Here's Some Good News

Read this interesting news from Investor's Business Daily.

Two good points out of it:

1. The Democrat Party is getting serious about serious issues and not wasting time on pipe dreams. (Well, except as they are related to "stimulus".) Hey, if they can mock us because they think we're over-the-top and "unrealistic" on social issues, I am happy to mock them because they are over-the-top and unrealistic on environmental issues.

2. They are all acknowledging that climate control legislation will hurt business. It's about dadgum time.

What's additionally funny to me is that there are the continuous claims from the Dems about how "green" jobs will resurrect the economy. That their argument was a complete sham is only further demonstrated by the fact that they included so little climate control nonsense in the stimulus bill. I guess it's tough to argue that when you even come out against industries you love and companies you love, because they are "hurting the environment." (Pssst...here's the secret...you and your job will never be green enough for them.)

A Little Phrontier Justice

Boy-oh-boy, have I been busy lately. Sorry that I've been slacking. Anyway, go check out this tasty film from Geeks Are Sexy:

Cellphone Reunion

Actually, this came from Chong...here's your hat tip! The fact that I hadn't seen it and posted it myself is another testament to how busy I've been.

TWO WEEKS UNTIL SPRING PRACTICE BEGINS!

What more needs to be said?

Owen's New Trick

One day several weeks back, Owen walked in on me while I was getting ready for work. He happened to walk in while I was gargling with my peroxide. (Don't knock it until you try it...it's not only great for killing germs in your mouth and throat, thus helping avoid colds, but it also is great for preventing gingivitis.) Anyway, he saw me gargling and thought that was one of the funniest things he had ever seen. I thought nothing of it at the time, so I would invite him in every morning to watch me gargle, just because he got such a kick out of it.

Well, he loved it SO much that he became determined to figure out how to do it himself. As of last week, he figured it out. He gargles now, quite well. This is not remarkable, except that now he gargles all the time. Doesn't matter what time of day, what he's drinking, where he's drinking it. He will take a drink with his cup, gargle it for several seconds, then swallow. HE DOES THIS FOR EVERY DRINK HE TAKES. It was pretty funny at first, and it still makes me laugh to see him do it and look so proud when he finishes. It does get tiresome and annoying after a while, though...and you can't make him stop.

Nothing like a nice lesson in care regarding what you demonstrate to your kids, eh? Thanks for reading along.

Incredible

Go check this out, courtesyof our friends at Geeks Are Sexy. Pretty dadgum cool.

It is sometimes amazing to see new ideas in action. And humbling that there are people who are that intelligent and creative.

Musings and Realizations

In the wake of the disaster in Lone Grove, my first realization is that perhaps we Oklahomans live too much in regular proximity to the tremendous power of tornadoes. There's a joke that you know you're an Okie when you hear a tornado siren and immediately go out to look for the funnel. We know the score as we live here, we know what we're supposed to do, and sometimes we take it for granted that we live close to them but won't get hit ourselves. Unfortunately, that lackadaisical attitude sometimes costs some of us our lives.

I've also had a realization about my time in Denver as compared to where I am here now. I lived in Denver, but I never felt it was my home...and the results of nearly my entire life there shows it. Instability in my career, no long-term friendships, removal of prior activities (for example, umpiring, which I did for 6 years straight before I moved to Colo.). Sure, I gained things that I might not have gained had I stayed in Oklahoma, like my career and experiences in the tech industry, or climbing 14ers, or the best and most important, meeting Heidi, but I'm already reconnecting and regaining more in 6 months here than I did in 12 years in Colorado. I never really understood or agreed with much that was done there, and so it really is best that for the most part, Colorado and I have parted ways. I can look back now without the bitterness that I had while I lived there.

I was reading an article today about the "live" music performances at recent high-profile events. Jennifer Hudson at the Super Bowl...the all-star string quartet at the inauguration...I didn't know they were both prerecorded. The author of the article spoke of it in terms of a drive for perfection, but I see more. I see the modern tendency for Man to put himself in the center of the universe, and strive to maintain control and dominance of everything around him and dictate terms to the universe. If you can maintain total control of a situation by completely presetting it, why not? I saw a lot of the same thing as Heidi and I went through the birth experience; lots of women just set a date and have a C-section. There's the Pregnant Man. There's the octuplets lady in California. Mankind likes to wave its technology and thumb its nose at Nature, at uncertainty of any kind. Ask the folks in Lone Grove how well that works out sometimes.

Thanks for reading along.

Closer To The One Device

(DISCLAIMER: I normally issue disclaimers for OU football posts, but I also acknowledge that not all of my readers are avowed geeks (or even closet geeks). If you're not into gadgets, technologies, and other geekiness, come back another time.)

Several months back, I talked about my one perfect all-encompassing digital device to help me do all the things that will organize my life, my efforts, my productivity, and to a degree, my entertainment. (iPhonies, beat it...you're still getting nowhere with me. Go live your "lifestyle".)

Today, there are more devices coming that are showing excellent progress toward my goal. Let's take a look at a few that really have me tingling:

First up: my new dream smartphone is the Palm Pre. The reviews to this point, from many sober and dependable sources, have been excellent, even rave. IWANTONEIWANTONEIWANTONEIWANTONEIWANTONEIWANTONE

Then there's this little gem from the folks over at Archos. I've been a big believer in Archos for quite some time; my first decent MP3 player was an Archos jukebox that included FM radio (something no other player offered at the time, not even the beloved iPod). And it was cheaper than many other less fully-featured devices. (cough, iPod, cough)

Finally comes the Kindle2. I've thought highly of the original Kindle, as have thousands of other Americans (this must be the case because Amazon keeps ramping up their production of the Kindle, and the Kindle keeps selling out and causing 6-to-9-week-long shipping delays).

Oh, excuse me...I need to go get a paper towel and wipe this drool off my keyboard. Have a great day, and thanks for reading along.

New Kids On The Block

Heidi took some good pics last night, but this one is one of my favorites:


That's awesome, isn't it? Owen is absolutely fascinated by his little sister. He comes over and kisses her, and stares at her, and gently strokes her hair...all on his own. We almost never have to prompt him when he does it. It's going to be fun (and challenging at times, too, I am sure) to watch them grow up together.

The Mysteries of the Airline Industry

I'm looking for flights from OKC to Denver for spring break. Heidi wants to stay up there with her parents for the entire week, so she and the kids will drive up, and I will fly up one-way later in the week and stay through the weekend. Then we'll drive home together. So I got on good ol' Southwest and looked at their flights for the timeframe I'm thinking of flying. Here's what I found...see if you can spot anything funny:



So let me get this straight: I can leave later in the day for a nonstop flight, OR I can take a flight with a stopover that leaves earlier in the day, takes an 1 hour and 45 minutes longer, costs $26 more AND only gets me there 20 minutes earlier??? I'm sure that there's some highly-advanced computer algorithm that looks at flight trends, travel trends, fuel costs, etc., etc. ad nauseum to figure out fares, but did anyone in Southwest's fares department think to check what the computer was doing with these fares before they posted them?

Julianna

It is SO amazing to just hold her. Just like I did with Katie, I hold her against my chest and she falls asleep there. When she's close to me, she's so warm...and I can feel her breathing and I just imagine her entire life spread out in front of her.

Heidi and I are so amazingly blessed. I just can't say any more than to give thanks to God in Heaven for bestowing these gifts on us. Thank you, Lord Jesus.

A Weekend of Victory

It's not often that I get to savor a longish period of time in which most of my endeavors were successful, and certainly not within the past few years. This weekend, however, was just such a weekend. Please indulge me for a moment while I go through what I accomplished and bid a tearful farewell to what was a splendid three days.

1. At close of business on Friday, I had made some excellent progress and completed the critical tasks of a project at work that I had been working on for weeks, since at least mid-December. I was so happy to get it going like I did, I almost did one of my famous victory dances. (If you've never seen one, it's something to behold, I tell you what.)

2. I removed the pieces of the Mustang that were the crucial first steps in the replacement of the transmission. Basically, two sections of the exhaust pipe were in the way: the first is Y-pipe from the headers and the second is the middle section where the catalytic converter is installed. These two sections were situated directly beneath both the transmission and the bell housing (which mates the transmission and clutch to the engine). This means that, without moving those pipes, there was no possibility of getting the transmission out. There were eight nuts/bolts holding all of these pipes on their fittings. I had loosened seven of them. However, one of the nuts on the passenger-side header connection flat-out refused to come loose. Worse, it was reachable from a couple of angles but it was in a very confined space, so the methods I could use to loosen it were somewhat limited; even the primary approach with a socket wrench was at an angle and so simply locking on a socket and cranking with a breaker bar was not a simple matter. To make matters even more challenging, it was slightly rounded already. I tried heating it, spraying penetrating oil on it, different sizes and depths of sockets to see if I could get a good, tight fit even with the bad angle. I had a decent approach from the side, through a small opening in the wheelwell, but the spring and suspension parts were in the way and I could only get a regular box wrench in. Without the ability to get a breaker bar on it, that approach bore no fruit. Nothing seemed to work. Finally, I got a 16mm socket on the nut and managed to get the extension bar in at a good angle. I put a good amount of pressure onto the socket to hold it in place, then got the 3-foot breaker bar on the handle. I pushed hard and turned...and it MOVED! Slightly, just a very small turn, but it was loose. I got it to move a little more, not much, and I still didn't have enough of an angle to keep using the socket, but I was able to come in through the wheel well with the box wrench and finish getting it off. After that, it was relatively quick work.

3. I also got the steering tie rods loose from the spindles, another very difficult task. Only this time I was lacking the correct tool. A coworker had done this before and lent me the tool. Now I can replace or replace the steering box which is also leaking fluid like a sieve.

So enough of the car success. That's fun and all, but there was still more...

4. I ran eight miles without stopping. I haven't really talked about this, but it has become a big thing for me the past few weeks. Every year, my company enters folks in the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. Two of the three other guys on the network security team with me have run it the past couple of years. They invited me to run it with them. Yes, the whole thing, 26.2 miles. Now, as longtime readers are aware, I've climbed 11 of Colorado's 54 Fourteeners, and that's pretty grueling. So I figured I could take this on. This is somewhat out of character for me, because of all the possible ways to exercise, running is my absolute, dead-last, almost-need-to-be-paid-to-do-it choice. I HATE running for exercise. When I run, I am either chasing or being chased, heading for the end zone, heading for home plate, or something like that. On the other hand, a marathon is exactly the kind of ultimate goal I would need to motivate me. I climbed fourteeners because I hate just hiking around in the woods; I need to be going somewhere, and the "somewhere" represented by the summit of a fourteener is pretty awesome. So I figured that as much as I don't like running, running a marathon is pretty much right up my alley. Of course, it also provides a great way to actually start exercising again, something I hadn't done regularly in quite a while.

My training regimen is fairly rigorous, and I am slightly behind schedule. Most marathon training schedules seem to be 16-week affairs, and I actually started training with about 14 weeks to go, so I'm having to push a little, without killing myself, to stay on track. I still have issues with high blood pressure, so it's a delicate balance for me. However, I managed to make my 8 miles (again, I'm behind schedule; this week's long run should've been 10 miles). This was actually a great triumph because it was the longest I had EVER run without stopping, and I was ready to quit at 4 miles. At 5 miles, my body was screaming for me to stop. At 6 miles, I was hoping I'd see Heidi (who had gone to Wal Mart) so she could pick me up and take me home. I don't remember much of the last two miles, in fact, because I pretty much went on autopilot and just ran until I hit eight miles. It's amazing what you can do through sheer force of will.

5. This morning I was up early with Owen, got some breakfast, let Heidi catch up on a little sleep, then went out once she was up and raked all the leaves in the yard. We have a really big tree in the front yard, and it is very thick with branches. It shed many, many leaves. I had meant to get them all raked and in the garbage before we had any serious precipitation and I missed that deadline. Leaving the leaves in the yard can really mess with the grass, so it had to be done. And now it is.

In addition to these big victories, I also had some small ones, like getting two loads of laundry finished, cleaning the kitchen, and emptying and reloading the dishwasher. If you count the major points I scored by watching all of the kids so that Heidi could take my grandma to the casino as a thank-you gift for her staying with us and helping us for the past two weeks, it's been a pretty dadgum good few days.

Let's see if I can keep the pattern going as we start the new week.

What Kind of Healthcare??

Remember, folks, this is the kind of healthcare system that so many in our country are clamoring for right now. The US Government has screwed up every financial endeavor they've undertaken. Medicare...Social Security...Indian trusts...even just maintaining a budget like everyday citizens do...it is impossible for the US Government to do it right. I've worked inside the government and seen how terribly slow and inefficient it is. Yet so many still clamor for the Feds to take over healthcare system, impose price caps to "drive down costs," manage all health resources for the whole country.

"Oh, Chris...we're smarter than that! We'll do it better! We'll learn from their mistakes." [sound effect: author blowing a loud, wet raspberry] Be careful what you wish for.

I Just Couldn't Resist This One

So thanks to my old pal Dion, I've been following the "Geeks Are Sexy" blog. And they had a link today that you simply MUST see:

Come To The Dark Side: We Have Cake

I found this very appropriate for my current family situation. Oh, and Chong also sent me the link almost simultaneously, so he gets a hat tip for this one, too.

Ah, The Glory of the Internet

Welcome to the 21st Century! We may decry Big Business as the evil of all evils and excoriate them for their greed and lack of moral fiber, but who knew it was so easy for a complete stranger thousands of miles away to have your water and electricity shut off, or even get you arrested (or even injured or killed)?

Isn't technology wonderful? It brings us all together so well, doesn't it? And we wonder why our country is dying so quickly. Oh, yeah...that guy gets to vote!!

Whatever Happened To...

...a rendition of the National Anthem that was...well, normal? Yo, we want the US National Anthem, not an audition for American Idol.

...a concert that didn't have a major sporting event break out before and after it? Hey, wait a second...

...a 3D ad where they actually sent you the damn glasses to watch it, instead of forcing you to go get them yourself? I doubt that many people care that much about a 3D trailer for the latest computer-animated comedy/adventure.

...a great play that didn't instantly become "the greatest play of all time"? We could already build a new drinking game around that stupid 100-yard interception return.

...companies that wasted the $3 mil they paid for that 30-second spot with a completely boring, unremarkable ad? Errrrrrrrr...uhhhhh...

...companies that tried too hard to feel like they didn't waste the $3 mil they paid for their 30-second spot and came up with totally embarrassing commercials? Ummmmmmm...

...an injury in a major game that wasn't "a big, big loss" for the victimized team? Time for Madden to retire.

...interesting Super Bowl games? The last good one I saw was Elway's first Super Bowl win against Green Bay. THAT was a great game, but you know, that was ELEVEN YEARS AGO. Why do you people think the pro game is so great, again?


(In the meantime, spring scrimmages for REAL football are only about a month and a half away.) WOOHOO!!

OK, This Just Pisses Me Off

So we learned that Michael Phelps really IS just a normal 23-year-old guy. What the heck did you expect? I did plenty of stupid stuff at 23, and as Jesus said, "Let him without sin, cast the first stone." (I mean, come ON...we have people who are 40 or 50 or even older that still act this way regularly. In fact, knowing the AP's leanings, I'd put even money that the AP writer who cobbled this wondrous piece of "news" together had a nice fat doobie only the night before.) But hey, how much we love to see our heroes fall, eh?

Well...unless your hero is named Barack Obama. Don't even admit that you want to see HIM fail.