What a story!
Confused Cops Swarm Woman After Birth
Sounds like an episode on a bad TV Sitcom.
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Confused Cops Swarm Woman After Birth
Sounds like an episode on a bad TV Sitcom.
So we bought a new vehicle. Our old Saturn has been giving us quite a bit of trouble lately, and It has 160K or so on it, so it is difficult to justify investing too much into it. For the last month or so I have been trying to patch together the cooling system with Epoxy putty. That has not worked too well I suspect that what is happening is that when I patch it one place the presure is breaking out the next weakest point...
Finally after weeks of this silly chasing the leak, it began leaking coolant into the Serpentine belt. I am not sure where it is leaking from, but when I look I get sprayed with Coolant, so I give up...
Yesterday we visited the local cheap car lot and shelled out a couple thousand dollars on an 92 Chevy Astro van. It is a bit beat up in the front, but seems to run well, and is quite clean inside.
I was lobbing to name it "Big Ugly Truck" Or B.U.T. for short. But Andee said no. She said I could call it "Big Ugly Minivan". I guess we will be taking the kids camping in the B.U.M. this summer.
CNN.com - Spouse as next of kin has deep roots - Mar 29, 2005
"It's odd that conservative Christians would be making this claim," said Christopher Schroeder, director of the public law program at Duke University. "You can find biblical passages that say once you have a union like this, the union's all that matters. The parents drop out of the picture."
This article echos what I was saying earlier about this case. I don't like Michael Schiavo's decision, and I question his motives. I do however believe that it is his job as a husband to make these kind of decisions for his family. I think the family institution will be damaged if the courts take the husband's responsibility away from him.
He has responsiblity over his wife's medical care. He will be judged based on the motives of his heart in eternity. There is no way that a court here on earth will be able to do that.
Just added this Blog to my Bloglines account:
I have often wondered what is going through Bill Clinton's head. Now I will know.
I was surprized at his honesty. It appears that he really wants to share his life struggles.
It’s very hard to put these demons to rest. I talk to myself and I talk to myself. I’m not a nice guy. I have demons in me. We all do. Maybe mine are a bit bigger than other people’s, because I went through hell when I was a little boy, but I fought back.
You know what happens when you shave off your beard? It grows back, stronger than before. The harder I fought to free myself from the hell I lived in, the harder the demons fought back. I won. That’s what I thought. I won, but at what cost?
If someone is willing to be that honest about personal matters, I will be sure to read what they are stuggling with and Pray for them.
-- Update ---
So, Is it a hoax? I would guess so, but it is hard to tell for sure. Likely so. I will stay subscribed anyway.
When I was on Jury duty a month or so ago , I made a note about how I felt that what happened in the courtroom had as much consequence on the outcome than the actual choice to commit a crime. In my case, our defendant took the stand and said some things he shouldn't have said. If he had not said those things, I would have had a hard time voting to convict him. Although he was certainly guilty, and deserved the sentance that he recieved. I was a little uneasy with the notion that his sentance was more a consequence of the desision to put him on the stand than it was his choice to wrestle with a cop.
Steve Sailer: iSteve.com Archives: Inside Story on Schiavo Case
In essence, the finding that Terri Schiavo would want to die came down to the subjective opinion of one overworked trial judge who was confronted by a very sharp, experienced right-to-die attorney on one side and a young, quasi-pro bono lawyer on the other.
Terri's case is likely not much different. Court cases have enormous consequences. Once something is decided it is pretty hard to overturn. I guess the moral of the story is to make sure you do it right the first time.
Well, I am really racking up the hits today. I think that the Wendy's Chili additive is the hottest blog topic since Indian Larry passed away.
Last I checked,They still hadn't found the source. Weird... You would think that somebody who lost a finger would be looking for it, but apparently not:
MSNBC - Search continues for owner of missing digit
"All of our employees have ten digits," said Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's International Inc., based in Dublin, Ohio. He said there have been no reports to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of injuries at any supplier of chili ingredients to Wendy's.
I guess I should set up google news topics for Fingers and toes. I am fairly certain that the name of this silly blog is why I am ranking so high on the search engines. Welcome visitors. (I don't know what the name means either)
A friend sent me the following Netdisaster link. I am not sure if that is commentary on my blog or what...
;-)
Principal apologizes for smoking at school
Johnson said that she ordered Central High officials to remove the suspension from Velasquez's record and that Almagno had apologized over the intercom for smoking on school grounds.
The internet is a amazing device. One voice quickly becomes a powerful media outlet. It is pretty hard to punish somebody for telling the truth. It doesn't sound like this kid is going to get an apology regarding his suspension however.
Many folks are desperatly wanting the Judiciary to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case. I think that the judges are doing the right thing, no matter how painful it is.
The fact of the matter is that the husband should have the final say in his wife's care. She has left her parents to cleave unto him, and for better or for worse, he has been given authority over his household.
I think it is a dangerous precedent for the judiciary to ignore that truth. He may do a terrible job of running his family, but it is still his family to run.
Many will argue that his adultourous relationship should absolve him of his responisiblity and authority. I think that this should be a matter for legislators to look at. Adultry should be wrong. Legally however it is not. Judges are forced to look at legalisms, not at moral judgements when making their decisions.
If judges used morality to make their descisions, when we choose to do irrational things like forgive our enemies, and trusting God, Judges would be able to overrule us.
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Horrors (Finger Food)
The following day, Santa Clara County health officials announced at a press conference that they had confirmed the object found in the bowl of Wendy's chili was indeed a human finger, and they were planning to trace the ingredients back to the source to determine where it came from, whose it was, and how it got into the chili. The Associated Press reported that officials believe the contamination did not pose any health danger:
Officials said the fingertip was about 1-1/2 inches long and contained part of a manicured nail. The woman, who asked officials not to identify her, immediately spit it out, Santa Clara County Health Officer Martin Fenstersheib said.
My Question is, Who loses a finger and doesn't try to track it down? Seems a bit odd that Wendy's would have to backtrack their supply chain to figure out where this came from. Weird. Sounds like something from a Mob movie.
So, All of that work this weekend half paid off. I have had next to no comment Spam to deal with. I am still having to deal with Trackback pings, but I think that will get better over time. I think that they should develop a whitelist system for trackbacks. Perhaps based on a Technorati or Blogstreet score. If you have a legitimate blog, and have established yourself in the blogging community, your pings go right through. Otherwise You get moderated or blocked.
Eyewitness News - Student suspended for taking photos of principal smoking at school
If a picture is worth a thousand words—then one Central High School student has proof, in photos, showing his principal is breaking the rules!But....guess who's in trouble?
Sometimes you do things that you can't take back. Once you are caught, nothing you do will repair your integrity. The harder you fight, the worse you will look.
Snooze is my friend. I suspect my wife might be buying me one of these for Christmas this year though. She gets sick of the 4:30, 4:40, 4:50, 5:00, and 5:10 routine each morning..
MSNBC - Hit snooze and this alarm clock runs and hides
After the snooze button is pressed, the clock, which is equipped with padding and a set of wheels, rolls off the table to another part of the room. Each day, the clock finds a new place to hide.
A great post over on Evangelical outpost regarding the Terri Schiavo case.
the evangelical outpost: No-Fault Death:
Terri Schiavo and the Absurdity of Marriage Laws
Florida is also a "no fault" divorce state, which means that a history of infidelity is of no concern to the courts. While adulterous conduct might be used in determining the "moral fitness" of a parent seeking custody, it apparently can't be used as evidence of lack of 'moral fitness' to be a husband. Even though he has committed adultery, sired illegitimate children, and openly shares Terri's marriage bed with another woman, he is still considered fit to undertake his role as a ''husband." By giving Michael Schiavo guardianship over his 'wife', the Florida courts have exposed the absurdity of marriage laws.
I think Terri should have the right to make her own decision on weather she choose to keep fighting or not. If she made that decision, she did not write it down. Now we are forced to take the word of her cheating husband that that is what she wanted. Those who believe that marriage vows mean something see this as a travesty. Those who don't believe "until death do us part" means what it says, don't understand what the rest of us are so upset about.
The biggest threat to traditional marriage is not gay marriage, it is divorce. In today's world unconditional love is a foreign concept. the culture considers you to be crazy if you love some people. Unconditional love needs to be unconditional love, otherwise it is just a selfish marriage of convenience.
Fought with getting Moveable type to play nice with my bloglines blogroll. Got it working moderately well using an Include Plus plugin. Still fighting with the stylesheet.
The more I work with Movable type the more I dig WordPress. Wordpress seems to have more plugins, more themes, and more support the Movable Type does. I think that Movably type's backend interface is superior, and I like having static pages for the most part. Dynamically generating the same pages over and over again seems like overkill to me. (See the Goldfish analogy below) Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
Yahoo! News - New 10-Gig Ethernet Chip Targets High-Speed Servers, Switches
Vativ Technologies has announced it has begun customer sampling a single-chip 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) transceiver for full-duplex operation over a single CAT5e or CAT6 unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cable. The transceivers are targeted at OEMs and system vendors developing high-speed Ethernet switches and servers for the enterprise datacenter market.
I wonder what in the world we will be transmitting to need a 10Gb/s Ethernet connection.
I think that there is a "Goldfish" effect in computers. The faster and more powerful computers become the code grows to fill the new capacity with useless eye candy, code inefficiency and complexity. It is like putting a fish in a bigger bowl. The fish grows into the bowl. Or moving up a waist size in pants. Somehow I always manage to fill the extra two inches.
I am updating the look and feel of Fingertoe.com due to the MT 3.15 upgrade. The old stylesheets don't work with the new templates.
Anyway, I will be enlarging the fonts on this page soon. I am having trouble getting the Bloglines Blogroll to match the rest of the stylesheet.
Been doing quite a bit of work today! Got Fingertoe.com all of the way up on Movable Type 3.15, and did a lot of Wordpress work on Sean's website:
Overall, my impression is that both platforms are a hassle to get working correctly at first. Hacking templates is not a lot of fun. I think I have a better feel for what is going on in the Wordpress installation. PHP is much easier to understand than Perl. The open source community behind WP is a little more forthcoming with Information than the proprietary folks behind MT. I probably should go ahead and buy Movable type, and perhaps I will be happier.
The Movable type installation was a hassle because the new version of MT-Blacklist was difficult to get installed until I totally nuked the old version. Also I had to replace most of my default templates to get MT's new modern commenting system to work. Always looks easy to do, but there is always something that doesn't get updated quite right.
Working on getitng a "What I am reading" section working for Sean. He would like that on a totally separate webpage. I am sure it will be easy once we got it figured out. Installed a weather plugin on his system. Looks nice.
Well, I think I got everything upgraded. Decided to allow typekey authenticated comments only. I am hopeful that this will eliminate most of the comment spam that I have been battleing for the last few weeks. Let me know if you notice any quirkyness.
Well, I have decided to stick with Movable type.
I have been playing with Wordpress quite a bit, and I am impressed, It is easier to stay with Movable type for the time being however as all of the archive pages and stuff would be difficult to convert without changing the path names.
Upgrading was pretty simple so far. I had a little bug where the admin page didn't read its stylesheet Changed permissions on the stylesheet and it seems to work okay now.
I have been having terrible trouble with Spammers lately. I decided to upgrade so that I could utilize some of the more powerful tools to combat the spammers. I have been getting 25-50 spam comments and pingbacks a day. Hopefully that will end soon.
Apparently some enterprizing folks in South Dakota started selling candles smelling like Jesus.
His Essence -- Creations to Comfort the Soul
I am a bit unsure about the Patent Pending notice. Especially since the Prior art is sighted right in the product description.
It is interseting to see the ripple effect of Ashley's Smith's courage. It is indeed inspiring. Here are a few examples of people mentioning their desire to check out "The Purpose Driven Life"
Ashley Smith: Her Faith Got Her Through by Steve BowersI've heard of the book The Purpose Driven Life and heard it was good but never bothered to check it out myself. Likewise with the Bible. As a preacher's kid, I got the Bible stuff so much growing up that I welcomed to opportunity to get away from it as an adult. But it's quite obvious to me that this young woman's faith-based purpose-driven live is the reason why she's alive today. I think that maybe it's time to put The Purpose Driven Life on my reading list. And it might not be a bad idea to open up the Bible again. It seems to have worked for Ashley Smith.
MyWestTexas.com - Local News - 03/15/2005 - Sissom: Amid headlines of violence, America witnesses miracle of hostage reading to captorWow! Just one day before, I had stumbled across that very book gathering dust in my living room while cleaning and placed it in my desk for storage. It was a gift from a dear friend that I had never gotten around to reading, being the late-night TV news junkie I am.
As the hostage read to her captor, a human being emerged from what was perceived by the world as a complete monster. He wanted her to read more....
But tonight, I'm going to do something different.I think I'll finally read that book my friend gave me.
The nice part of this kind of Evangelism is that iLove is what Christ is all about. Ashley gave Brian Nichols love that he didn't deserve. She mad him pancakes, she asked about his family, whe told him that he had value, when everyone else in the world overflowing with hatred for him.
This ounce of love transformed him rrom a rampaging murdorous madman to a human being, hanging curtains for a friend. At least for a bit.
So often Christianity is portrayed as a bunch of old men telling others what they are doing wrong. Every one of us is doing some selfish thing that is hurtful to others and offensive to God. That should be so obvious that it doesn't need to be pointed out. The real message is that even thogh we don't deserve it, God loves us.
We should love others in the same way. Even though they don't deserve our love, only good can come of it. Evangelism is most effective when it is done by leadership. Toss off the entanglements of this world and follow God. If we do this, nobody will miss the effects. They will be compelled to follow.
Maybe not, he is only 23. I knew a lot of guys just like him!
Ashley Smith shows us what can happen when we love our enemy.
Hostage reads 'Purpose-Driven Life' to alleged Atlanta courthouse killer - (BP)"He needed hope for his life. He told me that he was already dead," Smith told reporters. "He said, 'Look at me. Look at my eyes. I am already dead.' And I said, 'You are not dead. You are standing right in front of me. If you want to die, you can. It's your choice.'
"But after I started to read to him, he saw -- I guess he saw my faith and what I really believed in. And I told him I was a child of God and that I wanted to do God's will. I guess he began to want to. That's what I think," she said.
When he was hungry, Smith made pancakes for Nichols and they talked more about God.
"I said, 'Do you believe in miracles? Because if you don't believe in miracles -- you are here for a reason. You're here in my apartment for some reason. You got out of that courthouse with police everywhere, and you don't think that's a miracle? You don't think you're supposed to be sitting right here in front of me listening to me tell you, you know, your reason here?'
"I said, 'You know, your miracle could be that you need to -- you need to be caught for this,'" Smith continued. "'You need to go to prison and you need to share the Word of God with them, with all the prisoners there.'"
A little love can go a long way. What a monster this guy was. A serial murderer stopped in his tracks by the Grace and Peace of God.
I helped my friend Sean set up a blog last night.
I also set up the Coppermine photo album that are hosting his images.
Dreamhost is pretty nice for Bloggers. They added a Wordpress One-Click install a few months ago, and it works great!
I am very sick today. Have weekend shift at work, Nobody is here to pass this along too, so I am toughing it out.
I have been not blogging much lately. I have been busy doing varios things.
I am writing some software to help manage the check in of kids at Sunday School. This has been a fun project, and I am nearly done now.
I have been Geocaching lately. I am all of the way up to 2 finds now. Walked about 12 miles last week, but I am still fat. Geocaching is a nerd sport. I like it.
Nathan is talking now. He is using words all of the time. Sometimes even 3 at a time.
It is hard to find information about sensory deprivation tanks via Google. A search yeilds more sarcastic references that actual info. One of you Google PhD's who reads Fingertoe.com (I know your out there becuase you keep developing my ideas for me) needs to invent an "NOT SARCASM" boolean operator. Anyway, I had considered building a Float tank about 3 or 4 years ago, so if you searcjh for "Float tank Spokane", You will likely find me amidst the vast collection of Pretender episode reviews and "Unless you where in a Sensory Deprivation tank you know...." references. As a result I occasionally have people email me and ask if I know of any float tanks in the Spokane area. If you know of one, Please add a comment. I am sure that this post will show up soon on the search engines.
Started cleaning up my garden area. I have about 3 years worth of maple tree leaves composting back there. I am trying to consolidate these into the compost bins so that I can have some more soil to plant. It is pretty hard work!
I have to work this weekend. That is not fun.
At church we have been going through the Sermon on the Mount. At BSF we have been going through 1st and Second Corinthians. For several weeks in a row, the topics have complemented each other almost perfectly. For example Matthew 5:43-48 and 1 Corinthians 13 Or Matthew 6:1-4 and 2 Corinthians 8:1-13 I suspect this is an interesting coincidence, although I am sure that the sermon on the mount was a pretty big inspiration to all early Christians, Paul included.
Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site
Bought myself a nice GPS the other day. My Dad has been getting into Geocaching. I think it is a really dorky hobby, but I need the excercize, and I am kinda a dork, so I won't complain about the dorkyness..
Looking at geocaching.com, there are about 20 caches hidden within 2 miles of my house. Yesterday, We our whole family went out and found our first Geocache. Julia, My 4 year old (Tommorow) really enjoyed it. She was bragging about it all night.