I can't vote for my prefered candidate

I didn't realize that Kentucky law required that people switch parties before Dec. 31st. to vote in a given Primary. I would like to see Gatewood Galbraith elected governor of Kentucky. Gatewood is the author of a book I wish I could have published: The Last Free Man in America

While I certainly don't agree with every position he has, I respect that Gatewood is certainly the most honest man in the election for Kentucky Governor, and the least "buyable". If I had any spare money, I'd certainly donate to the cause.

I'm still sick of Politics, but one thing is for sure

Bush has an undisputed ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Mr. Gonzales is a perfect example. All the bloke had to do was cruise for 4 years, and things would be fine. But no, a few US Attorneys have to be fired for political reasons, and then he can't even explain what his subordinates did.

Gonzales needs to resign, and a reasonable replacement named.

UK Benefits -- Milady is Disappointed

Milady isn't disappointed about the fact that UK is extending "partner" benefits to live ins (i.e. same-sex committed pairs and non-married opposite sex pairs). If anything, both Milady and I would prefer that employers simply say "You'll pay all costs, but we will insure anyone who lives in the house with you". This would take sexual preference out of it, and instead cover family members or friends who live together for non-sexual purposes (i.e. two sisters live together as old maids, etc.).

No, Milady wanted to get her degree. UK employees get 6 hours a semester free, and there were high hopes that they'd extend those benefits to spouses and children. Instead, the UK employee can either get the 6 hours, or the spouse or child may get 50% off tuition and fees. Very useful for kids, but where Milady wanted to take 1 or 2 classes for free, that won't work.

Oh, well....

Good, cheesy science fiction

As one of my guilty pleasures, I've been watching The House Between. It's an excellent low-budget science fiction show similar to the Twilight Zone.

Star Trek: Of Gods and Men is behind schedule, so they only have the first 3 minutes of Act One on-line. It's still a really good three minutes.

Hidden Frontier (a Star Trek fan fiction follow-on) is wrapping up its final season soon. The first couple of seasons are very painful to watch, but they have matured into a cast capable of rivaling any series put forth by Paramount.

Finally, New Voyages will be releasing "World Enough And Time" any day now. I'm not quite over what they did to Chekov in "To Serve All of My Days", but they may fix it in the Special Edition later....

If you know of a show that should appear here, leave a comment or Email me and I'll add it.

The Song of the Day

"Bad Moon Rising" by CCR.

Why? All kinds of bad moon magic being used here at work. I can't say much more, but fortunately it's not my manure pile to shovel....

The Sounds Of Wretched Silence

Thanks to The Captain (of Captain's Quarters), I've read about one of the silliest ideas I've heard about since campaigning for the 2008 election in March 2007: One Day of Blog Silence. We bloggers are supposed to be quiet tomorrow as a show of solidarity for Virginia Tech's victims.

I have been praying for the families of the people who died at VT. I've cried over the incident. But in this case, I have little sympathy for the victims, because (with few exceptions) they chose to be victims. Cho surprised the people in the first room. OK, I can see where the people in that room had little room to act. However, every other room had ample warning. Why didn't they fight back?

People are victims all over the world because they are denied the fundamental right to defend themselves. In the US, we teach our kids to never, ever fight (which 99% of th e time is right, but not 100%). In the rest of the world, we deny repressed groups access to arms to defend themselves.

I think Darfur is a shame. That said, every argument I used to oppose our trip into the Balkins and Milady used to oppose Iraq also apply there. It's a terrible problem trying to be a consistent libertarian...

Bloggers do little good when silent. Christians do little good when silent. That's why I won't be silent.

Why women avoid IT -- and possibly should

Slashdot had an article last night titled Women Are Fleeing IT Jobs. Appearantly, women are figuring out that Information Technology isn't a place to work if you want a lot of nights and weekends free. Imagine that. Milady and I discussed me living the blue-colored outsourcer for almost 2 years before I went to the current job, and one of the reasons I left was that my only advancement paths involved working more hours and traveling more. I ended up having a little less take-home pay and fewer methods of advancement, but a lot less overtime and much fewer nights and weekends.

In the comments to the article, Natomui said:

It really frightens me that the tone of the article depicts all IT related women as doting career moms who are only waiting for an easy out to go home and take care of Father Jr. This backslide into 1950s pre-feminist movement status scares me. Why can't the IT dad have to worry about day-care and being on call 24 hours a day because he has to take care of his children too? Why have we set up yet another situation for detached parenting that falls prey to the same social normality that we've been trying to eradicate for decades to pave the way for something far more beneficial - a well rounded parental structure that depicts both parties as nurturing.

1960s feminism has failed the children. The Baby Boomers may not have realized it, and even their kids, but the current generation is, because they've lived it. Feminism is "I want it my way" for women. OTOH, having kids is all about their needs and growth. If a kid needs Mom to stay home, then Mom stays home. Period. If the family needs Dad to skip the promotion to $150k manager so that he can be at every ballgame and play, then you don't advance.

Once you have kids, it's about duty and responsibility, not rights and privilages.

Be careful Michael

One of my worst guilty vices is listening to Michael Savage. We didn't hear that Cho sent a package to NBC News, but Michael was raving about needing a lot of new mental hospital/jails, and using them.

Mr. Savage needs to be careful. Too many frothing-mouth rants like tonight, and the powers that be might put him to the front of the line for one... ;)

Built Lord Tough

Some people are just positive thinkers. Now, most of my crew isn't. Number 1 Son, Milady, and I all have that "ray of sunshine" missing. As my mother-in-law once said to her husband, "you'd pick up a free puppy and look at its hindend".

Not Jeff. Jeff looks at things from the sunny side of life. It took us almost a year of going to our church before we realized that he wasn't the children's minister. Jeff has run the 3-5th grade ministry at our church for at least 9 years now, on top of his day job owning his own contracting business and his "night job" as a husband and father of 6 kids.

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff had some form of seizure or attack on the way home from work, and lost control of his Ford truck. He doesn't remember the truck entering one end of a house, and exiting the other end. Now, Jeff vaguely remembers the firefighters saying that he must be dead when they were getting him out of that Ford truck. At the time, he woke up asking why he was in the parade.

The doctors of course ruled out drugs or alcohol, and found that Jeff had broken several bones in his back. They also had to restrict his pain medicine, since there was a fear it could cause another seizure.

Sunday, Jeff was at church. He was in a plastic brace, and you could tell he hurt, but he was smiling and talking to everyone. When Milady and I tried to be gentle and shake hands, he pulled each of us into a strong hug. He was talking about how he knew it was the Lord who saved him, and that he's already talked to Ford about using "Built Lord Tough" as a theme for wristbands and a speaking tour. He's going to talk about "The Lord, Me, and a Ford", and how the Lord and his Ford pickup saved his life.

It takes a truly Godly man to feel that way about such a tragedy. Instead of kicking back, he's turned to God and is going right on. I for one am humbled.

If you'd like for Jeff to come talk to you and your church, Email me, and I'll pass the request along.

Prayer Request: Jeff still wants and needs a lot of prayer, because he's facing the possibility of other surgeries to his back, and months of healing and rehabilitation. His family also is going to need a lot of help getting past this.

We MUST Understand -- Or It Will Happen Again

When I heard of the Virginia Tech shootings, I couldn't help but cry over both the victims and the killer, Cho Seung-Hui. A couple of months ago, I read Mark Ames' book, Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond. Mr. Ames describes the nihilism and complete and utter bleakness to which a person who is pushed beyond hope.

We have created a society of people without hope, either in God (whom they either don't believe in or don't know) or in man. Their parents don't raise them, foisting them instead into car seat pens (early daycare) and child holding areas (later daycare). They get to school and have absolutely no structure or discipline. If they can't sit down or quit acting like a kid for 5 minutes, they get pumped full of speed and labeled a problem child. There is no right, no wrong, and the kid who causes the problem gets the attention. Through a lack of discipline or being sympathetic to the abusers, school administrations will not take the picked-on kid's side. Is it any wonder that we have angry children who are so narcissistic and nihilistic that they are ready to die and want to take their attackers (real and imagined) with them?

As Christians, it's time for us to say that enough is enough. We must raise our children, even if it means living on one income for some time. Like The Anchoress has raised Buster, we must teach our children that living boldly is more important than just living. We must push the rest of society to raise theirs, and give what aid we can. Public schools need to be a place of limits and of love, or we must ALL force them to change, even if only by leaving them and driving them broke.

Most of all, we Christians need to throw this Purpose Driven, Prosperity asserting, touchy-feely pseudo-Gospel junk out the window. We must get back to the business of loving people and telling them that there is a God in Heaven who loves them, and who wants them with Him for all eternity.

These people need hope, real hope, and we are the ones who haven't been telling them where it is.

This is the old blog

I've decided to restart blogging from scratch. I'm turning off all comments here, and keep these old posts as an archive.

A few notes from the week past...

1> Plumbing hurts. Our master bedroom's bathroom was desperately needing redoing, so I started. Of course, the medicine cabinet had rusted, so a new vanity was needed. Then the sink won't match the new mirror, so let's just put in a pedistal sink (makes the room look much less cluttered). And the linoleum was warn out. And.. well, you get the picture.

To put in a pedistal sink, I had to undo the twisty plumbing that was put in for the last sink. I started learning how to sweat (i.e. soldier) copper a couple of weeks ago, and after throwing my first couple of creations away, I thought I was ready.

Of course, I bought the wrong size drywall AGAIN. Sitting on the floor for 6 hours straight hurts. But I have pipes that aren't (yet) leaking, a wall that's mostly solid, and one step closer to the master bathroom of my dreams (or at least not my nightmares). And only two superficial burns. (Don't touch the hot pipe.)

2> Writing is hard. I've had three posts bouncing around in my head this week, but I've not been posting or writing in so long that I couldn't get started. Therefore, I'm just starting now. I think you'll get more posts this week. But that's not a promise. :)

3> I'm really really sick of politics. I should be more interested, but I get this deep, retching feeling every time I think of either group of bozos in Washington. I don't know if I'll be able to do much political commentary this year.

Why I'm Not a Conspiracy Theory Nut

Number 1 Son loves to watch shows about alien conspiracies. Milady and I have been working too well on instilling a libertarian streak in him: he doesn't trust the government to tell the truth. How he can also claim to be a good Democrat too, I'm not sure... ;)

I would use my own words, but daveschoder summed it up so well over in this comment at SlashDot:

We can't keep any of our classified programs secret; we have people coming out of the woodwork at AT&T and within the intelligence agencies themselves to leak every possible program we've got going on in the "war on terror", but yet we can manage to keep it secret that the government itself directly planned and executed 9/11 and also murdered 3000 of its own citizens, despite millions of pages of evidence to the contrary, Islamic extremist organizations the world over, and so on - this is getting better than Holocaust denial!

Like I've told Number 1 Son: Nixon and the plumbers couldn't keep a simple break-in secret. I used to suspect that the mafia had killed Oswald, but even the mafia couldn't keep that kind of secret. No, there's no way 200+ people have kept the Aliens secret at Area 51, or that Dub and crew fixed the WTC buildings, etc.

Requests for prayer

A young man, Drew O., who goes to our homeschool co-op, fell 30 feet out of a tree Tuesday, and has been unconscious and in ICU ever since. The doctors have had to put him in a drug-induced coma to try to keep his brain fluid pressure down, and have been somewhat successful. At last word, he will have to stay in the coma for at least another day or two, and then they'll wake him up to see if he can start responding again.

Also, the son of Little Miss' Sunday School teachers, Jarrod, has not been responding well after surgery to close a cleft palate. He has not been wanting to eat or drink. We need to pray that he gets his appetite back, and that eating and drinking don't hurt him.

(8:12PM Update: Jerrod is eating, and seems to be turning the corner. No updates on Drew yet.)

I fibbed

In the splash page, I said:

Thanks to the new work, I needed to move the blog over to a new database. I started to do it, and halfway through, I asked myself, "Why am I doing this?" That's when I realized that I am just not up to blogging right now.

I haven't tossed the old articles yet, so I may bring them back in a couple of months.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

It seems I'm hooked on blogging. I had the blog down two days and was wanting to post at least three different things. Guess you're stuck with me, whomever's reading.

He's Back

Dave from Revenge of Mr. Dumpling is back. Since Dave was one of the first bloggers to hit my webrolls, I just had to mention it.

Good to see you back.

Updated: I just checked the blog roll, and it looks like Spoons and Nick Queen have made a reappearance too. I've moved them out of the "no see" category too. You know, the one I was in. ;)

Milady is well

I had hoped to take the laptop to the hospital, but we ended up not staying long enough for me to even log in had I taken it.

Milady is very well. She is in great spirits, and is doing physically well. Moreover, the stress associated with the cancer is gone. Her blood pressure is down from 138/98 or so down to 118/78, and her sugar (we think) is also down from borderline high to normal.

She had a full bi-lateral mascectomy, and we have chosen not to have any reconstruction.

Thanks for everyone's prayers and well wishes.

Milady will have surgery Friday

I was going to post the story of our trip to New York last week, but the computer didn't co-operate. Last night, I was going to try again, but then I had another migraine. So maybe tonight or tomorrow. ;)

Milady's doctors have advised her to go ahead and have a preventative mascectomy, and scheduled it for Friday. She will also have a preventative hysterectomy in December.

We haven't confirmed it yet, but it appears that her mother's family may have Cowden Disease in it, which means that her chances of feminine cancers are in the 30 to 40 percent range.

Please pray for Milady, and the entire family.

They finally hit a ball

I've been a Cincinatti Reds fan as long as I liked baseball. I think my Grandfather helped influence that. I've wanted Reds tickets ever since the 1990 World Series.

Our homeschool co-op got free tickets from the Reds for Friday, and I paid $30 in the silent auction for all 4 of those tickets. I thought it was a bargin.

Well, they weren't bad. For being way back in the far right corner, on the lower part of the upper deck.

Fortunately, we all REALLY like the Great American Ball Park. Even in the far corner of right field, the field was very watchable.

The game was a different story. The Reds couldn't get a hit, and they stranded 2 on base. Poor Coffey turned a 1 run deficit into a 3 run gap, and that sunk the Reds. The reliever isn't supposed to help the opponents so much.

A couple in our Sunday School class saw Saturday's game, and Arizona shut the reds down again. Terribly embarrasing.

At least the Reds won today, by the skin of their teeth (a 2 run homer in the bottom of the ninth). I told Number 1 Son that that's why you watch baseball: it's not over until the third out.

Playing free poker, again

This is Number 1 Son, if I ever let him play for money with me:

No. 1 Son thinks he's a really good Poker player. The only problem is, he is pretty good. Good enough to where we can't consistently beat the other.

That's why I told him that we can play free tournaments, and games that don't involve paying out money.

Last year, I played this tournament, and he "advised me" (until he got bored and walked off ;) ). So we're going to try it again.

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I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

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