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Yahoo! News - Arch-Conservative German Elected Pope
It only took a few hours before the media turned on the new pope.
I commented earlier on how the media seemed to be campaigning for a liberal pope. Now they are stunned, that somebody was elected who actually believes what the Church teaches.
Go figure. I think it will be a long time before there is a liberal Episcopalian pope. It is impressive how the failure of fantasy suddently becomes news.
I was born in Nevada, to parents that grew up in California and New Mexico. I have spent all of my adult life in the northwest.
I am not at all midwstern, but perhaps I play one on the phone. I spend most of every day chatting with farmers on the telephone. Some of them may be rubbing off on me. A sizable portion of the people who I work with are farmers or bankers based out of Minnesota. I would suspect that qualifies as upper midwestern?
Your Linguistic Profile: |
| 75% General American English |
| 20% Upper Midwestern |
| 5% Midwestern |
| 0% Dixie |
| 0% Yankee |
So I got a collection of travelbugs today. I am going to launce my first one in the next couple days.
For those that don't know, Travelbugs are a geocaching gadget. Basically you buy a dogtag from the geocaching cartel, and then you can attach it to an item and drop it in a geocache. Other Geocachers can pick it up and take it to another cache, and it gets passed around from place to place. Sometimes they accumulate thousands of miles. Some of the Travelbugs have specific missions that they are attempting to accomplish..
I am going to attach a Thermochron iButton to my travelbug and send give it the mission to get as hot as possible in the summer and as cold as possible in the winter, then return home to me, so that I can read the tempuratures and send token prizes to the Geocaches who helped it get hotest or coldest.
Such silly fun. I think it will be a good thing to waste time tracking for a year or so... Plus, my iButton will no longer be gathering dust.
"I could have - should have - graduated many years ago, but I keep passing on the real world's invitation," said Lechner, 28, who is in his 11th year as a student in the University of Wisconsin System, the last 10 at UW-Whitewater. He's taken a full course load every semester except the current one, in which he's taking seven credits.
I only took 9 years, but that was not full time. I quit for a couple of years after my zymurgy studies ate away at my motivation. I went to college at U of I with a few guys would where pretty close to Matt's Tenure.
I figured there had to be a Bizarre Twist coming since this story broke. People don't just lose fingers and not go looking for them.
abc7news.com: Bizarre Twist In Case Of Finger Found In Wendy's Chili
San Jose police confirmed today that they did go to Las Vegas and working with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, served a search warrant yesterday on a home on Coral Berry Street. They are investigating the possibility that the finger that was found in the bowl of chili in the Bay Area could belong to the deceased aunt of the woman who found the finger.
I like eating Wendy's chili. I am glad that this likely was not thier doing.
Here are some good tips on how not to get fired for blogging...
EFF:How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)
I haven't had a problem yet. My stratagy has been to promote my blog all of the time at work. This insures that everyone is annoyed enough with me that they will never read it. ;-)
Actually I am careful with what I say, I just ran a seach for my employer's name and it doesn't return any entries. I ran a search for 'boss', and I only find one entry, and it is generic, and applies to my behavior, not theirs.
Business is such a fun topic to discuss, it is a bummer that it can be so dangerous. I would guess that there is a little bit of 'Dilbert' or 'Office Space' in every workplace. It is a bummer that many companies don't have a sense of humor about it.
Monday Morning Insight Weblog: The Tithing "Money-Back Guarantee"
I think that God often blesses us in ways that are difficult to recongnize. God may often be leaving my wallet empty so that I don't have the opportunity to spend that money on something that would be appealing to me now, would be pointless from an eternal perspective.
Often some of the richest experiences in life happen when you have nothing, you take the family to the park, you play in the back yard, You bake bread together and spend time with one another. Those times are a blessing.
Tithing is a useful habit because it puts your priorities straight. God is more important than money.
Unfortunately campaigns like this often trivialize the concept. They teach that you should give because you get. While this may be true, it is not the reason you should give. God sees our heart, and a selfish gift is seen for what it is.
The way I see it, it is all God's money anyway. He will Bless me, because he promised to bless me.
11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD , "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
God's blessings don't always feel like blessings, but they are.
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
I started tithing years ago, and didn't notice an bugetary impact at all. I have always had what I needed, and little more. This was true before and after I started the tithing habit. I see that as a blessing. 90% seems like 100 percent, plus I get to be part of an awesome community of faith that is leading hundreds of people out of despair and into hope.
Google Maps Now with High resolution satellite shots. Woo Hoo! Pretty darn cool. I keep looking for myself. Unfortunately my office is just out of range of the high resolution photo. Otherwise I could probably find my car...
Seems that the media is treating this pope transition time as an opportunity to start a political campaign.
Yahoo! News - AP Poll: New Pope Should Push for ChangeSixty-nine percent of Americans and 60 percent of U.S. Catholics said the next pope should change church policies to allow priests to marry, while 25 percent of all Americans and 36 percent of Catholics said they preferred no change.
Most Americans, 64 percent, said women should be allowed to become priests, and 60 percent of the surveyed American Catholics agreed in the poll. Thirty-two percent of Americans in general disagreed, 38 percent of Catholics.
So sounds like the majority of Americans believe the Catholics should elect a protestant pope?
Telegraph | News | Woman breastfeeds newborn tiger cubs
I once got in trouble for telling my wife that she was a great mammal...
The "Ads by Google" bar is pretty funny when I read this. Google is confused. Do I sell them Cats or nursing Bras????
I don't think there is anything wrong with having a proxy server on your website. I have one on my server.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Computer project lands student, teacher in hot water
I don't call mine "Bad Dog". There are lots of legitimate reasons for using a proxy server giving it a name like that makes it seem more naughty than it really is.
UPDATE -- Here is Conrad's Blog entry explaining why he built "Bad Dog"
Blog247.Blogspot.com: Bad Dog
And here is his story about getting in trouble:
Blog247.Blogspot.com: BadDog is over
Sound Politics is covering this story as well:
Sound Politics: Spokane School Case Shows Weakness Of Internet Filters
CNN.com - Car that runs on compressed air - Mar 30, 2005
I wonder if I could convert my new van. The van runs great, but it guzzles down the gas pretty darn fast.
I have always been intersted in Hybrid electric cars. Perhaps this is an even better invention.
Yesterday, I started brewing some raspberry wheat beer. Looks pretty cool doesn't it??
The walls of my carboy are coated in asending air bubbles. It is fermenting so fast I figure I should open a window, or my house may get over pressurized.
I used to brew a lot when I first came back from college. Haven't done much in the last 8 or 9 years. Made a batch a month or so a go that turned out pretty nice...
I added a couple of plugs for some companies I do business with on the "Shameless plugs" section of this website.
The first link is for Broadvoice. I have been using broadvoice for 6 months now, and I have been quite happy with their service. I have a phone number in the Portland area, where a lot of my family lives. Now my family can make a local call, and talk to us whenever they want for free. I can call most anywhere for no additional cost. It is also nice to have all of the features available for such a low price. If I where to get Voicemail, Caller ID, Call forwarding Distinctive ringing, Simultanious ringing and the like on my Qwest phone, it would cost me a small fortune. With Broadvoice, that is all included in the base price.
I also added a link to Dreamhost. I have been a customer of theirs since 1999, and I have been quite satisfied with their service. I rarely see any outages on my website. They keep adding features without raising my price. Most importantly (To me) when there is a problem they are open and honest about it.
Anyway, if you are in the market for these VoIP or web hosting, please give these guys a look. I think you will probably be satisfied if you choose to do business with them.