were exposed were my hands and my face. I had a jacket with a hood, so I had my neck and ears covered. But let me tell you, that didn’t stop the mosquitoes.
It is very hard to be still in a deer blind when you have hundreds of bloodsuckers swarming around you.
I took this picture during the worst of it:
Around 8:30, it started to get better as a breeze picked up.
Late last night I took an inventory of the damage. Just on my two hands, I counted 32 bites. For whatever reason, I don’t swell up when bitten. They just leave little red dots, as seen in this picture.
They are more visible in person
This hand has 18 visible bites.
In the end, I only saw one small doe. Oh well, at least I got out of the house and in touch with nature…
It’s time for the end of the year post, re-capping the best WunderKraut posts of 2008, as selected by me.
Blogiversary – Did you know that WunderKraut.com is 3 years old? It’s hard to believe that I’ve had something “interesting” to say for 3 years. Maybe the blog is finally out of it’s terrible teens and will be more mature…
Money in my pocket – The WunderVan was finally paid off! Yay! What to do with all that extra cash? Why not turn around and pour it into my next project: Paying off other debts! Hooray!
Remember, sleep is over-rated – It’s been a tough year, but we are making progress on Mei’s sleep issues. Shoot, if that’s the only non-fun issue she has after spending 10 months in an orphanage, I say she is blessed. She has been doing much better lately. As a result we are not walking zombies. Which is a good thing because zombie season is just about to open. I don’t need that kind of pressure in my life.
Thoughts on Mei’s birth mom – Nothing funny to write. My heart is still heavy for Mei’s birth mom. If I spend any time thinking about her, my eyes tear up. Lord, please bless Mei’s birth mom and fill her with peace and joy.
Spring has sprung – Albany in the Spring is a thing of beauty. Albany in Summer? Fires of Hell. You win some, you lose some.
The Great Marshmallow War of ‘08 – To get the correct feel, you have to say “aught 8″. I never knew it was marshmallow. Who knew.
WunderFamily goes mountain gazing – Hey, for us on the East Coast, they are pretty large mountains. I know they are nothing compared to out West. We had a great time.
Hidden victims of high gas prices – Remember back in the Spring/Summer when gas was like $893 per gallon? Yeah, I know it was a long time ago. Anyway, things got pretty rough out there.
You and your rules! – I get my first and only traffic ticket. Lesson learned. I do drive much slower now.
I r a righter – My first attempt at a short story of sorts. I liked it. It was something different and I may try to do more in the future.
Bouncing blubber – Video of me on a slip and slide. Sorry, you’ll need to provide your own bleach for your eyes.
Attack of the Yellow Jackets – I’m still haunted at night with visions of the that terrible, terrible day. I vowed that day to terminate all wasps. Terminate with extreme prejudice. On the plus side, my brother-in-law and I sent them to an early and hopefully painful end.
I’m a Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech – video of our day at the Georgia Tech football game. Good thing they didn’t suck like they did last night against LSU…
Deer slayer is my middle name – I lucked into killing two very tasty deer in 2008. A nice doe and a small buck who I should’ve let walk and get bigger for next year.
Cómo comer un burrito – To be fair, I don’t know Spanish, so I used Babel Fish which gave me the translation. Funny thing, when I put the Spanish in and translated it back to English, I got “How to eat a young donkey”. Anyway. It has been suggested that I write a book on how to eat all sorts of food. With actual scientific data! Maybe one day.
Mei Day – It was a crazy day, but we got to hold Mei for the first time. It seems like it was both just yesterday and a million years ago. I love you girl and I can’t imagine our family without you. Another good post was our homecoming post. Heck, why not go relive the entire trip. See here.
To end I just wanted to say thank you again for all your love and support in getting Mei. You guys are amazing and pray that the Lord will give you blessings upon blessings for your generosity. You will never know what it meant to us.
Hemoglobin is the principal determinant of the color of blood in vertebrates. Each molecule has four heme groups, and their interaction with various molecules alters the exact color. In vertebrates and other hemoglobin-using creatures, arterial blood and capillary blood are bright red as oxygen imparts a strong red color to the heme group. Deoxygenated blood is a darker shade of red; this is present in veins, and can be seen during blood donation and when venous blood samples are taken.
And this is an interesting, more concise explanation with this as the end:
The bottom line is: blood is red.
My blood? Well, that’s classified, but let’s just say that my favorite color is green…
I know it’s not New Years yet and I know I didn’t put up a Christmas post, but there is a reason.
We had our annual “year in review” DVD made once again by the wonderfully talented Joanna. The thing is, I forgot to mail them until the 23rd, so I wanted to make sure the family got theirs before I posted it on YouTube.
It’s been an amazing year. You guys were with us at the end of last year as we got ready to go to China. You and other random internet strangers helped raise enough funds to cover our flight to China and back. You’ve watched as Mei became a part of our family. You’ve been a part of our life this past year.
Thanks for the kind words, snarky comments and joy you’ve given me this year. I love this little blog and appreciate everyone who drops by for a visit.
Happy New Year!
Also, I will still be doing my end of the year post where I highlight the top posts of this year. That will be posted on New Years Eve.
While updating my WordPress installation, I noticed a new incoming link.
Being the curious monkey that I am, I followed the link to a blog called: Wordlustitude
Very cool site. This guy takes made up words from blog post and gives them a definition. Sort of like a dictionary for made up words. My CTWF (Catastrophic Tortilla Wall Failure) made it on his site. Yay me!
I’m currently working on my first draft of a FMA Plan for one of the local counties down here in South Georgia.
FMA stands for Flood Mitigation Assistance and it is a FEMA plan that is one of those action plans that a community is required to have.
Today I’m working on the outline of the actual plan. I remember back in school when they taught us how to write reports. They said to start with an outline. I always scoffed at them and failed to see the use of spending time on an outline.
My how times change. When attempting to get your mind around a report, an outline is your best friend. It really gives you a chance to flesh out the structure of the report. Like my teachers told me, once you have a good outline, it becomes a simple exercise to fill in the gaps with data/filler/fluff/useless information/gossip/slander/copyrighted material.
Also, is it just me or does the word “assessment” have too many S’s in it? Why not spell it “asesment” or at the very least “assesment”?
This got me thinking of a new spelling rule that should be taught in school for the word “assume”: remember, to assume makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. Well, at least that’s what goes through my mind every time I type it.
They are ALWAYS on National TV…doesn’t matter if they are 2-5 playing Harvard…their game is Nationally televised.
This year has not been the best year for them, Praise the Lord, but they were still able to go to a Bowl Game.
In my College Bowl Pick’em I had them losing to Hawaii. I even put a ton of confidence points behind my pick…but no…they had to win…
Come on Hawaii…how bad do you have to suck? You were playing at home for goodness sake.
Anyway, you’ll notice how much confidence I have in my Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets…hey, they’re playing LSU and I went to the last Chick-fil-a Bowl where Tech played Lsu…it wasn’t pretty.
Thanks to some help from a fellow engineer in Houston and my not dead yet brain, I figured something out that will save me TONS of time! TONS!!!
Quick and dirty: When working in GIS to develop a geoRAS model, I was having to digitize the stream centerline that I brought in from CAD as a shape file. Same with the flow paths and bank lines. Today I figured out how to associate the shape file I already drew in CAD with the proper element in geoRAS. No more digitizing!
Christmas is right around the corner and I can’t wait!
The kids are running around like they are on speed and have been counting down the days for the past 90 days or so.
I have one more present to buy for Jen. We are done with the kids stuff and the family stuff is coming together nicely. A special thanks to Jo for helping us with that!
What did you guys get me for Christmas? Don’t break my heart like you did last year. You know, there’s only so much neglect I can take.
I’m heading to the woods Saturday morning. A guy who works in the same office as me sent me a picture of a real buck which was shot at one of the plantations around here:
He showed me the picture to show me what a REAL deer looks like….kind of puts my tiny 6 pointer to shame. I really should’ve let him walk. He would have been much bigger next year. Oh well. Lesson learned.
Work is going well. Even though we had a tough year, they gave us a Christmas bonus. I am very grateful for what they gave us. It was WELL below the usual, but again, with the year we had, I’m grateful.
As we head towards the end of the year, my thoughts turn to my traditional end of the year wrap up post in which I highlight particular posts which stood out this year. Have a favorite post from this year? Let me know in the comments.
The weather around here has been crazy! It has been in the high 70’s all week. It is going to be 61 degrees and foggy tomorrow morning when I go hunting…not the best weather, but oh well. Get this, its going to go from a high/low of 75/61 on Saturday to a high/low of 60/28 Sunday…Man, these wild swings suck.
I need some training for work. My bosses told me to find the training I need. Well, I found it. It’s the perfect class for what we do and for what I need to learn. I sent my bosses an email and they both agreed that the class is exactly what we need….
But…
Yeah, you knew there was going to be a but there didn’t you? It seems that the class is ONLY offered at ESRI’s campus in Redlands, California.
It seems my bosses don’t want me to go to Southern California for a class. I understand, it is a pricey class and then there’s the airfare, rental car and hotel to think about. Still, it’s the perfect class and what could be better than going to Southern California in the winter?!
Oh well, such is life.
It seems my burrito post has taken on a life of its own. It keeps getting linked by other sites. Sites I’ve never heard of. The common theme? They are all sports related sites. Maybe we should create the World Burrito Eating League. It could be fun.
I’ve got a sort of controversial post I want to write, but I haven’t had the time. What do you think? Should I tackle controversial topics or stay safe with food related posts? Me? I think I really want to write the post in question. I’ve been pondering it for about two weeks now. It’s just finding the time and figuring out the best way to write it.
Well, I hope to have a picture of a GIANT buck from tomorrows hunt.
As promised, here is my post on burrito eating techniques.
I’m sure techniques vary from region to region, but I feel that the following information forms a good all around fall back technique no matter where you find yourself munching a burrito.
Types of Burritos
There are many different types of burritos that you may encounter in your journey through life. It is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of each type so that you may prepare yourself to properly eat said burrito.
Let’s start with the “burritos” they typically serve at your local Mexican restaurant:
Notice something odd about this burrito? It is impossible to pick up and eat with your hands. This is nothing but a glorified enchilada without the corn tortilla. As is such, the proper way to eat this type of a burrito is with a fork. These can be very tasty burritos, but no real technique is required to enjoy them.
Next is the foil wrapped burrito:
This type of burrito can be found at hole in the wall burrito joints, national chains like Moes and other fine eating establishments.
Due to the foil wrapper, this type of burrito can and should be eaten with your hands. You may be tempted to open the foil and eat the burrito with a fork. But that would make you look like a fool and people will rightfully laugh at you. So don’t do that.
Finally, there is what I like to call your average, everyday burrito:
When you make burritos at home, they probably look like this. If you unwrapped your foil wrapped burrito, it would look like this. Similar to the foil wrapped burrito, this should be eaten with your hands.
Remember folks, unless the burrito is served like an enchilada, it is not only OK but normal to eat a burrito with your hands. See my point above about being made fun of. Don’t let that be you. If you don’t want to use your hands, order a salad.
The Physics of Eating
It may seem odd, but I feel it’s best to go over the basic physics of eating. Hey, I’m an engineer, what did you expect?
Think about how you eat. Namely, think about holding a roll and taking a bite.
If you take a bite of a roll, what happens? You open your mouth and your top and bottom teeth engage the roll. Next your jaw muscles work to shut your jaw. This creates a scissor like action between the top and the bottom teeth. The motion is finished when you pull the roll away which completes the cutting action of the teeth, leaving you a mouthful of roll to finish chewing.
I know…duh…
But look deeper. What happens to the roll when you take that bite? When you hold the roll you are apt to give it a slight squeeze when taking a bite. This is to ensure you have a firm grasp on the roll.
Also, since the roll is not rigid, the teeth do not have enough resistance to slice through the roll until the top and bottom teeth come together at the end of the bite. In essence, you are pinching off a bit of the roll.
Why is this important?
It’s important because when you eat non rigid things, you exert two forces on the food item. There is the force of the slight squeeze when you take a bit and there is the force of the teeth pinching the food.
It is this second force that is most critical when eating a burrito.
Allow me to explain with a few pictures. I can’t draw people but I can draw T-Rex’s, so I used them instead of people:
Step 1 – Open wide
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Step 2 – The bite. Pressure is exerted on the un-bitten portion
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Step 3 – Pressure travels through the remaining portion
Burrito Eating – Learn The Skilz, Live The Life
Hopefully you see where I’m heading with this. If not…
Anyway
When you eat an average, everyday burrito, it is like eating the roll in the above example. Since there is nothing rigid for your teeth to slice through, the burrito is pinched off by the teeth. This sends a pressure wave from the nibbled on portion through the rest of the burrito.
If the burrito is especially full or the tortilla is weak, this pressure wave can cause there to be a catastrophic tortilla wall failure or as I call it CTWF, which creates a giant mess.
Don’t think for a minute that having a foil wrapper around the burrito will prevent this. Yes, it must be admitted that the foil does add structural integrity to the tortilla walls, but unless you only peel back just enough for one bite, the failure can still take place at the junction of the tortilla and the peeled back foil.
How do you prevent such a failure?
After years and years of research, I have developed a nearly full proof method for preventing CTWF: create back pressure.
When you take a bite, close your lips around the burrito and suck in ever so slightly, creating a vacuum/back pressure. If you create too much back pressure, it will be like sucking a burrito up a straw…that is NOT what you are going for. What your goal should be is to equalize the pressure in the burrito. By slightly sucking in while taking a bite, you should be able to neutralize the pressure in the burrito, thereby reducing the threat of CTWF.
It takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, you will be shocked at how non-messing eating a burrito can be.
The office wants to go to Taco Bell? No fear, order that 7-layer burrito. Your shirt and pants will be stain free if you practice this simple technique.
Taking a date to the local burrito pit/jazz club? You should worry more about food poisoning than getting burrito guts all over you fly outfit.
Conclusion
Burritos are one of God’s gifts to mankind. Stuffed full of rice, beans, meat, sour cream, salsa, cheese and most importantly Guacamole, they are a thing of beauty and should not be feared.
We take eighteen ounces of sizzling ground beef, and soak it in rich, creamery butter, then we top it off with bacon, ham, and a fried egg. We call it the Good Morning Burger.
If you remember, I shot a small 6 point buck a little over a week ago.
I was in a tree stand in a magnolia tree. From the stand I had a good view of the woods along the creek to my left and about half of the food plot to my right. I hunted that morning, so as is usual, I wasn’t paying much attention until I could actually see things.
It was a cold morning and because I am afflicted with the worlds smallest bladder, I was ready to get out of the stand by 8am. But I decided to stick it out until 9 at least.
It’s fun seeing deer when you are hunting. There you are up in a tree, freezing and you begin to think: Why in the world did I get up so early? Why did I leave my warm bed and pretty wife to go sit in a tree? There are no deer on this stupid property. There are no deer anywhere. Why am I here?
But then it happens…
You see movement.
All of a sudden, your senses come alive. You are a caveman on the hunt for fresh meat. It’s hardwired into your DNA!
Around 8:30, I saw movement at the top of the hill to my right. A deer had stepped out of the planted pines and into the food plot. While I could see him very clearly, I realized it was not going to be an easy shot. Being right handed, I was going to have to turn as far as I could in my stand to get a shot. This particular stand did not have a rest for me to use to help with my aim. So I was going to have to shoot opposite what was comfortable for me, with nothing to rest my gun on.
So I waited to see where he would go.
He walked a bit towards the river, but then I realized I was going to lose site of him due to some tall grass/weeds. So I took the shot.
He turned and started running back towards the pines and I immediately thought I had missed him. I quickly chambered another round to take a second shot.
Before I could get him lined up in the scope, he jumped, turned and started running towards me. I thought that was terribly odd, but then he dropped dead.
I looked through the scope. He was down alright, but then I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
I looked up and saw another animal running across the food plot going left to right. I realized it was a coyote!
He had been stalking the deer and now he was moving in for the kill. He was running right to the deer…MY deer.
I took a shot and missed, but it caused the coyote to run past the deer and head back to the woods. A second shot JUST missed behind the coyote. I saw the dirt kick up behind him. Then he was gone.
I climbed down from the stand and made it to the deer. I called my brother in law to tell him about the deer and when I got off the phone I realized I was shaking like a leaf. Seeing that coyote and taking two more shots had me all pumped up.
I was very upset that I missed the coyote. I really wanted to bring home a dead one. They are all around the property and one less would have been great.
So there it is, the rest of the story about my deer.
Here is a list of beers they brew:
JEWBELATION TWELVE
REJEWVENATOR
ORIGIN POMEGRANATE ALE
BITTERSWEET LENNY’S R.I.P.A.
GENESIS ALE
MESSIAH BOLD
And of course they sell t-shirts.
Gotta love the marketing skilz! You know, if a product makes me laugh, either because of the name or because of an advertisement, I’m very likely to purchase said product. Good job Guys. I love the originality.
I’ll always remember driving in the car after picking up the boys when I got the call. Mike happened to be with me, so the whole family was together. Barbara from the agency called my cell and I honestly thought she was calling for something else( getting our paperwork in order or something). So I was really shocked to find out that our referral had arrived. And so I bagan screaming and laughing and crying all at the same time. And Mike was just trying to get me to pull the car over and smiling from ear to ear. That day we found out that Feng Yun Man was in Jiangxi Province in Fengxin County SWI. Her birthday was March 18, 2007. And that she had lots of hair.
Then it was a long month and a half wait to go get her. After 2.5 years of planning and waiting, we finally new her name and the next day we saw her picture for the first time.
O.J. Simpson was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for armed robbery and kidnapping in a failed attempt to recover sports memorabilia from two collectibles peddlers.
That is going to cut into the amount if time he can devote to finding the real killers of his wife and her boyfriend.
This week I’ve been learning new things. I have a love/hate relationship with learning new things. I enjoy learning, but when I don’t understand, I get very frustrated.
It’s been one of those weeks.
I have to get up to speed with GIS software. It’s the wave of the future in regards to mapping data and we have a project coming up that will require us to use the functionality of the software. This isn’t a bad thing as the software automates a bunch of things…once you know how to use it.
I’ve been on the phone all week with an engineer out in Houston who has been holding my hand, walking me through the basics. He’s been a great help, but we hit a stumbling block yesterday.
It turns out we had some major gaps in our data. But never fear, we punted and found a different data set to use.
After working all morning to get it up and running, I now know how to take a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from USGS, imported it to GIS, converted it to a Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) and now I can use it.
The light grey is the lowest elevation. The Flint River is at the far left of the image. The darker colors are higher elevation with the dark green/light blue-ish being the highest.
Now I can define a stream centerline, left and right overbanks and cut cross sections to make a HEC-geoRAS hydraulic model which I can push my stream flows through to determine the 100-year flooding elevation at a proposed school.
Scientists say if it is not stopped, it will reach northern Germany, Scandinavia and Britain and could invade the whole world.
Maybe we can get a few of these “Super-Ants” to come over here to Georgia and have them fight it out with the Fire Ants. Now THAT would be a fun war!
But seriously, my God! We’ve got to do something to stop them! I’ve been suspicious of ants for a long time now. It seems they are organizing for a full scale take over of earth.
WE
MUST
NOT
LET
THAT
HAPPEN
I can no longer sit back and allow Ant infiltration, Ant indoctrination, Ant subversion, and the international Ant conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy being an engineer. I really do. Some days are very exciting and fulfilling, but to tell you the truth, some days I would rather be a writer.
There are so many things I want to write about. Right now there are three books in my head. They just spin around and around and I think about them often. If you catch me daydreaming I’m probably thinking about writing.
How do I start? How do you do it? Where do I get information for research? How do I find the time? How do I earn a living?
Sometimes I day dream about one of my books being turned into a movie and it winning an Oscar.
Strange, I know.
You know what I want to write someday? A book that has no meaning.
Let me explain that.
Back in my junior year in high school, I had an American Literature class with a teacher who was constantly digging deep into books to find the deeper meaning.
Being the smart ass that I was back then (some would say still), I raised my hand and asked what I thought was a very good question: How do you know that is what the author was trying to say? How do we know he intended there to be “deeper meaning”? What if he just wrote the story because he liked the story?
Needless to say, she was none to pleased with me. The class went on and I continued to be a good little sheep, writing papers explaining all the “deeper meanings”.
So, I want to write a book that has no meaning. It will be a great book. One that is very enjoyable to read with a great story.
My goal will be for the book to make it to the reading lists for colleges and high schools. Then I want to go on a show, something like the Actors Studio but for writers. When all the critics start asking me about this meaning or that meaning or when they give
