Tales From Snake Run

2011 deaths

2011-12-31T22:00:00.000-08:00

I used to do these every year and I just realized I haven't done it in several years. So here is a look back at the deaths of 2011 (at least the one's notable to me).

John Barry - Jan 30 - This guy used to write the soundtracks to the James Bond films.

Gary Moore - Feb 6 - An underrated rock and blues guitar player/singer.

Jane Russell - Feb 28 - Old time hotty/actress. Starred in about 20 movies, one of them along side Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Nate Dogg - March 15 - Rapper associated with Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre.

Michael Gough - March 17 - Played the part of Alfred in the Keaton/Kilmer/Clooney Batman films.

Elizabeth Taylor - March 23 - Another Old time hotty/actress in too many movies to count.

Osama bin Laden - May 2 - You know, that terrorist guy.

Jackie Cooper - May 3 - Overshadowed by the news of OBL's death. He is a former child actor known for Our Gang (aka The Little Rascals). He later appeared in many movies and TV shows.

Randy Savage - May 20 - AKA "The Macho Man" Randy Savage. Former WWE wrestler and spokesman for SlimJims. Little known fact: he was married in real life to his "in ring manager" Miss Elizabeth. They divorced in 1992 and she died in 2003 (drug od) while living with wrestler Lex Lugar.

Peter Falk - June 23 - Most famous for his role as Lieutenant Columbo. He also appeared in many other TV shows and movies.

Betty Ford - July 8 - Former first lady.

Amy Winehouse - July 23 - I wasn't going to even mention her, but they made a pretty big deal about it in the news.

Bubba Smith - August 3 - Former football player, but I knew him better as Hightower in the Police Academy films.

Steve Jobs - October 5 - Again, another name that was in all the news outlets. Founder of Apple Computers in case you don't know.

Dennis Ritchie - To me this is a much bigger loss than Steve Jobs. Passing on Oct 8, he developed the C programming language and co-wrote the UNIX operating system. MacOS X, or iOS on the iPhone, was originally called NeXTSTEP which is a derivative of UNIX. The Andriod runs Linux which is based on UNIX and mostly written in C. Microsoft Windows' base OS and many applications are written in C. I learned UNIX and C while in college and that was my main influence in getting into computers. So I owe a lot to this man. On Facebook recently, Purdue University's College of Technology posted a link to the following article that talks about Dennis Ritchie and how the UNIX OS was developed: The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix

Muammar Gaddafi - October 20 - Former Libyan leader.

Andy Rooney - November 4 - Most notable for his "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," on 60 Minutes.

Joe Frazier - November 7 - Former boxer.

Harry Mogan - Dec 7 - Col. Potter on M*A*S*H and Det. Bill Gannon on Dragnet.

Getting the tornado damage repaired

2011-12-15T07:32:00.000-08:00

Previously I had written about the tornado that came through on February 28, 2011. We've gotten all the damage repaired now, so I thought I would tell about it in chronological form.

February 28 - Tornado went through in the early AM, see story. I realize I didn't actually finish that blog post, so I will continue here. After the power came back on, I went up to Bicknell to get Emma. Later Beth and Evan took a shower at Mom and Dad's because the hot water heater wasn't on yet and we got supper from McDonald's, just because.

March 4 - I took the day off of work. Me and Emma went to visit my insurance agent, he was not there.

March 7 - I went to see my insurance agent again after work to start my claim.

March 21 - The Insurance adjuster came out and looked at the house. He was pretty busy since there was a lot of damage in the area, that's why it took two weeks for him to get there. He wrote me (and the bank) a check and gave me a writeup of the damages. Right after he left, he called me to tell me to tear up the check that he gave me because he miscalculated something and gave me too much money. So then I had to wait a week or more for the revised check to show up.

I decided that I would take a stab at doing the repairs myself. So I took the check to the bank to deposit it. Nope, bank wouldn't do it. They said if I have a mortgage, and the amount on the check is more than $10,000, they have to put the money into an escrow account and write checks out of it. I asked why and I was told "We have to protect our investment." (emphasis mine) What also made me mad about the whole thing is that I have almost twice the amount of the insurance check paid off on the mortgage. If they are worried that someone would take the insurance money and walk away from the house I could understand. The check wasn't large enough to be worth it and the damage wasn't that extensive AND the bank would not have lost that much even if I had. Their rules need to be reconsidered. So let that be a lesson to everyone out there. Ask your insurance provider to give you multiple checks of amounts less than about $9500 to avoid this scenario. They gave me some instructions and paperwork to fill out and send in to the bank's insurance department. At the bank they told me I could do the work myself if I wanted to. Good. So I called the bank's insurance department and I told them I could save a lot of money if they would let me do it myself. Again they said no because the check was above $15,000 and therefore I would have to use a contractor. I was not happy. So I went looking for a contractor and a friend of mine referred me to one.

April 5 - Jerry Davis of Jerry Davis Construction came over to take a look at what repairs were needed. I was going to follow what the insurance adjuster had written down, but Jerry gave better advice, so I followed his. The roofs that were damaged were either shingled, rolled-roofed, or metal. Jerry suggested we go all metal since it's almost the same price and will hold up better and longer. Not to mention that the existing metal roof on my house was the only one that held up during the tornado.

April 8 - I started tearing down the car port. This took me a while because I carefully took all the nails out of it so that I wouldn't get one in a tire in the future. Some of the metal was still usable.

Somewhere in here I had to take Mom and Dad's tractor and trailer out into the neighbor's field to pick up all the wood and crumbled up pieces of sheet metal from the barn. Mom and Dad's trailer is pretty good size and I (with the help of my sister and brother-in-law) filled the trailer up twice. The debris was scattered all over the field and it took a while to drive around and pick it up. The piece farthest away from the house I measured to be over a half-mile away. It took me a while to get it all picked up because, well, it kept raining. The field was too muddy to take the tractor and trailer out in it without cutting ruts in the field. I was also up against the clock because the farmer wanted to plant crops. Luckily I got it all done just in time for the farmer to start. I also noticed a seat cushion off of one of our deck chairs was missing. This chair was under our back porch. I dreaded having to find a replacement. One day I was walking through the neighbor's field and managed to find it in a ditch about a quarter-mile away from the house. I also had a tree leaning on the house being propped up with a clothes line pole. I had considered trying to save the tree by digging around it and putting an anchor in the ground next to it. Keep in mind it was a pretty good size tree. In the end I just gave up and cut the tree down. I hated to do it since most of the trees in our yard are now gone due to tornadoes.

April 19 - Yet another nasty storm came through. Tornadoes hit Haubstat and Princeton. We weren't sure how things were going to go, so we took cover in the hallway of our house this time. The kids were already in bed. I got the cushions off of the big couch and put them on the floor so we had something soft to lay on (or something to get under to protect us if we had to). We left Emma in her bed asleep since we were right outside her door. If we had to go get here she was only a couple inches away. I remembered the story my Dad told about my Grandma and the tornado of 1925. They survived because they huddled down behind a couch and the wall fell over against the couch leaving a triangular shaped area behind the couch that protected them. Turns out the power was out in Princeton pretty bad, so they actually canceled work. Luckily the power was still on at our house.

April 21 - Got the quote from Jerry Davis. I immediately mailed it off to the bank. As expected, it took a while but they finally contacted me and told me that nobody had signed the quote. So I had to sign it and then hunt Jerry down again and have him sign it and mail it off again. Then I waited and waited. Finally, the first check came in for the first $10,000.

Late June through mid-August - Jerry and the guys did all the repair work. They did a great job by the way. I gave Jerry the check after he got started. Then I had to call the bank for the "halfway" point inspection. By the time the bank sent someone over, they only had the carport to go. The carport took less than a week and the inspector said that he would be back in the area later that week if I could get the bank to send him out again. I called and sent email (as they requested) to get them to send him back over for final inspection. As you might have guessed, it didn't happen. They did send the second check and I gave it to Jerry. Another week and I think the final inspector came over. The inspection didn't take long and it was a lady this time and she had no idea why she was there. I could have just made something up I guess, but I told her what the bank wanted to know and she took pictures and filled out a report.

September 6 - The final check for Jerry arrived. Since Jerry's quote was below the amount the insurance company originally gave me, the bank sent me a check for the remaining balance. I'm amazed that they even allowed it given all the other hoops I had to jump through. I figured they would insist that I spend all of the money for repairs. At the very least I expected them to take the remaining balance and put it against the principle of my mortgage.

September 12 - Now here's where is gets weird. The bank sent me an interest check? (Queue the the Twilight Zone music and by Twilight I mean the old TV show, not the new series of movies/books about vampires) Yes, that's right, the account that they put the insurance money in actually earned interest and they actually sent me a check for it! I thought for sure the bank would pocket that money themselves and maybe they did keep some of it, I'll never know for sure. They did charge me for the two inspections.

Right now the only thing I have left to do is contact my insurance company and let them know I got everything fixed. The first check they gave me was for the depreciated value of the roof and building. After they inspect it again, they will pay for the actual repair work I spent up to what they think it should have cost.

Updates 11/30/2011

2011-12-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

I was going to make some comment about how it's been a while since my last posting, but I realize that I say that a lot. So I won't. I will say that I have many posts started, but I'm not sure when they will get posted. Got a few more stories from college and I have finally written about my Grandpa and will post that soon.

I got to go to the Bob Seger concert at the new Ford Center in Evansville on November the 9th. Beth got me tickets as a birthday/anniversary present. I went with Johnny Spells, who's ticket was also a birthday present from his wife. We had supper at Turoni's on Main street (along with everyone else going to the concert it seemed like). While Bob is gettin' up there in age, he still rocks on. I noticed that he did songs in a strategic order. He would do a really rockin' song where he was standing and then he would do either one where he would sit at the piano, or play the accoustic guitar. And when he played the guitar, he sat on a bench front and center. At one point he took a "7 minute" break and during one song he mysteriously disappeared from stage while the band played on. At the end of the concert, he did the infamous double encore. I was disappointed that he did not play "Like a Rock" but I'm wondering if Chevy owns the right to that song or something. I did some Google searching on it and found no proof. So maybe he didn't play it simply because he had to draw the line somewhere. After the concert I stopped by McDonald's for a quick bite and didn't get home until after midnight. There's more to this that I will post later.

So now it's after Thanksgiving and the radio stations have started to play Christmas music. I'm fine with that, but I have one problem. The radio station at work seems to think that there are "heavy rotation" lists for Christmas music. Wrong. Last Monday I heard Andy Williams' "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" three times. I've harped on Christmas songs before.

Those who know me well know that I really enjoy silent films, especially those from the 1920s. I was thrilled to learn about a movie that came out on November 25 that is set in the 1920s about a fictional silent film star. It's called "The Artist" and in addition to being about a silent film star, the movie itself is actually in black and white and is (you guessed it) silent. The main characters, George Valentin (almost certainly a nod to Rudolph Valentino) and Peppy Miller, are played by two French film stars I am not familiar with, but it also stars John Goodman and James Cromwell. It got a lot of attention at the Cannes Film Festival and they expect it to win an Oscar or two (the first silent film to do so in 83 years!). I find it amusing that it's entry at the IMDB under "Technical Specs" and "Sound Mix" says "Silent | Dolby Digital". I realize that it has music, it just seems odd to see that for a B&W silent. I was greatly disappointed to learn that on November 25 it was only showing in 4 theaters in the US, two in California and two in New York. However, I have just learned that it will be in many more theaters on December 25. I haven't heard if it will be in Evansville though. You can see a trailer for the movie at www.theartistmovie.net

On a side note about movies, if you haven't see the 2009 movie "Sherlock Holmes" with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, it's pretty good. A sequel, "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows", which you may have seen commercials for, will come out December 16.

Believe it or not, as of November 24th, it has been 20 years since the death of Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury. I remember on November 25, 1992 I was on the bus heading for school. The radio station we listened to played Paul Harvey's News and Comments and that is were I learned of his death. If you haven't noticed lately, there have been many Queen songs being performed by various artists. Queen themselves appeared on MTV EMA's not long ago. Dartmouth Aires sang a medley of Queen songs on "The Sing-Off". The surviving members of Queen are also putting together a tour called the "Queen Extravaganza". It will feature musicians selected by the band to play their music for them. If you haven't seen Marc Martel's "Somebody To Love" audition video, you will not believe it. It is on YouTube.

Speaking of YouTube, I posted "McDonald's Pizza Commercial ca 1989" a long time ago. Recently it was featured on the website memoryglands.com (never heard of it). Anyway, as of the time of this writing, it has been viewed almost 42,000 times!

For those who don't know, when I was in junior high and high school, I was a swimmer. I swam for Tecumseh Swim Club for age group swimming and additionally I swam for Gibson Southern for high school swimming. I retired from swimming in February 1994 after my high school sectional finals meet in Mt. Vernon. Recently I got a call from the Tecumseh Swim Club inviting me to an "alumni swim meet" in January. I am excited at the opportunity, however, I have to get back in shape. Some time ago I talked about my diet and how I lost a bunch of weight. Well, I fell off the wagon on that one and pretty much gained all my weight back. As soon as I got the call, I immediately went back to working out and eating better. I have already lost ten pounds as of the time of this writing. The difference this time is that I'm being more aggressive about not just losing weight, but strength training as well. I'll post more about this later as well.

Why I left my church, a F.A.Q.

2011-09-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

If you've heard the rumor about me leaving the church, it is true. But let me take this time to clear up any possible misinformation.

So why are you leaving?
I do not feel like I am an effective member of the church any longer. The answers to the other questions will expand on this further. I have no problem admitting that I am not a "contemporary" and never will be. I am much more of a traditionalist. That won't shock people who truly know me, but it might shock everyone else. We should not worship out of duty, we should worship because we want to. And I feel that I am no longer truly worshiping. Last weekend I took the kids to my Grandmother's church to visit with her. We sang from a hymnal, the kids came up during service to sing (they say they do it every week), had responsive reading, someone played special music, heard testimonials, and took prayer requests. The pastor made a few announcements before his sermon. He said they were having a baptism out at someone's lake at 4pm and everyone was invited. I wish I could have gone because I have never seen a baptism at a lake. Seen pictures but not in person. The pastor read from the King James Bible (that one actually caught me off guard). The pastor raised his voice during his sermon and at the end... an alter call. It was great. If the church's new approach reaches people for Christ, then good. But I cannot help reach people if my heart is not in it.

What's your problem with the changes over the years?
Did I say that? Imagine if you will an engineer at a company that makes cathode ray TVs. As we all know, I don't think you can get cathode ray TVs much anymore, they are all flat panels now. So the company wants the engineer to start designing LCD TVs, but he has no experience at it. At this point, if he didn't already work there, if he were to apply for his own job, would he get the job? So look at it like this: if I just moved to the area and I was looking for a new church, and I visited the GBC, would I want to start attending there? The answer would be no. That's not to say that other's wouldn't or shouldn't, it's just that *I* wouldn't. The church changed over the past 10 years or so, but I did not change along with it. I'm still the person I was 10-15-20 years ago. More mature perhaps, but still the same person. It's not a matter of personal choice, it's who I am.

So is the church not fulfilling your needs?
It's not about *my* needs, it's about the church's needs. I come to church and I sit there. Being an usher every other week or so really isn't service to the church. The church has gone a down a path that I did not follow despite what people might think. Therefore, I would be a hindrance to it's growth.

But where is your faith? or [insert obligatory question that uses the word "faith" in it]?
Really? You want to ask me about my faith? My mother tells me that I have been attending this church since I was born. Next month I will be 36. That means I've been going there for 36 years. I was baptized there, married there, and my kids were dedicated there. Leaving the only church I've really known of 36 years is the biggest step of faith I've ever made. I don't know where this is going to lead me, but we’ll just have to see.

Are you mad at/having a problem with someone?
No. In my 36 years there, I have had only one conflict with someone. My attitude was that if that
person didn't want to be around me *they* would have to leave. Eventually they did. But it was a long time later and I really think it was for other reasons. Leaving a church because you are mad at
someone is just an excuse. If both of you are truly adults, you can work out your problems/differences and stay focused on the real reason you are there: to bring people to Christ and help them grow in their relationship with him.

What about your wife and kids?
My wife and I have talked about it and she feels the same way and fully supports my decision and that is very important to me. Given her work schedule, she trusts my judgment on where we go. My little girl is too little to know the difference. She's happy as long as other kids are around. My son has been called a "social butterfly". We attended another church not long ago. To my great surprise, when we left he said "can we come back here next week?" He didn't know a single person at that church, but he wanted to come back. He'll do just fine wherever we go.

Why did you write this up and post it on a blog so publicly?
Because I don't like to have to repeat myself. And if I were to have to repeat all of this to everyone who asks, I'd probably leave something out every time. I have no problem making my feelings public, I have nothing to hide. So I would like to request that no one try to talk me out this because I have already made up my mind. It wasn't an easy decision. Life changing decisions like this never are. I guess I am also considered a relatively young lifetime member of the church, so it may come as shock to some people's systems that I am leaving. This way, anyone who wants to know can read this and not feel uncomfortable asking me in person. I've prayed on this for a long time. Years actually. Finally I decided to listen to what God was telling me recently and to step out of my comfort zone.

Choice

2011-09-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I attended Bethabara General Baptist Church in Folsomville, Indiana. It is the church that my lone surviving grandparent attends and I hadn't seen her in a couple months. Technically she's my step-grandmother, but I've known her a lot longer than my biological grandmother who died when I was young. Sunday was Grandparent's day, but I didn't realize that until Pastor Scott mentioned it during service. Afterwards we went out to eat for lunch.

Pastor Scott's message on Sunday was about happiness. He started his sermon asking "are you happy?" As I listened I remembered that I had an idea for a blog post but never sat down to write it. So I have decided to do it today.

I thought I could use the line from the movie "The Matrix Reloaded" where Neo says "Choice, the problem is choice." as some kind of lead in to this, but it's just not working. Choice can be a problem and a solution. Duh, right? But allow me to explain what I mean.

We make choices everyday, no doubt about that. But there are things that we *could* make a choice over but don't. "What the heck are you talking about???" Keep reading.

Back to Pastor Scott's message about happiness, I believe that happiness is a choice. That's right, you can choose to be happy or you can choose not to be happy. Another way of putting this is you have a choice whether you want to see the blessings in your life or not. It's kind of like the difference between a pessimist and an optimist. You can choose to see the bad or you can choose to see the good. I'm not saying you should ignore the bad things and pretend they aren't happening. I'm just saying that if you focus on the bad (and negative) you'll never be happy.

This goes right along with anger. Things happen all the time that make us angry. But like happiness, anger is a choice too. If you don't choose, the anger will make the choice for you. You have a choice to be "proactive" or passive, hence a problem or a solution. Again, I'm not saying ignore the bad and let people walk all over you. I'm just saying that we all have a choice as to how we react to things. Anger is a natural reation, but how you handle that anger is your choice. You can choose to dwell on it and when you do, it just makes you more angry. Then you start taking it out on others. Anger is contagious. I just wish happiness was half as contagious.

To answer Pastor Scott's question, yes, I am happy, because I choose to be. I choose to see the blessings in my life and let them outweigh the negative things.

Review: Weird Al - Alpocalypse (pt 2)

2011-09-01T06:43:00.000-07:00

I had some time to re-listen to the song "Ringtone" to see how it is a style parody of Queen. I then listened through several Queen songs and decided that it is most similar to the song "Killer Queen" from the album "Sheer Heart Attack".
However, it also has elements of the following songs:
"Now I'm Here" also from "Sheer Heart Attack"
"Seven Seas of Rhye" from "Queen II"
"Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy" from the album "A Day at the Races" and
"Don't Stop Me Now" from the album "Jazz"
The very end of the song sounds like the end of "Killer Queen", however it also sounds like the end of the song "The Show Must Go On" from the album "Innuendo".

I also gave "Perform This Way" another listen. I have decided that Al has met his match. No matter how bizarre he tried to make that song, Lady GaGa will still come up with something even more outragous than what he came up with. Probably Lady GaGa's only problem with the song was that she had already come up with some of Al's ideas but now she can't use them or else she'll be accused of copying him.

Review: Weird Al - Alpocalypse

2011-08-30T13:31:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I become more and more disconnected from Weird Al, at least when it comes to his new music. The reason? I don't keep up with new music myself. His last album, Straight Outta Lynwood, I'm not sure I knew any of the songs that he does a parody of. Al's new album "Alpocalypse" is no exception. But I have to say that I do enjoy the album much more than "Straight Outta Lynwood" because I at least know a few of the songs. Just like in his album "Poodle Hat" where he did a song about eBay, Al continues to do songs about things in pop culture such as TMZ, Craigslist, Ringtone, and Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me.

Al starts out the album poking fun at the artist that seems to get the most attention these days, Lady GaGa with the song "Perform This Way". If you haven't seen the video to it, go watch it on YouTube.

Some of the songs on this album were available long ago on the Internet. The song "CNR" was one of them and I think there was even a video on YouTube of it also. If you haven't heard about this song, it's basically a bunch of Chuck Norris-type jokes about Charles Nelson Reilly. And if you don't know who he is, go look up "Match Game 76" (I know that he is known for more than that, but that's how I know him).

It's one thing to take someone else's song and put different lyrics to it. That doesn't take a lot of talent, just creative thinking if you make the song something completely different from what the original was. What takes real talent is when you take the style of an artist and write a completely original song in it. Al has done this many times, here are a few examples with the artist being parodied:
Dare to be Stupid - Devo
Dog Eat Dog - Talking Heads
Velvet Elvis - The Police
Twister - Beastie Boys
Trigger Happy - The Beach Boys
Germs - Nine Inch Nails
The greatest of all, in my opinion is the song "Genius in France" in the style of Frank Zappa from the "Poodle Hat" album. Al gives us a grand total of six style parodies this time with "Craigslist" in the style of The Doors which you have to hear to believe. Ray Manzarek, a former member of the Doors actually plays keyboard for the song. "Skipper Dan" in the style of Weezer. The song "Ringtone", as I understand it, is supposed to be in the style of Queen. My problem with that is that Queen doesn't have any one style to really duplicate. The song "CNR" is supposed to be in the style of The White Stripes. "If That Isn't Love" is in the style of Hanson. And finally "Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me" sounds like it was written by Jim Steinman (the guy who wrote most all of Meatloaf's hits). You've probably already figured out that it is a song about stupid emails people send and is probably the funniest song on the album. Some lines from the song:
"No I don't want a bowl of Chicken Soup for the Soul"
"And by the way your quotes from George Carlin aren't really George Carlin, Mr. Rogers never fought the Viet Cong, And Bill Gates is never gonna give me something for nothing, And I really doubt some dead girl is gonna kill me if I don't pass her letter along"
"And your two million loser friends All have my address because you never figured out the way to BCC"
At one point he mentions hoaxes and Snopes.com.

Overall I have to give the album my full recommendation.

Stories From College Pt 4: Wily Hall

2011-04-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

This one is not funny.

On the afternoon of October 16, 1996, I was heading back to my dorm after a long day of classes. About a block or two away from my dorm, I knew something was up. People were coming out of the woodwork from everywhere and gathering outside of Wily Hall. I went to my room and my roommate said that there had been a shooting. I lived in a 7th floor room and I had a great view of the situation. In no time, a SWAT team was on the scene. They sent guys into the building to clear all the students out. Meanwhile, a sniper set up on the roof of the recreation center. Eventually, the team shot a can of tear gas into a room. That was about the end of it. The team found the shooter, Jarrod Allan Eskew, dead from a self-inflicted gun shot.

It began when Eskew had been caught with cocaine by his floor couselor, Jay Severson. As the story went, Eskew went to his home in Crawfordsville to retrieve a gun. Neighbors claim they saw him put a gun in his trunk. Then he returned to Purdue and shot and killed Severson in his room for turning him in. He then went to his own room and shot himself.

Here is an AP article about the incident.

December 21, 2012

2011-04-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

So what's going to happen on December 21, 2012? I don't know. I saw an article that claimed that George Lucas thinks the world is going to end. But then I saw another article saying he was only joking.

The History Channel has done a special or two on the date and I wouldn't be surprised if Discovery channel did one too. Don't forget there was even a movie (staring John Cusack).

What I think will happen is best illustrated in a scene in the movie The Matrix. The scene is Neo's first encounter with the Oracle. Here's the dialog:

Oracle: I'd ask you to sit down, but, you're not going to anyway. And don't worry about the vase.
Neo: What vase?
[Neo turns to look for a vase and knocks over a vase of flowers and breaks it]
Oracle: That vase.
Neo: I'm sorry...
Oracle: I said don't worry about it. I'll get one of my kids to fix it.
Neo: How did you know?
Oracle: Ohh, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?

Someone was nice enough to post this scene on YouTube

So my question is, if something DOES happen on December 21, 2012, is it because it was actually going to happen no matter what or is it only happening because the date was over-hyped?

Stories From College Pt 3: Physics Class

2011-04-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

I think I already wrote about this incident in a past blog post only in another form. So I'll write it differently so it sounds new. This particular story makes my parents REAL proud.

October 3, 1995

Only true masters of "Trivial Pursuit '90s Edition" will know what happened on that date. It was like any other day at college. I had to walk several blocks to class and I always had my walkman radio/tape player on me listening to the radio (yes I said TAPE, now get over it). The difference was that once I got to class, I kept one of my ear buds in and kept listening during class. This was one of the most anticipated days in 1995, I wasn't going to miss this just because I had class. I was paying attention in class and taking notes. But finally my attention was turned entirely to my walkman...

"We the jury.... find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder..."

Yes, there was no way after watching that train wreck for a year that I was going to miss that moment just because of class. It could have been worse, I could have skipped class entirely and watched it on TV. As it turns out, right after class, one of the professor's assistants wrote "OJ not guilty" on one of the overhead projectors.

Stories from College Pt 2: Seek First to Understand, Then To Be Understood.

2011-04-15T10:45:00.000-07:00

That is habit #5 from the book "7 Habits of Highly Effective People". It was also the "habit" that me and my partner, Doug, had to do a presentation about in CIMT481. That class happened to be the "senior project class" for CIMT, but the professor also used the class to have us read this book.

Doug and I read our chapter seperately, then met up and put together our presentation. I found a Microsoft Word document the other day that contained my original notes from this presentation.

I led off by talking about "the five levels of listening". This speech was destined to be boring. Level one is "Ignoring - not really listening". Level two is "Pretending - saying things like 'yeah, uh-huh. right'". As I was going through this list, Doug kept interupting me. He kept telling me about something that happened to him on the way to class. I ignored him at first, but eventually I turned to him and reminded him we were in the middle of a speech and he could tell me after class.

The look on everyone's faces was PRICELESS! We all had taken speech classes before, but none of us had seen people get into an argument during a speech. Why was Doug doing this to me in the middle of our speech? Keep in mind also that everyone in the room knew each other and had been working with each other for years in the CIMT lab. So they were confused by Doug's behaviour, especially since he was usually a quiet guy.

I went on with my list, which eventually led into me revealing that Doug's behaviour was an example of what I was trying to explain. Everybody realized then that they had been had. The professor grinned and made a note on our evaluation. We got an A and he noted our effectiveness and attention-getting.

It turns out that groups after us also used acting in their presentations, but they all announced they were doing it before they actually did it.

Tornado Alley

2011-04-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

Or so they say. Yes, once again, we had a tornado go past our house on February 28. It was all over the news about damage in Owensville and Oakland City and they mentioned places outside of Princeton. But the fact of the matter was that after it hit Owensville, it went straight East out of town and went all the way across the county in between county roads 550S and 450S which is exactly where I live.

I previously wrote about another tornado that caused some damage at my house on June 22, 2009. That time a tornado headed south and took out two of the three main branches of the biggest tree in our yard. The third branch was dangling over our house. I had to have someone help me cut it down and I had to use a tractor to pull it away from the house to keep it from falling on it.

This time, the tornado was heading east and went right between my house and my parent's house, and we live less than a quarter of a mile apart! The tornado picked up the roof of our shed (the one I like to call the 4-car carport) and threw it over the top of our barn and it landed in the field several yards away. When the roof came off, it ripped down our power line. I had heard the wind blow pretty hard many times before. A lot of times it sounds like the roof is going to blow off. This time it was so loud I was FOR SURE it was coming off. It woke me up and I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen doorway. I could see out the window across the room. The pole light was still on, but all I could see was "white". Suddenly the power went out. I immediately called the power company. I went and got a flashlight and went back to bed. Shortly after that the wind died down and I went and looked out the window. When the lightning flashed, that's when I could see just enough to see that the barn was tore to pieces. I looked out the back door and that's when I noticed the power line down. I also noticed that for some strange reason, I could see Mom and Dad's house a little better, but I didn't think anything of it.

The rest of the night, I hardly slept. I got on Facebook on my cell phone and no surprise a lot of people were up posting about the storm and how they couldn't sleep either. I eventually dozed off right as I needed to get up and get Evan ready for school. I stayed home from work and Beth just happened to be working that day. Emma was safely up at Beth's Mom and Dad's house in Bicknell. When it started to become light outside, I went out and looked around. I have a large pine tree on the south side of my house that was leaning over onto the house. Only the branches are touching the house, BUT I'm guessing it would have been on the ground if it weren't for the clothes line pole holding it up. My Mom and Dad had two pine trees the same size as mine. They were laying across the road and no cars could pass. That's why I could see their house better suddenly from my window! So Mom called the bus driver to let them know. I ended up taking Evan up the road to meet the bus to save them some time and trouble.

I put on my work clothes and went down to Mom and Dad's. To my surprise, the tractor and the chain saw both started and I was able to cut up the trees and drag them out of the road. A guy from the county highway department helped me get them off the road. The same friend that helped me with the tree in June 2009 brought over a generator so I could run the sump pump in my basement. The water had already flooded my hot water heater and furnace. To my surprise and delight, the power company had the power back on by 2:30pm (a little over 12 hours after the tornado) despite the fact that there were many other houses without power throughout the county. I thanked them multiple times.

What's New 3/17/2011

2011-03-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

I'm back like the Backstreet Boys or Eminem. I say it all the time I know I haven't blogged about myself much lately, so I will give an all around update and ramble. Some of this is old at this point. On top of that, I have several articles written up and I took the time to edit them and get them ready to post. So I will try to post one a week.

Last year, July the 14th through the 16th, me and the family went to St.Louis for our vacation of the year. Yes, I realize that a Wednesday through Friday is unusual time to go, but that's usually how we plan it. We also did it because when I take off on Friday's it only counts as 4 hours of vacation time.

First place we went was the City Museum. That place is CRAZY. For the most part, it's more like a giant indoor playground than a museum. But that makes it great for kids. There are places inside and out that kids can climb everywhere on. I was worried that we would lose Evan because he would crawl in a hole somewhere and we never knew where he'd come out at. We held Emma most of the time because we would have definately lost her in there. They have an indoor slide that's several stories tall. Evan went down it and then came over to where we were sitting and he didn't have his shoes on. I asked him what happened to them and he said he lost them on the slide. Fantastic. So we headed over to the slide and a kid had found them and gave them back. Thankfully. I like to call the place "The dream of professional welders everywhere" and a nightmare for OSHA. You'd just have to visit the place to understand what I mean.

I made a big mistake. I swear that according to the website, our hotel had a pool, but it turns out it didn't. Wednesday after the museum we ate supper at Applebee's (I know, you'd think we'd go somewhere different while on vacation but by that time we were hungry). I was looking for a Boston Market and while we were driving around we saw a guy laying in the street who had just been hit by a car while on his motorcycle. There were people around him taking care of him before the paramedics arrived, so we didn't just pass him up. We drove around the Washington University in St. Louis campus. It was a VERY nice looking campus. Wednesday evening I looked for another hotel by driving around looking for one in the car and online. I eventually found one, it was several miles away though.

Second day we had breakfast at Denny's and went to the St. Louis Zoo. I think I had been there before, but it was a VERY long time ago. It was rather hot out that day. I think the kids had a good time despite all the walking (Emma rode in her stroller). Drinks there were highway robbery, so we kept refilling our water bottles in the water fountains. The water fountains weren't particularly cold, but they were better than nothing. After the zoo we checked into our new hotel, a Courtyard Mariot and it had an indoor pool and hot tub. We ate supper at the Boston Market we had been looking for the previous night. It was "ok" but pricey.

Friday we had breakfast again at the same Denny's and then we were going to stop at Union Station Mall in St. Louis, but Beth wasn't feeling well so we headed straight home. I know it doesn't sound like much of a vacation, but it's not easy to go far away for very long with a 1.5 year old.

City Museum of St.Louis website

2010's softball season I'm happy to say I was not sore after every game like last year. Last year I would play a game and four days later just as I was about to completely heal up, I had another game. I'm going to go so far as to say that I am in the best shape that I have been in since high school, though no where near as good as then.

Beth and I decided to get a new washer and dryer. I had fixed our dryer before, but now it was making really awful noises and I had no idea what it was or where it was coming from. We also have no idea how old our washer and dryer are because they came with the house. We've been at the house for 5 years, so we can account for at least 5 of them. At first I looked online and decided that Sears had the best prices, but I wanted to look at them first and talk to someone. So I took the kids and went down to Evansville one Friday while Beth was working. I narrowed it down to two sets. I took pictures and showed them to Beth. We decided on a Kenmore set that was brand spanking new. So new that they were actually taking the floor models out of the boxes while we were looking. The next day I went down, thinking I would pick them up and take them home that day, and made my purchase. Sears was having a 20% discount sale at the time, we also got a discount for buying both the washer and dryer, and we got a discount because they were "high efficiency". Turns out that they had to order them. One, because they were new, and two because the dryer was gas. They told me they would arrive on Tuesday. In the mean time, Beth did laundry, but we had to take the wet clothes down to my Mom and Dad's house to use their dryer. Tuesday comes and we go down to Evansville to pick them up. We get them home, I move out the old washer and dryer, unpack the new, and start installing them. I get the washer installed no problem. As I am hooking up the dryer I discover two problems. I need an adapter for the gas line and the dryer is for natural gas and we have LP. The instructions say I need a converter kit. So the next day (Wednesday) I go to Sears and they order me the converter kit and it will be in on Tuesday. Fantastic. F&M had the gas adapter that I needed in stock. The next Tuesday I go and get the converter kit and get it installed. The kit contained three tiny parts, and I only used two of them because one of them was for butane. Thanks to a panel in the front of the dryer, it was easy to get the part and install it. I get it all hooked up and turn it on and the smell of gas gave me a headache. I hoped that wasn't how the thing was always going to be. I turned the gas off. Luckily it was cooling down outside, so I opened several windows in the house to clear out the gas smell. Later I tried turing the gas back on. I got down on the floor and smelled the gas line and sure enough it was leaking. I turned the gas back off and was depressed. I thought I'd have to find someone to come in and fix the gas line because I didn't know what was wrong. I decided to take the gas line back off again and look it over. Turns out that the copper tubing was not angled correctly and it wasn't centered on the inlet. So I bent it around a little and re-attached it. The nut went on a little easier that time. I turned the gas back on and this time I did not smell anything. So I fired up the dryer (no pun intended) and this time it acted a whole lot better and it didn't smell. I was so happy, and so was Beth.

Just a few years ago, it seemed like if you had a business, you HAD to have a website. In commercials and other advertisements, you slowly started to see the www.nameofbusiness.com appear. These days, you have to have a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account. I keep hearing "follow us on Twitter". I do have some advice for businesses that have a Twitter or Facebook fan page. If you are going to have either or both of them, post stuff regularly. There is a radio station that I follow on Twitter. They say "follow us on Twitter" on the radio all the time. Yet they haven't "tweeted" since June (that would be about 6 months ago at the time of this writing).

My Top 10 Places To Eat

2010-11-22T06:58:00.001-08:00

I decided to write about my favorite "non-southwestern Indiana" places to eat. None of them have any gimmicks, so they don't throw rolls at you. This is not a list of defacto places like Log Inn or Moonlite BBQ and none are franchises. These are places I have come across over the years and they ARE in a particular order. After I finished the list and looked back through them, I discovered that to me they are not only good places to eat, but I have fond memories at a lot of them. You will get the idea. I have been working on this list for a long time and am happy to finally post it today.

10. Marlowe's Ribs and Restaurant in Memphis, TN
One of the destinations my wife and I went to on our honeymoon was Memphis, TN. We stayed at Elvis' Heartbreak Hotel across the street from Graceland. I think on the first night we went downtown Memphis to Elvis' Restaurant. But the second night we looked for another place to try out. We drove down Elvis Presley Blvd and saw this place and tried it out. It's been over ten years now, but I'm pretty sure that Marlowe's is the place we ate at. I don't remember much about it other than we did like it. After figuring out the place's name and finding it's website, I discovered that it was featured on the Food Network's show Diners, Drive-in's, and Dives. And for that, it makes my list.

9. Quickie's Subs in Vincennes, IN
Some time ago, there was a bar in Princeton named Shotz and they would deliver lunch to the place that I work. And they had the BEST subs. Far better than Blimpies or Subway. They went out of business and I was sad. I noticed on their menu it stated that they sold "Quickie's Subs". So I did some looking and discovered that they are located in Vincennes! I was so happy that I bought me a sub the next time I made it to Vincennes. I wouldn't doubt if they made their own bread for their subs. They are soft and oh so good. They are located on 6th street in Vincennes near the RR tracks. They have a drive-thru and a rather small dining room. My favorite item is the "Mile-high" club.

8. Bo Mac's Drive-In in Shoals, IN
I can't seem to find a website for this place, so I'll just put a link to their fan page on Facebook. Yes, this is just a burger stand, but it's a drive-in just like the old days with car hops and everything. They serve a little bit of everything here and it's all very good. It's located at the intersection of highway 50 and 150. Shoals is 41 miles east of Vincennes on highway 50. In case you don't know, Shoals is home of "Jug Rock", which is the largest free-standing table rock formation in the US east of the Mississippi River.

7. Pea-Fections in Vincennes, IN
Pea-Fections is a little restaurant/confectionary on Main Street in downtown Vincennes. The owner is a Purdue graduate, so I will try not to sound bias based on that fact. They offer a lot of different things. At lunch time they are basically a sandwich shop. Beth and I like the "Bill's Creation" and they have THE BEST cheddar-broccoli soup. They are also a coffee shop and they take orders for wedding and birthday cakes. Beth and I went there on Valentine's Day one year. They were having a special 7-course meal, by reservation only. I'm not sure how often they do that. Their website says they do private parties and catering as well.

6. The Old Mill in Pigeon Forge, TN
Pigeon Forge, TN is a popular place to go. So it says something when The Old Mill is a popular place to go while in Pigeon Forge. So if you go, you will wait in line, and good luck finding a place to park. I don't know what it is about the Pigeon Forge area, but there are pancake restaurants EVERYWHERE down there. So for breakfast, I recommend The Old Mill. Sort of like the Log Inn does "family style" dinners, I think it's the only place I've ever been that had "family style" breakfast. We've been known to eat there more than once per trip to Pigeon Forge.

5. The Millstone Dining Room at Spring Mill State Park Inn outside Mitchell, IN
I want to mention this place because of their fried chicken. If I were to make a top ten list of the best fried chicken, this place would top the list, even if the Log Inn or Black Buggy was on the list. I stuff myself silly with that fried chicken every time I go. It is buffet style and they have a wide variety of desserts. Did I mention their fried chicken was great?

4. Gasthof Amish Village in Montgomery, IN
When you think Amish restaurants, most people probably think of the Black Buggy. While the Black Buggy has great food, I think the Gastof is better. As the name implies, it's not just a restaurant, there are several stores and flea markets scattered around the village. They have a hotel also. The restaurant is in the main building and was built by a traditional Amish "barn raising". Most of the food is home made. Their bread, more specifically, is fantastic and they have some kind of homemade peanut butter spread for it that you must try. This place is buffet also.

3. Spageddies Italian Kitchen in Lafayette, IN
Being a Purdue grad, naturally I would know a few places in the Lafayette area. I'm unsure of when my first trip to Spagheddie's was, but I've had at least one memorable moment there. This is where I ate dinner the night I proposed to my wife. Since then it's been special to us. One of their specialties is some sauce that they bring out with their breadsticks. I believe the main ingredient is olive oil. Very good stuff. I don't have a particular favorite here as I like most Italian dishes.

2. Boulder Creek Dining in Brownsburg, IN
One might ask, how on earth did you find this place?? Solely by accident, but boy was it worth it. Back in B.C. (that's Before Children), Beth and I were in Indianapolis and we were looking for a place to stay. We happened to see a sign for a Holiday Inn and followed it all the way to Brownsburg and stayed there. It was within 10 miles of Speedway and was far cheaper than the hotels in Indianapolis. Our room key advertised a discount on dinners at Boulder Creek Dining. So we asked the front desk where it was and we tried it out. I'm not sure I could do this place justice trying to talk about it in a blog. We have taken friends there before and they all say that EVERYTHING they had was very good. The owner of the restaurant has several other restaurants and I think all of them have won "local favorites" awards. There is Charbonos in Avon, Cafe 251 in downtown Indy, Stone Creek Dining in Greenwood (as well as several other towns). We recently tried Charbonos and it was basically the same as Boulder Creek Dining although the menu is slightly different.

1. Patti's 1880 Settlement in Grand Rivers, KY
I thought for sure I had written about this place before. I did some exhaustive searches on all my old blogs and it turns out that I never have. A few years back when we went on vacation at Lake Barkley, we ate at Patty's 1880 Settlement. This place is what I like to call the "real deal". Everything, I mean EVERYTHING we ate there tasted so so good. I know I just said the same thing for Boulder Creek Dining, but it is exceptionally true for this place. I mean even the salad is exceptional! They bake and serve their dinner rolls in flower pots. Clean ones of course. Somewhere I was reading about how they had to do a lot of experimenting to figure out how to properly bake rolls in a flower pot. It sounds like a gimmick, but they really are good baked that way. Everything is "home made", including the butter and even the salad dressing. If you ever find yourself on the way to Paducah or in Eddyville, make the short side trip down to Grand Rivers, you will not regret it.

Honorable mentions
Syd's Place Inc (corner of 11th and Ash St in Lawrenceville, IL)
There is a little bar in Lawrenceville, IL (that's right across the river from Vincennes in case you didn't know) that sells tacos on Wednesdays and Fridays. They may be pricey, but they are great. My wife has a cookbook from some church, I think, from the area (one of those fundraiser types where people submit recipes) that actually has the recipe for Syd's tacos. They are good, because the meat in it is slow cooked for something like 8 or more hours. Syd's is in what appears to be an old neighborhood grocery store, so there's not a whole lot of room in the place. There are booths along the wall, but out in the middle there are long tables. So if you go in there, don't expect to sit alone with your family. Find some open seats at a table where people are already sitting and join them. Remember, you are all in there for the same reason: tacos. So don't be a stranger.

The Alamo Steakhouse Restaurant in Pigeon Forge, TN
My wife and I have been to Pigeon Forge twice since we've been married and we have stopped in this place both times. It's up on a hill in the main strip in Pigeon Forge. The only thing I didn't like it about it was they have a booth outside with a guy trying to sell time shares. I'll refer to this one as "yet another steak house". Yes the food is good, but pricey.

Miss Scarlett's Restaurant in Grand Rivers, KY
Right up the road from Patti's 1880 Settlement, next to Interstate 24, you will find Miss Scarlett's Family Restaurant. Yes, this is a Gone With The Wind-themed restaurant.

Bella Pizzaria in Indianapolis/NoblesVille/Carmel
New York style pizza in Indianapolis! Someone had told me about it, then I saw it on a TV show ("Across Indiana" on PBS I *think*), and finally Beth and I tried it on a trip to Indy. I had been wanting to try it out for a long time. It's kind of cafeteria-style. They have the pizzas sitting out, you pick out what you want, they put it in the oven to warm them back up, and they bring it out to you. Good stuff. I never had New York style pizza before and am glad that I tried it.

Beef House in Covington, IN
On the corner of highway 63 and Interstate 74, literally in the middle of nowhere, is this steak house. They have good steaks, don't get me wrong. I've been there once while I was in college. It's an hour away from Purdue and an hour north of Terre Haute. Some people swear by it. I don't, that's why it only made the honorable mentions.

Los Bravos (Evansville, Boonville, Jasper, Loogootee)
I just wanted to include this on my list as my favorite Mexican restaurant. I have tried Mexican restautants all over the place, even in Nogalas, Mexico! To me, Los Bravos is by far the best.

If I had Facebook when I was in college, I would have loved it.

2010-08-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

When I first got to college in 1994, I didn't know what the Internet or the World Wide Web was. I hadn't even heard of it. It was there, and lots of people were using it, but I didn't know about it. I think back home the only ISP was AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy, and the only dial-up number was long distance. One question that I heard a lot, which showed ignorance of what the Internet was, was "where is the Internet?" My computer was a 386SX 16Mhz with 4Mb of ram (I think). It ran DOS 5.0 with Windows 3.0 (you see, back then you had to run what was known as "DOS" which was a text command prompt and then start Windows). Shortly after I started, with the help of a friend on my floor, I had DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Purdue, at the time (1994), had a modem pool of 100 14.4baud modems. When you dialed into them, they were simply a text-based terminal session. So in other words, it was not an actual network connection, you could only use Terminal in Windows or Hyperterminal in Windows 95. So that being said there was no AOL Instant Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger, Outlook Email, Hotmail, etc. Once you dialed in, you connected to a UNIX server and logged in. Once in, you could check your email with a program called "elm" or "pine". I used elm. If you wanted to see if a friend was online, or when they were last on, you could type "finger [username]@[domain]". There was a way to do instant messaging. You could type "talk [username]" and the screen would split and you could type to each other. You could see everything they were typing, including when they would backspace and fix typos. If you had a friend with a compatible system at another school, you could type "talk [username]@[domain]" and talk to them the same way. There was chat rooms out on the Internet known as "talkers". You could type "telnet [ip address] [port number]" and connect to them, IF you knew were one was. Again, all text based, no fancy graphics.

There were no blogs and no Facebook to post your status on. If you wanted to let a bunch of your friends know how you were doing, you started a email mailing list and emailed them all at once. Instead of posting a link to an article or something funny, people would email the entire article or joke (usually a forward, and that still goes on today). If you wanted to show someone a picture, well good luck with that, you had to know what FTP was. In my case, Purdue gave us some space in our UNIX accounts to build websites. From there I could SCAN a photograph (no digital cameras), and upload it to my "homepage". Then I could email friends with a link to it. There were options on the web at the time, "Tripod", "Angelfire" and "GeoCities" comes to mind (look it up on Wikipedia). You had to know how to write HTML code to use those services to, there was no graphical editor.

So working with all this stuff, especially the UNIX accounts, is what got me interested in a career in computers. I got so good at it in fact, that my first job at Purdue was as a "General Consultant" for the Purdue University Computer Center. I worked with a group of people who took general questions about any computer problem over the phone. We didn't have full administrator privileges to everything.

In 1995, I got my first cellular phone. There was no such thing as "text messaging" and the coolest thing you could have at the time was caller ID. Some of my friends had pagers. I still have the same phone number to this day. My parents paid for it and I justified it because it was cheaper to call home than the long distance plans the university had. I insisted on an Evansville number. That way, my parents would never call me because it would be a long distance call for them. So I would have to call them. Additionally at the time, most of my friends were in Evansville, and therefore it would be a local call for them. Hey, I thought it was a reasonable trade off. I went with Verizon, because at the time they were the only cellular phone company that offered service in southern Indiana and in Lafayette that was in the same "home area". There's another term that kids these days have no idea what that means. There are remnents of it in cellular phone advertising today when you see the term "nationwide no-roaming". Although I think they now say "nationwide coverage" or something like that. But for the college kids out there, cell phones used to have what was known as a "home area" and they gave you a map to show where that area was. If you went outside that area, and used your phone, they would add on ridiculous charges. They didn't offer free minutes to other Verizon customers at the time and for an extra $10 a month, you could get "free nights and weekends." I think they still call it that but instead they raised the price of the service by $10 and then say you get "free nights and weekends" for free! Ahhh advertising. Anyway, free nights started at 9pm everyday and weekends started at 9pm Friday. On Purdue campus, I would watch the clock until 9pm and then go use my phone. Frequently I would get the message "all circuits are busy" which meant about 100 other people waited until 9pm to start using their phone too.

So if I had Facebook while I was in college, I think I would have liked it a lot. I would have used it to stay in touch with everyone better. I have a few Facebook friends who just graduated from high school and are going to college soon. I'm going to watch the news feed on their first week of college. I'm expecting to see "'Person' is friends with 'new person' and 36 other people" every day for the first week or so.

Review: Reverend Peyton's BDB - The Wages

2010-08-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

I am a fan of the Indianapolis hip hop group "The Mudkids". One day I was looking at a web site about local talent in and around Indianapolis, reading about the Mudkids, when I saw a link for The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band. Well I just had to check it out. This group resides in Brown County, Indiana.

On Amazon.com, they are listed as "Contemporary Blues", "Alternative Country", and "Americana". The only other group I've heard described as "Alternative Country" is The Kentucky Headhunters. I might also throw in "bluegrass" as a description but "newgrass" may be better. Their Facebook page says "Rural Blues". After listening to a few tracks, I have come up with a category for them. You know how "punk rock" is basically rock using about three or four cords, repeating lyrics, drums, and songs that are short and to the point. Well, I've decided to call them "punk country" because they are everything I just said about punk rock except they play country music.

From what I've read about them, they have traveled all over the place and are quite popular. Which is good to hear about a group from Indiana. I think the name comes from the fact that the Reverend Peyton is a damn big man because there's only three members of the group. The Reverend Peyton himself plays guitar and harmonica (and I've seen a video of him playing them both at the same time, and I mean with his hands and not one of those harnesses like Bob Dylan uses), "Washboard" Breezy Peyton who obviously plays the washboard and is the Reverend's wife, and Aaron "Cuz" Persinger plays drums. According to their Facebook page, the Reverend Peyton's thumb plays bass.

Their latest album, “The Wages” is (from their press release) "thematically rooted in the blues tradition of hard-bitten reality matched with enduring optimism." With songs like "Born Bred Corn Fed", "Clap Your Hands", "Ft.Wayne Zoo" (the Ft.Wayne Zoo's got chickens?), and my personal favorite "Everything's Raising":

Everything's raisin' but the wages
Gasoline, groceries, and our ages
Everything's raisin' but the wages

So after hearing this album, I was instantly a fan and I had to get a copy of all their other albums. I got "The Whole Fam Damnily", "Big Damn Nation", and believe it or not, "The Gospel Album". All are good, but I have to say that "The Wages" is the best.

Check out their website at http://www.bigdamnband.com

They have a YouTube Channel with a ton of videos.

Be sure and check out their music video to "Clap Your Hands"

Review: STP

2010-07-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

Review: Stone Temple Pilots
What is it with these self-titled albums?

I first listened to this album with some bias. I had already heard that this was NOT the same kind of music from STP like their "Core" album. Well, what I heard was correct. I think I like the first song and that's about it. I'm not going to comment any more on this album because I don't recommend it.

Review: Slash

2010-07-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

I picked up the new self-titled album by Slash. Being a Guns fan, I also have Slash's other albums as well as the Velvet Revolver albums. To be honest, it's exactly what you'd expect it to be. It's Slash playing guitar like he always does, with his friends singing. His friends include: Ian Astbury (of The Cult), Ozzy, Fergie, Chris Cornell (of Soundgarden), Lemmy, Dave Grohl & Duff McKagan, Kid Rock, and Iggy Pop. There are more, but these are the names I recognized. Every artists' song is what you'd expect also. Ozzy's track is very Ozzy-like. Lemmy's is Motörhead-like. Kid Rock's is country rock. I don't care for the Iggy Pop, Rocco Deluca, or Myles Kennedy tracks.

Overall it's a good album and I recommend it. Obviously you can tell I liked the Scorpions album better since I had more to say. Like the Scorpions album though, Slash sticks to the good ol' rock-n-roll like it should be done.

I am disappointed in one thing though. There are at least six extra tracks that didn't make it on the US version. Baby Can't Drive (with Alice Cooper), Mother Maria (with Beth Hart), Sahara (with Koshi Inaba, English and Japanese version), Chains and Shackles (with Nick Oliveri), and Paradise City (with Fergie and Cypress Hill). No version of the album comes with all six of the extras though.

Review: Scorpions - Sting in the Tail

2010-06-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

I'm back. I won't say why I sat out so long, but I will try to post regularly now.

I've done something recently that I haven't done in a long time and that is buy new music. So I've decided to write some reviews of what I bought.

Scorpions - Sting in the Tail

The following review will use the word "ROCK" many many times.

I have been a fan of Scorpions for a long time. They brought us hits like "Rock You Like A Hurricane". I understand that this album will be their last or so they say. If it is, it's a great way to conclude their career.

First thing I want to point out is that they stayed loyal to the ROCK. They didn't forget who they are, what they do best, and they didn't try to re-invent themselves like others have recently (did you hear that Axl?). Some critics might say that they are just "going through the motions" or something, but to me it's the ROCK that makes them great! With songs named "Raised On Rock", "Rock Zone", and "Spirit Of Rock", it's obvious they stayed focused on the ROCK.

They have a press release that says "The album is a true return to the classic and unmistakable hard rock sound that has allowed the band to remain an influential and powerful force in rock music throughout their career." Yes Yes, that is exactly what I'm trying to say and exactly the impression I got listening to it.

The first track "Raised on Rock" will remind you of "Rock You Like A Hurricane". Even the first line of the song says "I was born in a hurricane.." While all of the songs are new, if you listen carefully you can hear a couple notes from past songs. That's not a criticism, because this album is a real treat to the die hard fans.

I'll only give one small criticism. The title track "Sting in the Tail", I think it could have been a little better. It reminds me of the song "Soul Doctor" by Foreigner rather than a Scorpions song.

The song "Lorelei" is NOT a remake of the Styx tune of the same name. Thankfully.

Check out the album on Amazon
Obviously I give this one my full recommendation. So do yourself a favor and go buy it.

I'd really like to catch one of their concerts before the end of their current tour but I'm afraid Nashville and Moline,IL is about as close as they get and I doubt I'd be able to go.

Funny stories from college pt 1

2010-04-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

This story isn't actually about something that happened to me, it's a story that a professor told in class. This was an engineering class while I was still enrolled in the school of engineering.

NASA and the Russian Space Administration shares data from experiments they conduct. The Russians sent a report about testing that they had done on the strength of a metal they used on a wing. The reports have to be translated from Russian to English. In the report, it stated that they used "wet male sheep" for one of the tests. It was known that the Russians had different ways of doing things over there, but the NASA engineers found it hard to imagine a shepherd leading some sheep out onto the wing of a plane. They also wondered how being male and wet was significant.

So they returned the report to the translators and asked that an engineering translator be used this time. When they got the report back, they quickly turned to the "wet male sheep" page. Of course they all had a good laugh when the correct translation turned out to be "hydraulic ram".

March 18, 1925

2010-03-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

I don't consider myself a history buff, though the History Channels are my favorite on the dish. A lot of history buffs, at least US history buffs, their favorite period is the civil war. My favorite, which I think I have mentioned before, is the 1920s. I have a multitude of reasons why the roaring 20s fascinates me. And while the stock market crash of 1929 seems to be the event that everyone thinks of when they hear "1920s", that probably interests me the least. The event that interests me the most is one that I have some ties to and it happened 85 years ago today on March 18, 1925.

My Grandmother was born in 1906. I remember as a kid when we had some kind of a storm she always wanted Dad to come get her and bring her to our house until the storm was over. I asked Dad why storms bothered her so much and he said that as a young girl her house was hit by a tornado. I didn't ask any more about it.

About 25 years later, Hansen Corporation, the company I work for, had it's 100th anniversary. I believe I have talked about it in the past, but we made a DVD with lots of pictures and video from the past 100 years. The first "track" on the DVD I made was a history reel. In doing my research for the history reel, I discovered that Hansen was once destroyed by a tornado. Digging a little deeper into my research I discovered that it was the Tri-State Tornado of 1925! I was telling my Mom and Dad about it when Dad told me that my Grandmother had survived that same tornado.

For those who don't know, the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 was the largest tornado ever recorded in North America. It was an F5, went more than 219 miles on the ground through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, and killed 695 people. At some points during it's trip, it reached a mile wide an leveled several towns in it's path. By the time it reached Princeton, it destroyed the south end of town taking out Hansen, Heinz, Baldwin Heights school, the railyard and every house.

Dad said that my Grandmother's house was destroyed with everyone in it. They survived because they huddled down behind a couch and the wall fell over against the couch leaving a triangular shaped area behind the couch that protected them.

So my Grandmother survived to live on and have children which eventually led to me. Hansen Manufacturing rebuilt and is still going today so I have a job. Heinz rebuilt as well which is also important to me because my Grandmother and Grandfather both worked there when they first met.

I ordered a book from Amazon.com called "The Tri-State Tornado: The Story of America's Greatest Tornado Disaster" by Peter S Felknor. It includes interviews with some of the survivors that were still alive as of 1992. It tells an incredible story about how the accounting office at Heinz had the payroll checks tied together and sitting on a file cabinet when the tornado hit. They were swept away by the tornado and presumed lost. They were returned sometime later by mail by someone who had found them.... in West Baden, IN.

For more information about the tornado and pleanty of pictures of the damage in Indiana, see this website.

Here is a historic marker sign in Griffin, IN. I had to drive to Griffin one time just to see the town and this sign.

Smoking Ban in Evansville

2010-03-16T06:26:00.000-07:00

Smoking bill gets snuffed after tie vote

I have to go with the free market side of this argument. If you don't want to be around smoke in a restaurant, then go to a restaurant that doesn't allow smoking. There was a restaurant in Princeton and I really liked their food. We used to order it at work. One day I took Beth into the restaurant (this was before the kids came along). We could hardly breathe in the place and we smelled aweful afterwards. So we never went back. BUT I still ordered from them on Thursdays. It was my choice to go in and it was my choice not to go back.

They looked into doing this in Gibson County back in 2006. And this is what I had to say about it back then:
I only have a few comments to make about smoking bans. They do it because of the bars... only. They want to make going into bars less attractive to people. The people who would normally go into bars get angry about the smoking ban and go to bars in other counties eventually putting the bars out of business. Then someone's going to claim there's less crime and less public intox or less drinking and driving. If anything I'd think drunk driving would increase if they'd have to drive back from another county. I've been hearing reports about Evansville doing the same thing and they actually interviewed restaurant owners who say a ban would help their business. So why do they need a ban? Why can't the restaurant declare themselves a smoke-free establishment without the local government forcing it on them??

From a 2006 Clarion article about hearings on the Gibson County smoking ban:
"Accompanying Wallace were 13-year old students from Wood Memorial Junior High School, Ben Heldt and Andrew Wiseman. Both Heldt and Wiseman told the assembly they hoped the county would adopt a smoking ban."
The next day at school, both students were promptly beaten by other students. I made that up, but I wouldn't doubt if it happened. I wonder how many bars those two 13-year-olds have been in?

If they want to ban it everywhere people under 18 are allowed, fine, I can live with that. There was a past article that stated someone said a compromise should be reached. They said they should be required to put warnings on the outside of places that allow smoking. I'm ok with that and to those businesses I say, put up a sign that reads "Smoking FRIENDLY Establishment". They should also require the places that don't allow smoking to put a sign up as well.

Comedian Auggie Smith said it best:
Look, I understand you can't smoke cigarettes in a hospital room -- I understand that: it's bad for you, blah blah blah. But, America, we're beginning to make it illegal in bars! I mean, who is concerned about their health in a bar? Exactly what's the complaint on this one? 'Excuse me, Mr. Bartender-Man, I am trying to get drunk so I can drive home and have unprotected sex with some chick I just met tonight -- and this guy's blowing smoke in my face! And some more deep-fried cheese, when you get a chance.'

I'd like those places with smoking bans in restaurants and bars to repeal them and replace them with the following law. I have noticed that when Beth and I take the kids to a restaurant, they always ask if we want smoking or non-smoking. To me, the obvious answer is non-smoking. So why do they ask? Apparently someone must take their kids to the smoking section. Make a law that says the host can't even ask and just automatically take the family to the non-smoking section. Then make it illegal if one of the parents light up. I'm sure that would make a few people angry, but hey, if you want to smoke in a restaurant, don't bring your kids! This has another side effect. If you don't mind sitting around smokers, you can always request the smoking section and guess what? THERE WON'T BE ANY SCREAMING KIDS AROUND!

I'm sure someone is asking why I am defending smokers and bars especially since I don't smoke. Well, today it's smoking. Tomorrow it could be salt. Oh wait...

Another Note on My Diet

2010-03-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

As a followup to the post about my weight loss and diet, I have a story.

I think it was summer of 1998 I decided I wanted to lose some weight. So I tried to eat better and tried to exercise some.

Every now and then I would weigh in and sure enough, according to the scale, I was losing weight.

One day when I weighed myself, it claimed I weighed under 100 pounds. Curious, I tried it again. This time it was even lower. It was an electronic scale, so I changed the battery in it.

When I weighed myself again, it turns out that I had not lost any weight at all since the beginning. The scale wasn't working right the entire time because the battery was going dead.

Oh well. It was a good feeling while it lasted.

A Blast From The Past

2010-03-03T07:48:00.000-08:00

In the early years of college, I learned HTML and Purdue gave us some space on a server to make your own web pages. This was long before the days of blogging. The following is a page that I created, ca. 1995. It describes how I used to cruise Princeton back in the day. I guess you could consider this one of my earliest blog postings. I haven't noticed too many people cruising these days. I don't know if it's just not the in thing to do anymore or if the price of gas made it unpopular. Either way, the streets of Princeton are ideal for cruising. I had heard stories of people coming from far away to cruise Princeton on a Friday or Saturday night. The original page started with the graphic. I will include my updated comments in [brackets].

Welcome to Princeton, Indiana, the home of Orville Redenbacher and Dave Thomas. The first stop may be the big "M" on the right side of the picture. This is where you will find your Jolt and other beverages and snacks. The dotted lines just show that this is not part of the cruise route, it just means that you can go out this way to get snacks.
[I used an M because it used to be a Marathon gas station. The station is still there just not a Marathon. It's the one across the street from NU-GAS.]

The large building as you enter Princeton from the east is the Gibson County courthouse. The only purpose of mentioning this is that you can park around the square to talk to people. The line on the bottom of the building just means that when you enter Princeton from the east, you have the option of going straight, or turing right and going around the court house. The 5 above it represents the Silver Spur dance club. Don't even go there.
[The Silver Spur was also known as "Twisters" and both were short lived. The building is vacant today.]

The 2 towards the left of the screen is the turn lane into McDonald's. The dotted line is an option, but it should only be used by professional cruisers. The dotted line is an alternate turn around in case there are way too many cars in the turn lane. It is a U-turn in front of Ponderosa.

The 3 is the parking lot for McDonald's. This is where some off-duty sheriff deputy is sitting eating his donuts and telling us that we can't park there and if you're in Mcdonald's, you can't stand around and wait for your friends to get out of the restroom so you can leave, you have to sit down or leave. Anyway, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I just wanted to comment: what is the point of this person? Who or what is he protecting? Oh well, guess I'll never know.
[I haven't noticed the off-duty officer anymore. And yes he used to make you leave the parking lot and even if you were a paying customer, you couldn't stand by the door. I often wondered if it was only teens that he did that to or anyone.]

The X's on both sides of the Theater(4) show where you must turn up your radio. Attention from the people standing outside is the desired reaction. Only do this before and after a movie when the people are outside.
[I actually modified this sentence a little out of respect for my old car.]

The route that goes to the right before you reach the railroad tracks(6) is used only in case if there is a long, slow train. You can only use this going in one direction, towards McDonald's. You come out at the intersection of McD's and you have the option of going straight and going through McD's parking lot turn around, or you can turn left and go back down Broadway on the cruise route.

The big blue "H" at the top of the map represents the hospital(7). The purpose of it is to park your car in case if everyone wants to pile into my car or someone else's car (ie. Scott's). This is about the only safe place to park a car on a Saturday night.

Other rules:
(I) While drinking your Jolt or whatever else you may have, you will need to use the restroom. This can be done at McD's, but only 3 times. If you use McD's restroom three times, it is time to go home. If you must use it more than this and the night is still young, you must use the Taco Bell (on the other side of 41) or the Marathon restroom.
(II) Catching someone: As Scott has pointed out, only I have powers over time and space on the cruise route. If you see me and want to pull me over, don't try. Just look in your rear-view mirror and there I am.
[I guess I was kind of like the Chuck Norris of cruising.]
(III) At the rail road tracks, going in either direction, it is a good idea to pull to the right as far as you can and then back on the street. The farther you turn to the right, the more of a rebel you are.
[People did this because the tracks were rough going straight through the middle. I was making fun of it and after a while it seemed like people made a contest on how far to the right they could pull onto the tracks.]
(IV) Wet pavement: do not spin your tires on it, it is not cool. You can spin your tires any other time, just not when it's wet, it's too easy to do it when it's wet.
[I once saw a guy with some wanna be muscle car peel out on wet pavement. I thought, gee, my LTD could do that!]
(V) Pulling over chicks: absolutely nothing wrong with it and it is encouraged.
(VI) Problem: you got to Princeton too soon and no one is out. Solution: pass off the time by going to K-Mart or Wal-Mart. This can be a good time to pick up a tape to sample. If you buy a tape during the week, it is a good idea to not listen to it until Saturday night. Saturday night is the best time to sample new stuff.
(VII) Motorcycles: due to popular demand on this, I have added support for them. Although I don't have a motorcycle, they are acceptable on the cruise strip. But let's not refer to them as motorcycles, "chick magnets" is a better term to use.
[No doubt about that. I'd see two guys on two motorcylces and when they came back around they each had a girl with them. I also once saw two guys cruising in two semi's without trailers.]
(VIII) Supersoakers: no comment.
[Inside joke. Ask my friend Craig about it.]
(X) The rule for In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is that cruising cannot stop while listening to this song. That means you must cruise for 18 minutes straight once you have started listening to it. Even if you see someone you know, you can't stop to talk to them. The only exception is traffic signals. For the Dark Side of the Moon, you must listen to the entire album, but it can be interupted. It is not necesary to listen to all of Saturday Night Fever.
[I wore out my Iron Butterfly and Dark Side of the Moon tapes.]

So there you have it. That's how it was done back in the day, at least by me.

My Diet

2010-02-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

"I found there was only one way to look thin, hang out with fat people." - Rodney Dangerfield

I've lost 30 pounds since I started my diet back in November. I've dropped a size in pants and have to tighten my belt more to keep my pants up. I'm sure you are saying "what? I didn't know you were on a diet." Yep, I am. So I thought I would take a moment and tell you about how I've done it.

I'll get this part out of the way first. In a sense, I'm "low-carb dieting". I'm sure someone just said "That doesn't work and it's not healthy! You shouldn't do that!" Well let me explain a few things. First off, I said "low-carb dieting" and not "no-carb dieting", there is a huge difference. No-carb dieting isn't really possible, or if it is you probably won't live long. A better description would be "low-bad-carb" or "low-sugar". I have cut out all sugar-filled drinks. I was drinking several cans and bottles of Mountain Dew everyday before I went on my diet. Since soda is a 20th century invention, you can't tell me that it has some sort of needed nutritional value. I still eat candy, but very little. I had a bag of chocolate covered peanuts and I have been eating one or two a day. It took me a couple months to eat the entire bag.

A lot of the criticisms of low carb dieting is based on ignorance. I did lots of reading on the subject before I started. It has a reputation of being all meat and cheese with no vegetables or bread. Remember, it's "low" and not "no" carb. Yes vegetables have carbs, but not nearly as much as soda and candy. Bread has a lot of carbs too and is almost impossible to avoid eating. While I admit that I have been eating more meat and cheese and less bread, I've actually been eating more vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and green beans) than I was before I was on my diet. Consequently, the wife and kids have been eating more vegetables too. Potatoes are usually considered high in carbs, but truthfully they aren't "that bad". While I still eat them, I have cut back on potatoes. Salt is bad.

My favorite vegetable dish is steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. Bird's Eye makes a microwavable steam bag of veggies. Wal-Mart has them in the frozen section, go get some. I sprinkle on some Emeril Essence and shredded cheese and it's delicious.

I have also been eating less. And again, I'm sure someone is saying that I shouldn't starve myself either. Just understand that when I say I'm eating less, I was over-eating before! For example, we get these "family size" meals of lasagna. Evan would eat a quarter, Beth would eat a quarter, and I would eat half. Now I eat a quarter, and Evan gets seconds, though not a second quarter. When we have mac-n-cheese, I don't fill half my plate with it anymore, just a spoonful. Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy. Yes, I did have hunger pains, but only for about a week. A lot of times people say that low-carb dieting doesn't work because people don't stick with it and I can believe it.

So if I'm not drinking soda, what am I drinking? Water, mainly. I also drink Diet Cherry 7-Up. It's an acquired taste but I picked it because it is low in sodium and does not use artificial sweeteners. I do have a can of Coke once a week and sometimes I have a Sprite when I get drive-thru.

Enough about food, I've also been exercising. I've been doing a lot of walking. At work we were given these pedometers (GoZones) and enrolled in Virgin Healthmiles employee health program. If we walk a certain amount everyday we earn points. Earn enough points and we get $25 gift cards (up to six of them a year I think). I like to say I get paid to walk. At least once a day I go walk around the building, that is the entire building and the parking lot. It takes me about 1000 steps to do it. At first it wore me out, but now it's no big deal for me. My goal was to walk at least three times a day but the weather has slowed me down. So I am looking forward to the warmer weather.

Recently, my employer has started the Relay 4 Relief charity walk for the Gibson County Chapter of the American Red Cross. Instead of holding an event where a bunch of people all walk at once, they are having us record our steps from our GoZones. I signed up, now I just need a few pledges. If you are interested let me know. You can pledge per mile I walk or a general donation(advised). All proceeds go to LOCAL disaster relief in Gibson County.

Also, as I previously pointed out, Evan got a Wii for Christmas and Beth got a Wii Fit. Last week I purchased the Wii Fit Plus disk. Let me tell you something. It may just seem like a balance board, but when you play some of those games on there, you feel the burn. So I've been exercising on the Wii Fit.

For my birthday and Christmas and a few other holidays last year, my parents and my in-laws have given me some cash. I decided to use this cash to purchase a bike. I plan on riding it as much as I can for exercise. It will also be the first NEW bike I have ever had. I haven't purchased it yet, but I found one I like at Wal-Mart.

On another positive note, my sister told me that I have inspired her and her husband to eat better. In reality my brother-in-law just doesn't want to weigh more than me.

Why did I decide to do this? Many times I have weighed myself and said "Well that's it, I've maxed out my weight. I won't get any heavier than that." Needless to say it kept going up and up. Finally I had had enough. I had tried low-carb dieting before and I knew it worked, I just didn't stick with it. My ankles sometimes hurt from my weight. I keep having to buy larger and larger clothes. I would like to be in better shape to play with my kids. I hope to be in better shape for church league softball this year. I could go on and on. The pros outweigh the cons.

Updates and Stuff

2009-12-29T13:27:00.000-08:00

Christmas has come and gone. Evan got a Wii for Christmas and we've been addicted to it so far (yes, I said "we"). I got lots of Purdue clothes. The only Purdue clothes I had were leftovers from college and they were getting too small and/or discolored. I also got a pocket fisherman (photo on Facebook).

I've decided not to do my year end review of celebrity deaths this year. I haven't written much this year, but I will say that 2009 has flown by faster than any other year I think. 2010 can slow down as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully with Emma being able to walk and feed herself more now I can get more projects at home done in 2010.

I've started a couple new blogs. I know what you are thinking "why are you doing that if you don't even keep up with the one you have?" Good question and I don't have an answer. Although the two others that I have started are for specific subjects rather than the wide variety of topics I do here.

The Overstated Blog of Overstatements (theoverstatement.blogspot.com)
I'm reserving this blog for, well, silliness if you will. There are some topics I have thought of and then didn't want to post them to my main blog. This one is basically sarcasm and parody. I even came up with a pseudonym, James Younger, for this blog. I even have a photo of James Younger! If you are wondering where I came up with that name, just do a Google search on it and the first link will probably be the answer.

Iron Chef at Home (ironchefathome.blogspot.com)
I do the vast majority of the cooking at my house. I have learned the right and wrong ways of making simple things in the kitchen that I will share with everybody. I'll also share some recipes which I've always wanted to do but never put on my main blog. Enjoy the graphic at the top of that one too.

Have you seen the picture in this article?
from ABC EXCLUSIVE: Photos of the Northwest Airlines Bomb

I'm sorry, those are not just underwear, those are women's panties.

And since Al Qaeda Claims Responsibility for Attempted Bombing of U.S. Plane , then I guess the Al Qaeda guys are perfectly ok with their bombers cross dressing. Who would have ever thought?

My 10 Least Favorite Christmas Songs

2009-12-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

I've been listening to a lot of Christmas music at work since that's practically all that's on. So I've decided to make a list of my least favorite songs. Keep in mind that I don't like these songs no matter who sings them. I realize there are bad versions of good songs, but that is not what this list is supposed to be. I know some of these may hurt people's feelings, but that's too bad. Personally I think there are only a handful of Christmas songs, it's just that everyone does their own version of them.

10. Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer - There are a lot of songs that are funny and/or cute the first time they are played. Kind of like "Redneck Woman" by Gretchen Wilson. Well, this is one of those, and there are many more on this list.

9. Snoopy’s Christmas (The Royal Guardsman) - Again, I'm sure someone thinks this song is cute since it's about Snoopy. I'm sorry, I've never "gotten" this song and I get tired of it.

8. Merry Xmas (War is Over) - I'm not a fan of Lennon, but that's not a reason to dislike a song. This song is kind of a jumbling mess.

7. Santa Baby - gag me

6. All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth
5. I'm Gettin' Nuttin For Christmas
4. I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas - 4,5,&6 are practically a tie for me. These are probably the same as #10 being cute at first.

3. Any barking dogs or any other animals "singing" for that matter - You've heard the barking dogs doing Jingle Bells. Well there are other animal Christmas albums too. I've heard of one that uses cats. To me these aren't even cute or funny the first time.

2. The 12 days of Christmas (and any variation) - This song is too long. I get the idea of it adding another day on every verse. But if it started at 12 and went down and never repeated I would probably like this song. 10 Lords a leaping? I do enjoy the Muppets version when it gets to 9 nine ladies dancing. It's Bunsen and Beaker and you can hear Beaker squeaking "me me me me me me".

1. Feliz Navidad - My all time least favorite Christmas song. My guess is that people who speak Spanish either as a first or second language like this song simply because it has spanish words in it. If you took the spanish out and listened again, would you still like the song? Think about it....

Before I compiled my list I did a search for other worst Christmas songs list and many in my list were on lists I found. Here are a few more songs that were popular on the "worst" lists.
1. Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas) by John Denver - I'm not sure I've ever heard this song?
2. The Christmas Shoes - I don't think I know this song, but chances are I probably heard it just didn't realize what it was.
3. Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto by James Brown - I don't think I've heard this one either but it sounds interesting. I do like RunDMC's Christmas in Hollis.
4. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - I'd say this is another "cute" song that got old.
5. Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsting - Now I have to admit that this song almost made my list, but my list was songs and not specific versions of songs.
6. Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid - I can see how this song could get old. I'm not going to put it down because Duran Duran and Wham! were in it.
7. Hey Santa by Wilson Phillips - Again, this one would have made my list.
8. Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time - Look at that, another former Beatle. This song doesn't actually bother me that much.
9. The Chipmunk Song - As a kid I liked the Chipmunks, but now I can't stand them. I haven't even seen the newer live action movies.

Articles and Updates for 12/4/2009

2009-12-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

Local World War II Veteran Fights Homeowner's Association
I've heard stories like this many times over the past couple years and just about all of them are the same. The person fighting the homeowner's association knew the rules when they bought the house. Nobody is forcing them to live there. And I think every one of the homeowner's associations allow a flag attached to the side of the house which is more than adequate in my opinion. So I just can't figure out why these news outlets keep running these stories other than ratings from stiring up outrage in readers.

Does a flag pole really lower the value of a home or neighborhood? Can the residents not hold a vote of some sort to change the rules? Just once I'd like to hear about a homeowner's association that bans flagpoles UNLESS it's flying an American flag.

I know I haven't talked about the kids in a while. Emma is walking very well now. Just last night I found a new tooth coming in, which would be her seventh tooth. She had been acting strange lately so Beth took her to the doctor. The doctor said she had an ear infection, her first one and hopefully last.

Evan on the other hand is a different story. He's been suffering with some strange belly aches. The night before Thanksgiving he was frequently woken up with stomach pains. We went to Beth's Mom and Dad's house for Thanksgiving and he didn't really eat much of anything while there. He mainly laid around and watched TV, which was too bad because I really wanted him to ride his bike so I could go along. We spent Thanksgiving evening at my Mom and Dad's. There we had soup. All the food on Thanksgiving was good. Anyway, back to Evan, on Monday of this week he didn't feel well at school and then on Tuesday they had Beth pick him up from school. Beth took him to the doctor and they ran some tests. They told us the results would be ready on Thursday. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning at midnight Evan started having the same pains he was having the week before so Beth decided we needed to take him to the ER. So we drove him down to the ER at Gateway. If I had to pick a word to describe the experience it would be "waiting". I won't go into the details but the ER doctor decided he had ulcers. He asked us if he was under any stress at school or whatever and we told him no. I guess he didn't believe us. We ended up leaving at around 3:30am. Evan didn't go to school on Wednesday by order of his regular doctor. I didn't go in to work until 9am, and it was raining. Thursday Beth took him to the doctor again to get his test results. Nothing unusual. ??? Beth also told the doctor about our ER experience and told us to be sure and fill out the customer satisfaction form. I haven't told you the entire experience in the ER because I don't want to bad mouth Gateway too much. But I assure you that you would be rolling your eyes about it. As soon as Evan saw the doctor he asked if he could go back to school. I'm glad Evan likes school so much. After Evan's doctor visit on Thursday, Beth took him back to school.

Here's an older story I've been wanting to post so I'll do it today:
Anti-Graffiti Plan Raises Stakes for Homeowners
If you haven't read this already, believe it or not, the city of Los Angeles has passed an ordinance that basically makes property owners responsible for cleaning up graffiti. The ordinance says that the outside of all new buildings, including houses, have to have an anti-graffiti chemical coating on them. If they don't put the coating on, they can sign a waiver saying that they will clean off any graffiti within 7 days. At first I thought this was an article from "The Onion", but it wasn't. I have questions:

Is the anti-graffiti coating toxic? After all, this is California, the state where one city (Aliso Viejo) almost banned dihydrogen monoxide.

If I painted some artwork on my own building, who decides if it's graffiti or not?

If the graffiti is not reported, do I still have to clean it off? This question goes along with the question of if I go on vacation for a couple weeks, will I be fined if I don't clean something off while I'm gone? I guess it does say "within 72 hours of being notified", so if I was out of town they can't notify me.

I like reading comments on these kinds of stories and I think this one was my favorite:
Wow! Who would have thought that there would be such a simple answer to graffiti taggers? Instead of stopping them, just write laws to accommodate them! I wonder what our creative elected officials will tackle next - drive-by shootings? Here's a new ordinance: All Angelenos must wear bullet proof clothing. This is so easy!

1989 and the Winds of Change

2009-11-17T13:04:00.000-08:00

On Friday November 13th, I went to Wal-Mart after work to get our weekly grocery shopping out of the way. In the checkout, I admit, I made an impulse buy. There was a publication of Time magazine about the year 1989. Since I had already planned on writing a blog post about the Berlin Wall in 1989, I decided to buy this book and to write about it's contents. I admit that I had forgotten all the substantial events of 1989. A lot of what I've written here came from the Wikipedia article about 1989 (I don't have THAT good of a memory).

January 20 - President George H.W. Bush enters office as President Ronald Reagan leaves.

February 14 - The first of 24 GPS satellites are put in orbit, and now we have Tom Tom.

February 24 - The Auatolla Khomeini declares a fatwa on Salman Rushdie (author of The Satanic Verses).

March 23 – Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce that they have achieved cold fusion at the University of Utah. The Time book I bought talks about this. It turns out it wasn't true.

March 24 – Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil after running aground. If I remember correctly, Captain Joseph Hazelwood had been drinking, left someone else in charge, and went below deck to sleep it off. And of course there were Saturday Night Live spoofs and Johnny Carson made jokes about this.

April 25 – Motorola introduces the Motorola MicroTAC Personal Cellular Telephone, then the world's smallest mobile phone. I just want to mention this because I had one of these or one like it, but I got mine in 1995. I think this will be a future blog topic.

April 26 – Lucille Ball died. I actually thought she died in the 90's, but I guess I was wrong.

June 3 – The Ayatollah Khomeini dies in Iran. One might think that I don't remember much about this. But as a matter of fact I can answer the question of "what were you doing when you learned that the Ayatollah Khomeini had died?" The answer is, I was watching Saturday Night Live. And I think it was Weekend Update and NBC ran a news scroll across the bottom of the screen. I think at the next commercial break, an NBC news anchor came on and told about it again. I remember going and telling my mother.

July 10 – Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and others, died. Being a big fan of old time radio, I have to mention this because of his contributions.

August 20 - In Beverly Hills, California, Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot their wealthy parents to death in the family's den. I would actually consider this a "90's" event because that's when the trial was. And of course it was a media circus that even had a "made for TV movie".

August 24 – Record-setting baseball player Pete Rose agrees to a lifetime ban from the sport following allegations of illegal gambling, thereby preventing his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. If you hadn't heard about Pete Rose and his gambling you were living under a rock, or not born yet. Vince McMahon, always the opportunist for mainstream media attention, inducted Pete Rose into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2004.

September 22 – Irving Berlin dies at the ripe old age of 101.

Reading through wikipedia's page on 1989, there were lots of communists governments falling and countries having democratic elections either for the first time or the first time in a significant amount of time.

So in the midst of all these elections and fall of communism, we have the Tiananmen Square incident/massacre. On April 21, students from Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, and Nanjing begin protesting in Tiananmen Square. May 20, the Chinese government declares martial law in Beijing. Probably the biggest sign that something big was about to happen. May 30, the 33 ft high Goddess of Democracy statue is unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators. And finally on June 4, the Tiananmen Square Incident becomes the Tiananmen Square massacre on the army's approach to the square, and the final stand-off in the square is covered live on television.

And the biggest event of all in my opinion was the beginning of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On November 9, Günter Schabowski accidentally states in live broadcast press conference that new rules for traveling from East Germany to West Germany will be put in effect "immediately". East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel freely to West Germany for the first time in decades. November 17 is the actual day the Germans celebrate the tearing down of the wall. From what I have read, East Germans who would try to ram their car through a border crossing was often shot by East German authorities. When one or two does this, it doesn't get much attention. But after Mr Schabowski made his announcement on TV, the border crossings were swarmed with people, cameras on the western side a rollin'. So none of the crossing guards had the nerve to start shooting people so they had no choice but the open the borders. It amazes me how one little slip up on TV can change history forever.

On Getting Old

2009-10-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I set my Facebook status to the opening line of Vanilla Ice's song "Ice Ice Baby". Everybody got all retro on me. The reason I had Vanilla Ice on my mind was because the night before, A&E showed his biography. Oh the memories. So Friday I got out my copy of "To The Extreme" and listened to it on the way to Evansville. I was looking at the CD case when I noticed the copyright date... 1990. We are three months away from 2010. That means Vanilla Ice's album is 20 YEARS OLD!!! The phrase "20 years ago" to me should be preceeded with phrases like "Nixon resigned" or "Vietnam war..." not 90's pop culture references. I also noticed that the youngest person to respond to my Facebook status was 30.

Did you know Kurt Cobain killed himself over 15 years ago?? (April 5, 1994)

Twenty years ago this November saw the beginning of the end of East Germany. Sounds like a topic for a future post.

Most everybody saw the supposed kid in a balloon in Denver last week. That evening on The Jay Leno Show, Jay said "..they found the kid alive and well in a box in the attic. But then he went out in the back yard and fell in a well." Now I find that hysterical, but just about anyone under 30 wouldn't get it unless they've heard about Jessica McClure. And even then you really needed to have lived it to remember the media hysteria at the time. Can you believe that happened on October 14, 1987!?!

I was startled that one of the members of my church league softball team was born in 1990. But that's nothing. I was humbled a little bit this last Sunday when I was working in the nursery at church. I was holding one of the kids when I realized that I remember when his mother, who is older than my sister, was also a tiny baby in the nursery.

One of my friend's on Facebook asked the question the other day "does it make you old when you start noticing your movies on AMC?" I'm going to say no on that one because I think AMC stretches the definition of "classics". I have pointed out some time ago that a song that I used to dance to back in my "clubbing" days (I Like To Move It Move It) is now in a kid's movie.

The lady who cuts my hair told me a story. She said one day she ran into the flowergirl from her wedding. The flowergirl said to her "I want you to meet my grandchild".... ouch.

In a previous post I had a link to a Red Green video where he was talking about getting older. He said "someone's going to invite you over to play bridge." At least nobody's done that to me yet. He correctly pointed out that "Bridge is better than Solitaire".

A followup from the last post:
Moe Joe's Pizza was good. They have a specialty pizza called the "Cheesie Moe" and I thought to myself NOW you're talkin' my language! The description is "Extra Mozzarella & Cheddar Cheese plus 2 toppings". So we ordered a medium Cheesie Moe and an order of cheesesticks. As you can tell, I really like cheese. I think Moe Joe's is off to a good start. They even kept Subway's drive-thru window open, so you can call in your order and just pick it up at the window. I will probably write about Moe Joe's again because I want to try a lot of the other things they have.

As previously stated, Evan lost and tooth. The Tooth Fairy brought Evan $5 for his tooth. I don't know about you, but I think the Tooth Fairy's budget is 20 times higher than it was when I was a kid. So now another funny quote from Evan. He was wondering what he could buy with his $5. I told him to put it in the bank, but he said "I could get a $5 foot-long, but that would be silly." Somewhere, an ad executive is smiling. I guess technically he can't, this might be a good opportunity for me to teach him about sales tax.

Firsts, Birthdays, and First Birthdays

2009-10-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

What a weekend. It's been nothing but firsts and birthday parties.

Friday after work I had to pick up two birthday cakes and a few food items. Then I picked up my usual Friday lunch of fish tacos from Taco Tierra. Once home Beth and I spent the day cleaning the house and getting ready for the party. Beth's Mom and Dad and Aunt and Uncle brought the majority of the food. This will be the first of many double birthday parties. Is someone getting short changed? If anyone it's Emma since Evan had a birthday party at Walther's Golf-N-Fun last weekend. This party was specifically for the family though. In the future I may request that it be for three since my birthday is on October 27th. Like we did for Evan on his first birthday, we got Emma a cake of her own. She didn't really dive into it like I thought she would, but I think she may have been kind a full by the time we gave it to her. She really didn't make much of a mess to speak of.

Saturday was Emma's actual birthday. Recalling that day/night last year, Beth's water broke at 11:30pm on October 9th and Emma was born at 1:19am October 10th with no doctor or any anesthesia. I know this is a real way to celebrate her birthday, but I was going to take Evan and Emma to the Thresherman's park show in Boonville. But due to the rain, I decided against it. Instead we did our usual Saturday thing of going to Princeton for lunch and going grocery shopping at Wal-Mart. At 3:30pm Saturday, I surprised Evan by taking him to yet another birthday party. This one was for the daughter of a friend of mine at Lin's Lanes in Oakland City. This was a first for Evan because he had not been bowling before. I played a few games with my friend while I was there. I scored a 144 in my second game. Not too bad I didn't think considering I haven't played since I played league years ago. Evan scored a 66.

Sunday I decided to keep the kids home from church since the three of us were sick. No fevers or anything major, just runny noses, Emma especially. We still did our usual of going over to Mom and Dad's for lunch. We had leftovers from Friday night. Later I decided to take Emma for a drive in my truck so I could fill up with gas for the week. When I got back to Mom and Dad's, Evan had lost a tooth. So another first this weekend, Evan lost his first tooth.

Another great quote from Evan. I have to explain this one a little bit. He got a Lego set this weekend that makes a vehicle. One of them we put together looks like a Jeep. He was having a "battle" between his Jeep and a plane. The plane was winning and then he said "This Jeep is turing into a beat up Camero."
I asked him if he needed any blocks for the wheels. He said no. I'm sure the Camero thing came from the Transformers movie.

Sometime this week I hope to try out the new Moe Joe's Pizza in Fort Branch. I'll let you know what I think of it, but I will say already that my sister and her husband like it.

Baby Advice

2009-09-28T12:29:00.001-07:00

It seems I may have some new readers since I got a little free advertising during the service Sunday morning. Well, now there's pressure to continue to write quality material. And since I may have new readers, I thought I would post today. I already had a topic in mind.

This week there's been lots of new babies born to families in my church. And to those families I say congratulations. I'm certain that almost everyone they have encountered who also have children have offered their advice. Well I'm no exception! Though my advice will probably be a bit different.

When changing a diaper, ALWAYS have a new one ready. In fact, I always spread out the new diaper and sit the baby down on it before I even start to take the old one off. This minimizes the amount of time the baby doesn't have a diaper on. Every second counts.

Imagine a world without pacifiers. I hope that whoever invented it is a billionaire. But chances are by now "the pacifier" is in the public domain.

There are milestones in a child's life that every parent looks forward to and then there are some they dred. I'm sure you are wondering, what do parents dred? I'm thinking 16 when the cost of your car insurance goes up for one. But lets look at the ones parents look forward to:
-first words
-crawling
-eating baby food
-the transition from formula (or "the tap") to store boughten milk
-walking
-potty trained
-feeding themselves
-pre-school
BUT! There is one milestone that parents look forward to even more than all of those!! And you say "what could possibly be better than all of those??" You are not thinking, because you are too tired. That's right, the biggest milestone is "sleeping through the night". Evan and Emma where both sleeping through the night in less than three months. I am bragging. I'll tell you how we did it. There may be a difference in opinion on what constitutes "sleeping through the night", so don't expect your baby to sleep from 8pm to 8am. It's more like 10pm to 7am.

The key to getting your baby to sleep through the night is food, both quantity and type. A newborn baby eats only formula/milk and only a little bit at a time. Since the baby has a small stomach and is rapidly growing, he/she has to feed frequently. So you have to wait until the baby eats something that takes longer to digest and has a stomach big enough to eat a lot of it. The number one food for that is cereal. Emma has a bowl of Gerber oatmeal cereal at about 8:30. We mix a small bottle of HOT formula and then mix that into the cereal. After eating the cereal, if I have any formula left I'll feed that to her and rock her to sleep. I usually put her in her crib by 9:30 at the latest. She will wake up anywhere between 6:30 to 8:00 in the morning.

A few other tips for sleeping. We put something in the baby's room that makes a monotonous noise. Either an air filter or a humidifier. Newborn babies are used to "womb noises" and this imitates that. It also has the added benefit of covering up any noises that someone might accidentally make that would normally wake the baby. Emma didn't start out sucking a pacifier overnight, but now she does for some reason. Sometimes it will fall out of her mouth in the middle of the night and she'll start to fuss. Don't jump up and run to the baby's room when this happens. If the baby has figured out how to put the pacifier back in, let them do that. For Emma, if we go in and check on her and she sees us, she holds out her arms and wants to be held. If we leave the room, she'll scream somethin' awful and then we end up letting her sleep with us the rest of the night.

The story of Evan sleeping through the night is a little different. As some may recall, Evan spent 11 days in the NICU when he was born. The muscles in his mouth hadn't developed enough for him to eat enough. It was a catch-22 situation for him. He had to eat enough to have enough energy to eat more and grow. Since he couldn't do that well enough, he had a feeding tube and the doctor put him on high calorie formula. This, in my opinion, caused him to grow big really fast. At a year old, Evan was a full 7 pounds heavier than Emma is at a year old now. After Evan got out of the NICU and we brought him home, we were paranoid parents and kept him away from people for a long time. They told us that since he was premature, he may have an underdeveloped immune system. I had visions that every person who saw him would want to hold him or at least touch him in some way. Finally by December of 2003 we decided to take him out in public. Before Evan was born, Beth and I frequently went to Indianapolis on the weekends. So we got brave(is that the right word?) and took him along to do some Christmas shopping while up there. Along the way, we had another first for Evan: the first time we took him to a restaraunt. The first place we took him: McDonald's (we're such good parents). Anyway, the first night we stayed in our hotel room while in Indy was the first night he slept all the way through the night. We were pleasantly surprised. Back home after this trip, I fed him cereal before bed just like I do Emma now.

Happy Birthday to Evan. He will be 6 on Sept 29th. I can't wait for him to see the gifts we got him. Emma will be 1 on Oct 10th.

To Facebook friends: check for another video of Evan soon. I've got some footage for at least two more, I just need to put them together.

Who is Red Green?

2009-09-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've realized for a while now that a lot of people I know have no idea who Red Green is. I make references once in a while to him and some people don't get it. I set my facebook status to things he says once in a while and I even dressed up as him for Halloween one year (see the "humor" photo album on my Facebook page). So I have decided to fill everyone who reads this in on Red Green and his TV show.

The Red Green Show is a Canadian comedy show. It's now syndicated in reruns in the US on a lot of PBS stations. It was on WNIN 9 on Saturday nights at 9pm, but now it's only on KET 31.1 at 6:30pm on Saturday nights. Several years ago they made a movie called "Duct Tape Forever", thought I didn't find it as funny as the TV show.

Red Green - Played by Steve Smith is of course the main character and everyone's hero. I've heard him compared to Tim the Toolman Taylor, but I don't like this comparison. Red does do segments with tools, focusing on duct tape mainly, but a lot of his jokes center around marriage and getting older. His jokes tend to be more insightful and clever than Tim Taylor. Red has a van painted up to look like a giant possum and is therefore refered to as "the possum van". Red said that it was a gift from his father so that he didn't have to drive his father's car in junior high. As I indicated before they don't make any new episodes of the show. Red Green has written a book recently and is currently on a book signing tour stopping at hardware stores throughout Canada. It's sponsored by 3M (no joke).

Harold Green - Red's nerdy nephew played by Patrick McKenna. He makes odd noises and tries to be the voice of reason when Red is considering doing something dangerous. He also plays the producer of the show. He does this by using a very large remote control thing that looks like it has a keyboard and a tv antenna attached to it.

Dalton Humphrey - Red's best friend. Dalton owns a store called "Humphrey's Everything Store" where he sells junk by telling people they are valuable antiques. He is frequently in trouble with his wife, Ann Marie. An interesting note: the term "daltonism" is a form of color blindness where the person has trouble distiguishing the colors red and green.

Bill (Adventures with Bill) - Played by Rick Green. Rick is the real producer of the show and therefore has his own segment called Adventures with Bill. This is Rick and Steve's tribute to old time physical and slapstick comedy like the Three Stooges. Bill usually is the one to get hurt in the segments. He keeps everything he needs inside of his bib overalls. And in almost every episode, Bill ends up knocking off the rear-view mirror of the possum van.

Ranger Gord - A Canadian forest ranger that lives in a fire watch tower. It's always implied that he's deprived of women and has too much time on his hands so he makes animated PSA's.

Hap Shaughnessy - A compulsive liar. In every segment he's in, he tells some wild tale about how he invented something and never took credit for it or gave some famous person advice.

Ed Frid - The animal control officer. Early on in the series he did a segment called "talking animals". Ed always finds a reason to be affraid of any animal he's brought.

Winston Rothschild, III - Owner of "Rothschild's Sewage and Septic Sucking Services". Winston does several commercials for his business throughout the series. He's always wearing a hardhat and hip waders. He's always looking for new business and even wrote a book about his "success".

Mike Hamar - An ex-con. Mike is frequently making jokes about being in jail and is caught stealing things from Red and the lodge.

Edgar K.B. Montrose - An explosives "expert" that is hard of hearing. This guy has actually been in a lot of films. One of which is The Green Mile with Tom Hanks. I've also spotted him on the TV show "Northern Exposure".

There are several people on the show that we hear about but never see such as Old Man Sedgwick, Buster Hadfield, Moose Thompson, and Stinky Peterson.

Possum Lodge - Where Red and the gang hang out. Most of the characters are members of the lodge. At the end of the show they always have a meeting in the basement. They start out reciting "Quando omni flunkus moritati", which is supposed to be latin for "When all else fails, play dead". Then they recite "the man's prayer" which is "I'm a man, and I can change, if I have to, I guess".

Red's Monolog - Red does a monolog where he's usually tying a fly lure. It always starts with "I wanna talk to you older guys/middle aged guys/younger guys/married guys about" some subject.

The Possum Lodge word game - Probably the most popular segment on the show. It's kind of like the $25,000 Pyramid where they try to get someone to say the secret word. Naturally they give funny answers to the clues. The person always says the word just in time except for one time. Red was trying to get Dalton to say the word "love" and finally Dalton said "Red, if I won't say that word for my wife, I'm sure not going to say it for you."

Handyman's Corner - A segment of the show where Red tries to use his inventiveness to solve a problem. A lot of his "solutions" involve appliances and automobiles. They ALWAYS involve duct tape. He ends the segment by saying "and remember, if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy".

The Experts Portion - A segment where "we examine those three little words that men have so much trouble saying... I DON'T KNOW" They answer viewer's (supposedly) questions. Red and "his best friend in the whole wide room" give bad advice and Harold always trys to be the voice of reason, though he usually sets himself up to be the butt of a joke.

That's What Friends Are For - A segment on some of the earlier shows where Red and Dalton (sometimes Winston) come up to the camera and give rapid fire advice to a guy who is in trouble with his wife. An example might be what to do if a husband forgot his anniversary.

Youtube had a few great clips that I have linked to:

Red Green Shorts - this one has three great examples of segments of the show.
1. Monolog to middle aged guys getting older
2. Red and Winston gives advice to a guy who's made his wife mad with the TV remote
3. "The Experts" portion of the show with Edgar K.B. Montrose

Possum Lodge Word Game (Parent)

Possum Lodge Word Game (Celibate)

Handyman's Corner - Hardtop convertable

Handyman's Corner - All Wheel Drive (K car)

Advertures with Bill "The Chainsaw"

Follow up and more

2009-09-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

A follow up to the last post. I left out a couple things that was wrong with the van that I forgot about.
-The windshield was once hit by a rock. It was a small enough crack that we had one of those chemical patches done. Then another rock hit it and a crack went about halfway down the window. So we had it replaced.
-There was a loud screeching noise under the hood for about the past month. It was either the water pump, the power steering hydraulic pump, or the alternator. It was never addressed by Best One Tire. Whatever it was, the hydraulic pump was covered in oil and dirt and bad things were about to happen.

Another followup about my parent's Grand Torino they traded in. After posting I remembered why they had to tow it to the dealer instead of drive it. It had thrown a rod. I was too young to remember it happening and maybe I wasn't in the car when it happened, but I would love to hear what Dad said at the time.

Some agency, probably the FCC, has rules for television that limits how loud the audio can be. Of course the person watching can turn down the volume, but in general if you haven't noticed already that TV shows are always lower in volume and the commercials are always higher. The advertisers turn the volume up on their commercials all the way to the limit allowed by the FCC. They all do this except for one type of commercial: commercials for hearing aids.

Since this is "Tales From Snake Run" and all, I thought I would actually tell a tale... from Snake Run. As some may know, there is road construction on county road 550E. This of course is Interstate-69. They are working in the area of 550E that floods. Basically they are going to put the highway up on stilts so it doesn't get under water. Anyway, as I was driving near this part of the construction, there was a big orange sign that said "BUMP". I chuckled and thought to myself "which one?" 550E is FULL of bumps and pot holes and etc. I had a hard time believing that whatever the construction people were doing was going to be any worse than what was already there. I guess what they were refering to was a spot where they were driving their tractors pulling scapers full of dirt across the road. They were dropping a lot of dirt on the road and it made a "bump".

I haven't done one of those "on this day" things for a while. So here goes:
On this day (9/9/2009) in 1994 in the OJ Simpson trial, the district attorney announced that the death penalty will not be sought.
In 1926, the National Broadcasting Company (aka NBC) was formed.

Goodbye to another vehicle

2009-08-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

I know that I say this on almost every post, but sorry I haven't posted for a while. I haven't had the desire to sit down and write anything recently. Mainly because of time.

Emma decided to start crawling forward last week. Previously she was able to move around on her own, just backwards. Also this week she has been very cranky. For those that know her I know that sounds hard to believe since she always seems so content. She's probably teething.

Evan has started school and seems to like it. Before he went he was looking forward to riding on the bus. I don't know if that is his favorite part now or not. He does seem to like art class though.

Now on to the latest news. Wednesday I was about to haul off the trash when Beth called me. She was in Princeton and has just got her hair cut. She was going to bring home some supper but she was having trouble with the van. Basically the engine stalled. She was too scared to drive it and wanted me to come into town. So I put the trash aside and rounded up the kids and went into town. She was sitting in front of the Princeton municiple building across from free parking. I started the van up and drove it over to free parking. It died on me just driving it over there. So we decided to take it to Best One in Princeton. Since it was almost closing time for them, they kept it overnight and looked at it Thursday morning. Thursday morning they call me with the laundry list of problems that it had. I already knew it had problems because the dash was lit up like a Christmas tree. Over the years we have had to put extensive repairs on the van. Some our fault, some not our fault. Keep in mind this is a 2003 Ford Windstar.

-Once we had to replace the gear box on the steering column. This is not normal
-Once I left the parking break on and Beth drove to Evansville with it on. We had to replace the brakes and the master cylinder.
-The brakes were never right after that because we took it to Vincennes Ford to fix them again a year or so ago.
-After leaving Vincennes Ford after getting the brakes fixed, the alternator went out and it had to be towed back to Vincennes Ford.
-Beth has "curbed" the van a few times and we lost hub caps. On the passenger side of the van were Ford hub caps and on thedriver's side was some cheap replacements that I bought.
-The anti-lock brake module had failed a long time ago and we never got it fixed.
-The back hatch, like other doors, has a switch on it to turn on the interior lights etc. This switch only worked in the winter time. The rest of the time the van thought the hatch was open.
-The fuel fill door had a switch on it with a light on the dash telling you when you left it open. The switch was broke and the light stayed on all the time.
-We replaced the battery one time.
-We put a new set of tires on it and bought the road hazard insurance. Good thing because we had to have them patched at least three times and one tire was replaced entirely.
-Once while at the Gibson General Hospital ER parking lot, a guy backed into the rear driver's side of the van. It cost him around $1800 to fix it.
-Beth hit a concrete culvert once and it put a gash down the side. I never fixed the dent/scratch, but when the guy hit it at the GGH ER, he replaced the rear bumper for us.
-Beth once hit a big dog out on highway 41 north of the Gibson/Knox county line. It ripped part of the lower bumper, which was plastic.
-Sometime later, Beth drove the van through some water and it ripped the rest of the lower bumper off. Part of it remained, but was barely hanging on. I reattached the remaining part with some bailing wire.
-The dash had a pull-out drink holder. Beth broke it off by getting her purse caught on it.
-It has a low tire pressure warning light that kept coming on. I checked all the tires and nothing was wrong. I kept resetting the light, but it kept coming back on for no reason.
-We took it to get the front end aligned one time. Aparently, aligning a van requires all four wheels to be adjusted. They had to replace a part on the rear wheels and they broke some kind of cover (which they replaced for free).
-The check engine light has been on for a long time and that leads me to the on board computer error codes that Best One Tire found.
-Idle air control solenoid needed replacing. Probably the cause of it stalling.
-The fuel system needed servicing. Probably dirty.
-Evap system leak
-wheel speed sensor input missing (probably the cause of the low tire warning all the time)

My hooptie rollin', tailpipe draggin'
Heat don't work an' my girl keeps naggin'

ANYWAY. The computer listed nine faults in the engine and Best One was going to charge $612 in labor. I didn't even ask how much in parts. It has over 135,000 miles on it, overdue an oil change, and the air filter was probably dirty. It had good tires though. And to think we drove this thing all the way to Pigeon Forge a couple months ago.

So after all that, I'm sure it would be no surprise to say, we traded it in on a new car. We bought a brand new 2009 Chevy Impala from Memering Motorplex in Vincennes. I had bought my 2002 Ford Ranger new, my 2006 Ford F-150 used, and the van was used when we bought it. So I told Beth that when we got rid of the van we could buy her a brand new car, so we did. They only gave us a little over a thousand dollars for the van. That was fine with me. I don't think it qualified for the "cash for clunkers" deal.

I drove the van from Best One Tire all the way to Vincennes. Beth followed along in the truck. With Evan being five almost six and the van hanging from a thread about to die taking it to a dealership, it reminded me of a story. When I was 5 or 6 my parents traded in their 70-something model Ford Grand Torino (think: Starsky and Hutch, only different color) on a brand new 1980 or 1981 model Mercury Monarch (which was later my "first" car). They took the Torino to Lindsey Lincoln-Mercury in Evansille.... on a flat bed trailer. Yep, they had a car that died and they traded it in instead of getting it fixed too.

The Story of How I Sold My House

2009-07-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

I just realized in May I said I would post the story about how I sold my old house. So here ya go. And for those that don't know, FSBO = For Sale By Owner.

History
We purchased our first house in June of 2000. It's hard to give an exact day because of all the problems surrounding the closing. Since the owners of the house lived in Arizona,all the paperwork had to be overnighted by UPS. UPS lost the first copy of the paperwork.

We got our mortgage through Fifth Third Bank. It was 30-year.I made extra payments on the principle every month. By my calculations, we would have paid it off in 11 years. Those extra payments gave us some extra equity in our home which made it possible to purchase our second home with no problems. We lived in the house for about 4.5 years.

The Story
I had heard earlier in 2004 that Mr Holzmeyer was going to sell his home. In December of 2004 I called him and asked to look at it. When we went, Beth liked it and wanted to buy it. So we got some earnest money together and gave it to Mr. Holzmeyer. Shortly thereafter we put together a purchase agreement. Then we had to wait and wait while the property was surveyed. Finally, once the survey was done, we could close. The bank, again Fifth Third, set us up two mortgages. One of them was for 80% of the price and the other was 20% put on a home equity loan (against the old house, recall we had extra equity in the home to do this). January 19th, we closed on our new house. Closing costs were about $2800, same as the first house. After we closed on the new house, I had to move the home equity line to the new house.

Here's what made the move so hard. In January, as we were about to start moving, one of the nurses at the hospital suddenly had heart trouble and had by-pass surgery. This put her out for a long time. It just so happens that she had the night shift on the weekends at Gibson General in OB. Beth had weekend days and since no one else would work weekend nights, Beth took them. That meant that as soon as I got home on Friday, Beth wanted to sleep so she could be rested up to go to work Friday night. That meant I had to watch Evan and not only that, moving stuff would make noise and keep Beth awake. So the obvious solution was to take Evan up to Beth's Mom and Dad's for the weekend and I could work overnight on the weekends while Beth worked. Wrong. Beth's Mom had heart troubles also and they had to give her a pacemaker. The doctor ordered her not to lift heavy objects and naturally Evan was too heavy. So this left a small window of opportunity on the weekends from 5 to around 9 to move things. Actually we started around 3 loading up stuff at the old house and then having it at the new house by 5 when Beth got up to start getting ready. By around 9 or so I had to put Evan to bed. Finally on the weekend of February 25th-27th, Beth's Mom was able to keep Evan for the weekend. I managed to get 98% of the stuff out of the house that weekend.

I took a break and on March 11th I started cleaning. March the 18th I showed it for the first time to a nurse from GGH that Beth knew. She wasn't that interested because she wasn't entirely in the market for a house. I was hesitant to show it because it was far from clean. Finally on April 2nd I got the carpet cleaned and did some touch-up work on the paint. I put up the for sale sign before I went home. April the 8th we showed it to the first serious buyers. They were from Oakland City and really liked the house, especially because of the fenced in yard. They later changed their mind about moving. April 9th, I was mowing the yard and several people came by wanting to look at it. One lady actually tried to tell me that she was going to get a government grant for $50,000. I didn't argue with her. April 11th I showed it to a guy from Toyota. On April 23rd, we had a repeat looker. He was one of the people who came by on the 9th. He made me our first offer on the house, but it was so low that I just couldn't see selling for that. For a while after that I regretted not going ahead and selling it to him. It was a guy that had been shot in an accidental shooting by his father a few months previously. He walked into his house and his Dad, who had Parkinson's Disease, shot him the stomach with a shotgun. He had some settlement money from the insurance company and had enough to purchase a home. My only reservation on this one was that chances were he would hand me a check for the house and not get a mortgage. Since the lender takes care of all the paperwork and footwork in closing on a house, I would have had to hire someone to do this for me.

May 26th I showed it to a guy from Toyota named Seth. He was referred to me by the guy who looked at it on April 11th. June the 2nd I showed it to a couple that wanted to buy it right then and there. The trouble was they wanted it under contract for 6 months to a year. I didn't want to do that. Selling it under contract was a common request. I got the idea that this was something that people who sell their houses under FSBO have to deal with. So remember that if you ever try to sell your own home. It's very dificult to sell a house under contract when you are selling through a realtor. The reason being is at closing time, the realtor wants their cut of the sale which can be a lot of money. If the buyer actually had enough cash on hand to give the realtor, chances are they wouldn't need to buy under contract. June 3rd I showed it to Seth a second time. He brought his family along this time and they liked it (except for one) and I thought for sure he was going to make an offer, but he never did. The one family member who didn't like it kept pointing out things that was of no consequence to buying the house. It kind of made me mad. I called him a few times and he never returned my calls.

To my surprise, during the entire time it was for sale we didn't get a whole lot of calls from realtors. I expected many more. The first one was the realtor we purchased the house from. She said she had a buyer and wanted to list it "one time." I told her I had three buyers and I didn't want to. She was stunned. She couldn't believe I was turning down a buyer. This was on a Monday. The next Monday we get a call from another realtor in the same office. She gave me some sob story about how she "sold all of her listings" and therefore she didn't have any houses listed. She also said that her husband was in the hospital and she had to make a living etc. Of course I turned her down too and she actually got kinda snotty with me! The next Monday they tried it again. I don't know who called this time, but Beth answered and told them that we had already turned them down twice and to quit calling. They quit. This was American Real Estate in Princeton. I also got a call from Meek's, but they didn't leave a message. Anita Waldroup left a message on our answering machine, but I didn't return her call. Creatively, a ReMax agent from Evansville sent me three letters telling me how much of a hassel it is to sell a house by yourself. If I had gotten one more letter from her I was going to write her back asking her to take me off her mailing list. I was also going to mention that it wasn't that much trouble and it's possible to sell a home without a realtor.

Finally, on June 20th I showed it to the couple who would ultimately purchase it. I didn't know it at the time because their story was almost exactly like everyone else's. They wanted three bedrooms and the price I wanted was too much for a two bedroom home. Actually their real problem was they had bad credit. June 20th marked the 79th day the house had been officially up for sale.

Over the next several weeks I was on the phone with them and any mortgage company they were talking to. They changed companies several times for various reasons. Due to their bad credit, no one would give them the full amount for the house. So then it was a contest to see who would give them the most money for the lowest interest rate. I should also point out that they both worked for Toyota or one of the surrounding companies. They had a steady income and were cleaning up their credit, but not enough to make a bank happy. So when you have bad credit, you have to turn to a mortgage lender. Mortgage lenders are not famous for reasonable closing costs. Finally they settled on a company in Evansville. This lender at first said he could give them 90% of the selling price (read also: appraised value). This amount later changed to 85%. Now I was a little nervous. In order for them to get the full amount for our agreed upon price, the house would have to appraise for 15% more. This lender happened to know an appraiser out of Lynnville that would appraise it at the price we needed (read: dirty). There was a catch-22 situation. I needed the house appraised to find out what numbers to put on the purchase aggreement (not to mention whether it would actually appraise high enough for them to get the money). The mortgage company wouldn't appraise it unless there was a signed purchase agreement. So I decided to go ahead and pay for the appraisal myself. I figured that if it didn't appraise high enough, I could use the appraisal for the next person that came along and save on closing costs. Wrong. As I was about to hand the appraiser the money, I asked if it was going to be a generic appraisal that I could use for any closing. He said no, it was for that particular mortgage company. However, he did say that the mortgage company would probably release it to me if the deal fell through. We had the house appraised on July 15th.

The next week, almost like magic, the house appraised at just the right price for the couple to borrow enough money to buy. On July 20th I got the purchase agreement written up. The mortgage lender told me that closing costs would be exactly $3500. I asked him very specifically if there were ANY other costs for me or the buyer. He said no. And that was it. I wrote up the purchase agreement so that they could borrow a small portion of the closing costs and then asked them to give me more of the closing costs in the form of earnest. Then in the purchase agreement I put that I would pay for all the closing costs. I had to officially put the purchase price as 15% higher than what we verbally agreed on. It said that 85% of the selling price would be funded by the mortgage lender. The other 15% would be "worked out between the buyer and seller." Recall this later. I also showed the house to one last couple. I was quite suspicious of them. I explained to them that we were signing a purchase agreement that day, but I'm not sure they believed me. Either way, the buyers came by and signed. I warned them that they are going to require home insurance before we close. The next day I took it down to the mortgage lender for him to get started on closing. I had to wait in his waiting room for a few minutes. He had a few magazines on his coffee table. They were all "Christian Life" magazines. Later I believed these to be a plant. Trust him, he's a Christian, or so it's implied... He told me 15 to 20 days to close.

August the 10th I called the mortgage guy up and asked how the closing was going. He said he was waiting on insurance information from the buyers (recall I warned them!). We wanted to close on Thursday the 11th because there was no way for Beth to be at closing on the 12th due to work. They didn't get the insurance to him early enough in the day, so we had to put it off another day. That meant Monday since Friday was out. But the mortgage guy said we could have Beth sign a power of attorney of sorts so that I could sign everything on Friday. On Thursday about as soon as I got off work, I found out there was still a lien on the house left over from the previous owners!!! This was entirely Citibank's fault! They knew about it on Monday and figured it would be cleared up, but it wasn't yet. So we had to put off closing until Monday for sure. This wasn't good for the buyers though.

The buyers, since they worked at Toyota, had a hard time getting off of work. They also were renting a house that their landlord was trying to sell and wanted them out. So on the weekend of August 12-14, they had some friends ready to help them move. I was nice enough to go ahead and give them the keys early so they could move that weekend.

Monday August the 15th, we were going to go down to the mortgage lender's office to close, but he had to be out of the office, so we agreed to meet at the house itself. During the day, the mortgage lender faxed me a copy of some of the paperwork. This is where it gets interesting. It turns out that there was another fee. The mortgage lender gets a commission fee. Backing up to when I first talked to the guy, this is what he said. He said closing costs were $3500. Period. They included an appraisal ($325) and a title search ($250). I mentioned that seemed high and he said compared to a bank's closing fees it would. He said that I had to pay $250 of that $3500 for the title search. Since I had already paid for the appraisal, that would have taken the closing costs down to $3175. At first he said, "no, the appraisal is extra, but we can take it off, we can do that." Recall that I asked very specifically if there were any other costs to me or them that I should know about and he said no. Then on the day of closing I find out about a $4900+ commission fee. He listed the $3175 as the closing cost, but also added the $250 extra for title search! So how did he manage to get the $4900+? He changed their mortgage to 90% of the "purchase price" and took his fee right off the top. I thought he said he couldn't get them 90%? I still got all the money that was owed to me, but the buyers got royally screwed. There is a possibility that the buyers knew about the fee, but I don't know for sure.

At closing, they didn't even have a check for us. They did close our mortgage for us. I had to go to downtown Evansville on August 16th to get my check. It was the full amount that I expected. The insurance company called that day also asking about our policy on the house. Beth told them that we had closed on the house and they said they would cancel the policy. That saved me a trip to the insurance agent's office. On Wednesday August the 17th, Beth and I met at the bank and deposited it in my checking account.

Is it all over? Nope. Recall that the sellers still "owe" me 15% of the purchase price. That means that I had a lien against the house. The mortgage lender said that in 30 days I needed to call him and file some paperwork to "forgive" the 15%. We had to wait 30 days because by law they have 30 days to back out of the deal. After the 30 days and the final paperwork was done, we could officially celebrate. Then on August 21st I recieved a letter from the bank saying that they didn't like my check. They said since it was over $5000 that the entire amount was not available for withdraw. They did say it would be available on August 23rd. That would have been nice the know the day before when I sent off a big check for the home equity line of credit. It all worked out in the end.

Would I have benefited from a realtor? It's actually hard to say. If they would have sold it immediately for the full price I was originally asking for, then yes I could have benefited. I'm not convinced that they would have. If they had sold it to someone else, I'm not sure whether I would have had to pay as much in closing costs. Another expense is also the mortgage payments I made over the months that it was for sale. If you count between February and August, I spent $4620 in mortgage payments. So it was a gamble. If it would have taken them as long to sell it as me, then I would have had to given up at least 6% (more than likely more) of the purchase price to the realtor. So in that regard, I came out ahead. If you consider 79 days the time it took me to officially sell it, I've been told that's impressive for a FSBO. I'm just glad it's all over.

Morals of this story
1. It is possible to sell a house without a realtor.
2. If you have bad credit and/or you can't get a mortgage through a bank, don't buy a house.

A "Dad Moment"

2009-07-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

I had a "Dad moment" on Saturday night. I was putting Evan to bed and I told him he must have had a pretty good day. The night before we camped out in the tent in the back yard. Then we had lunch at Burger King and went to see the new Transformer's movie in IMAX. That evening we had a picnic on the back porch. After dinner we went to Princeton and met up with Mom, Dad, Steph, Brian, and Brayden to watch the fireworks at the fairgrounds. After I recounted all those things to him he said "yeah, and I caught some fireflies!" I guess I have to keep in perspective what he finds exciting.

Ed McMahon March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009

2009-06-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

Once again, we get a lot of deaths in the news lately. When it rains it pours.

Errol Mauck
Those who knew Errol probably think I'm joking around mentioning him. If you are from Fort Branch, you probably knew Errol, and if you didn't know him, you more than likely saw him on many occasions. Ask anyone who's worked at Holiday Foods (or Norman's) and they can tell you many stories about Errol as he was Fort Branch's staple citizen. About 90% of the time when I went into Holiday Foods, he was either in there or would arrive while I was there. One time I even went into Holiday Foods twice in one day and he was there both times! It was unbelieveable.

I have to tell a quick story about Errol. I almost killed him once. Not on purpose, and it would have been his fault. I was driving down Locust street (probably on my way to Holiday Foods) when Errol, on a bicycle, pulled out in front of me. I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting him. I was on the phone with Beth at the time and she remembers this incident. In fact, she reminded me of it to share it on here. Word has it that Errol died of a heart attack. He was 47.

You might think I'm going to talk about Farrah Fawcett or Michael Jackson. Well you're wrong! I will mention that as a kid, Michael Jackson's Thriller album (tape) was the first of few albums that my parents actually bought for me. I remember I was in third grade and EVERYONE had that album. Within the last few years, I picked up a copy of Thriller on vinyl and I dug it out last night just to confirm that I had it. My theory about Michael's death is that he had a heart attack after hearing about Farrah Fawcett's death.

What I really want to write about is the one death that quickly dropped from the headlines, Ed McMahon. And at the time of this writing, wikipedia does not even have Ed McMahon listed under the notable deaths in 2009. Michael and Farrah are though. Last night on the dish, I saw the TV Guide channel had a show on about Ed McMahon. I turned to it and guess what? They were talking about Farrah Fawcett instead.

What I have to say about Ed McMahon is probably not what everyone's expecting. It is ironic, sorta, for him to die right after Jay Leno quit the Tonight Show. What I was going to point out may have been said before, I just haven't heard or read anyone say it. I see a huge parallel between Johnny Carson's show and Jack Benny's show(s). Jack Benny was Johnny Carson's influence. Anyway, Johnny had Ed and Doc Severinsen and Jack Benny had Don Wilson and Phil Harris.

Here's a quote from the book "On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio" by John Dunning about The Jack Benny Show:
On April 6, 1934, Don Wilson became the new announcer. Wilson would remain with Benny to the end of the TV show in 1965. His deep, rich voice was one of the show's trademarks,... Wilson also brought to the show a deep belly laugh that could often be heard above the studio audience. Benny liked laughter from his cast and orchestra and assistants: he was "extremely dependent on a favorable studio audience"...

Now who does that sound like? An announcer with a rich voice, deep belly laugh that could be heard over the audience laughter, and stayed with him until the end of the show? Sounds like Ed McMahon to me. Don Wilson started his career in 1923, same year Ed McMahon was born. And Doc Severinsen would chime in once in a while the way Phil Harris would on Jack's show.

Johnny Carson gives Jack Benny some advice
This is a funny clip from 1955. In it, Johnny has been in show business for 2 years. Jack claims he's been in show business for 20, but in reality it was more like 30.

Here's an obscure video of Ed McMahon. In 1996, I think, the Disney channel did a show called "There's No Going Home" with Weird Al. It's a lot of concert footage and other assorted wackyness. In the video I have linked to, Al goes to his parent's house, only to discover that they have rented out his room. Fast forward the video to 5:40 and in a few seconds we see who they rented it to.

Why all this talk about Jack Benny? Well, I've been listening to his old shows a lot lately. There are over 600 shows in mp3 format you can download from www.archive.org. Not many know, but I really enjoy listening to old time radio shows. What started me on it recently was the show "When Radio Was" on 1280WGBF. They play it from 5 to 7pm on Sunday's, though on June 28 it moves to 6am. "When Radio Was" plays a wide variety of shows, but I mainly like the comedys. The only exception to that would be "The Shadow". Luckily for me, most old radio shows have been moved into the public domain and are kindly available online at www.archive.org. I have downloaded and listened to every episode of Abbott and Costello they had. I have downloaded every Jack Benny Show they have and am currently listening to them. The show ran from 1933 to 1955 and I am currently listening to 1938, so I have a while to go. After I finish Jack Benny I will probably download and listen to Burns and Allen.

For Father's day this year, Beth (and the kids) got me one of those cards with sound and it was Abbott and Costello doing a short clip of "Who's on First?"

Excitement on June 22, 2009

2009-06-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

Monday evening was supposed to be an evening for ball games. Evan had a t-ball game at 6pm and I had a doubleheader church league softball at 6:30pm and 7:30pm. When I got home from work, I started fixing supper. Beth's Mom and Aunt were coming down to watch Evan's game and to take Evan and Emma home with them since Beth has to work on Tuesday. While I was fixing supper, I started hearing thunder. I look outside and I check channel 14.2 for the WFIE radar. Everything appears to be to the north of us. Most all storms in the area follow the jet stream which goes either East or North-East. If a storm comes from any other direction, well, that's bad news. I kept the TV on 14.2 and as I watched the radar, I noticed the storm was moving SOUTH! Oh great. Channel 14's radar also has a little icon for rotating winds (read: tornados) and for upper atmosphere ice (read: hail). I can't tell the difference between the icons. Anyway, the storm traveled south and hit us and hit us hard. Rain was hitting the windows on the north side of the house which isn't normal. Some pea sized hail hit the windows once in a while. The wind was blowing south VERY strong. I looked out of the bathroom window and noticed that a huge branch of our biggest tree on the south side of the house had broken off in the wind. This tree is within 10 feet of the house. Moments later, another hugh branch of the same tree fell down. This left one-third of the tree still standing, but hovering over our house. The storm didn't last very long, but it left a huge mess of tree limbs in our yard, not to mention the downed tree. I went outside to see the tree leaning towards the house. It was right over Emma's room and the living room. I had Beth take the kids to the west end of the house as far away from the tree as they could. If another storm came along with the wind blowing to the north, that tree would hit the house. And the sky looked like another storm could come up at any time. I had to move a big tree limb out of the road and then drove down to my Mom and Dad's house to get the tractor with loader. The battery was shot, so I had to put the charger on it to get it started. I drove the tractor through the yard thinking I could just come up to the tree with the loader and push it over. I tried, but it didn't budge. So I call my friend Nick and he said he'd come over to help. I went back to Mom and Dad's barn and loaded up a few more log chains. I got in the bucket of the loader with several chains and a rope. Nick drove the tractor and lifted me up as high into the tree as I could get. On the first toss, I threw the rope in between two branches exactly how I wanted it. I tied the rope to one of the chains and pulled the chain around and hooked it. Then I hooked another chain to that one and lowered it to the ground. Back on the ground, I hooked up several more chains and stretched it across the yard. I got the tractor in position and hooked the chain up. I tried to pull the tree down as it was, but the trunk was still strong enough to hold it up. So Nick got out his chain saw and started to cut the trunk. I pulled with the tractor, but there was a problem... the ground was muddy and the tractor got hung up. Luckily, the chain was tight enough and had pulled the tree over far enough that when it fell, it didn't land on the house. Some of the branches did land on the roof, but it didn't damage anything. There was a clothesline pole under the tree that got bent up pretty bad in the fall. I took the chain and wrapped it around one of the limbs and hooked it up to the tractor again. I managed to pull the tree off of the house. Unfortunately it pulled the clothesline pole out of the ground, but I'd rather have that than a damaged house. By that point I was sweaty, sore, and just plain dirty, but at least we had saved the house from having a tree fall on it. I was very thankful that Nick came over to help because I couldn't have done that alone. He said he wanted the firewood from the tree, so he's going to come over some time to cut the tree up. Then I can drag the remaining limbs away. The yard will need extensive repairs from all the ruts I cut with with the tractor, but again, things could have been a whole lot worse.

It hasn't been confirmed, but we think there was a tornado within a mile of our house. We don't think that it touched down though. Mom and Dad had some tree damage at their house. The cap came off of their fireplace and they had an empty diesel tank up on stilts that blew over. Over the north hill from my house, my cousin had a HUGE pine tree blow over onto a power line across the road. Tuesday morning at 5:30am, the power company was still working to get that tree off the power line. Over the hill to the east of us, a barn was heavily damaged during the storm.

Blog now in HD!

2009-06-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

On the week of June 8 through the 12, we all went to Pigeon Forge. What? I didn't tell anyone ahead of time? Nope. Where I live you don't tell anyone you are going to be out of town. Anyway, we had a great time. We rented this cabin way up in the moutains outside of Pigeon Forge with my sister and her family. Emma handled the long travel time well I thought. We had to stop plenty of times to feed/change her, but it was nothing to complain about. Monday we spent most of the day traveling. Tuesday we spent the day in Gatlinburg. We went to the Aquarium, Ripley's Believe it or not, and the car museum. Beth and Evan went on the Sky Lift. Pictures of all this can be seen on Facebook. Before we called it a day, we played miniature golf. I just want to point out that I carried Emma in one arm and used the golf club in the other. I ended up with the best score out of the five people with several hole-in-one's. Me and Beth watched Brayden while Steph and Brian went out to eat dinner. I also want to point out that Wednesday the 10th was Stephanie's real birthday. Wednesday we drove through the Smokey Mountain National park for some site seeing. We ended up seeing six bears. For lunch we ate at "No Way Jose's Canteena" in Gatlinburg. It was good. Emma and my nephew Brayden sat next to each other. At one point we saw them holding hands. It was cute, until we figured out that they had both dirtied their pants at the same time. We did some shopping and headed back to the cabin. Steph and Brian watched Emma and Evan while me and Beth went out to eat at the Alamo restaurant. I had no problem remembering the name of that place. Bad joke, I know. Thursday we took a trip to Asheville, NC to visit the Biltmore Estate. Let me tell you about the Biltmore Estate. They would make Walt Disney World proud. It costs $50 a person to tour the mansion and the winery and all that. They don't allow you to use cameras in the mansion. Then we ate lunch there. We had 3 hot dogs, a small bag of chips, two bottles of water, and a bottle of grape soda, all for $30!!! After lunch we walked through the garden. Emma thoroughly enjoyed the garden. While in the garden it started pouring down rain. We took refuge under a tree. Brian ran and got the car while we waited. On the way back to Pigeon Forge we stopped at Ruby Tuesday's for supper and stopped at the Bass Pro Shop in Sevierville. Friday we packed up and left the cabin. Steph and Brian headed home as quick as they could to pick up their car from the repair shop. The rest of us stayed around for a little while. We took Evan to one of the go-cart places. He thoroughly enjoyed it. Then we played some more miniature golf. This time I held Emma in the shoulder strap carrier. It made it a little easier to play, at least I could use both hands. On the way home we stopped at a Wendy's in Lexington,KY to feed Emma (they were the only place on that exit that had some picnic tables). I don't remember what time we got home, but I fixed "supper" at about 10pm that night.

If you ever go to Pigeon Forge, you should at least visit the Old Mill Restaurant. They have many little shops too. One of them is a toy store, and I must say they have some interesting toys. I took some photos, but since I've been back, I have found websites that sell the same stuff. You aren't going to believe this, but found some better pictures on the web. These are a bunch of action figures and play sets.
First we have the HORRIFIED B-MOVIE VICTIMS play set. These are figures of people in bad acting poses in "B" movies.

The Paparazzi Play Set. Yes, that's right, figures of those guys with cameras that I hate so much.
Now you can stalk your KISS dolls with the Paparazzi play set!

Angry Mob Play set. Complete with rakes, pitch forks, torches, sticks, rolling pin, meat cleaver, shotgun, and an axe. Send them after the paparazzi or something.

Avenging Unicorn Play Set. Now I don't really get this one. It says it comes with four magical horns and three figures (one of them is a mime!) to impale.

Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure. Comes with six cats, plus one on her shoulder and one in her pocket.

And I saved the best for last, the Obsessive Compulsive Action Figure! Comes with a surgical mask and a sanitary hypoallergenic moist towelette. With those two things he should probably be called a "germophobic action figure".

To my great surprise, the traffic really wasn't that bad this time. I'm guessing that the busier times down there are on the weekend. Either way, it was quiet enough that I won't complain about it like I used to. And to my surprise those people selling timeshares were less aggressive this time. They were offering us free tickets to stuff for listening to their sales pitch. I pretty much ignored them.

I've been saying for years that I figured out how to make a bunch of money down there: t-shirts. Here's a couple examples:

A Few Notes

2009-06-05T06:24:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day weekend has come and gone and I managed to get by without buying a mattress or tires. Beth worked on Monday and Friday of the week preceeding Memorial Day weekend, so she got the weekend off. We didn't do much. I think we were pretty tired. Friday evening I went to the Otter's opening night game. I was a bit disappointed since the Otters lost 13-1 to the Southern Illinois Miners. But the Otters won the next two nights. The Miner's have several HUGE players. Their #27 is 6'5" tall! When he got up to bat, his stance was almost too big for the batter's box. Saturday I did some work on the house that I had been putting off for a long time. Mostly it was because of the weather. Sunday we went to the early morning service and then had lunch at Mom and Dad's. Monday we slept in. We wanted to go somewhere and do something, but the weather didn't really let us. We picked up some food from Subway and then went to Garvin park. We had talked about the city park in Vicennes or Pride's Creek in Petersburg, but the radar showed rain in both places. Well it rained in Evansville too so there was no escaping the rain. It was ok, we managed to eat without getting rained on and Evan played for a little bit. We made it home just in time for the big rain. Later we took Emma over to my Mom and Dad's and then went to the Princeton theater to see the new "Night at the Museum" movie.

At work, I'm still working on the Hansen DVD. I hit a few snags. I had it all completed or so I thought. Then when I started looking into pricing for having the DVDs pressed, I discovered a small problem. It seems that musicians want to get paid. Who do they think they are?!? I had read through the terms of use on the music that I selected and it seemed in the clear. Then the DVD printers wanted some proof that I could use the music legally. When I called the place to make sure what I was doing was ok, they basically wanted to charge me more for the music than it would have cost to print 1000 DVDs! So I ended up finding another place (www.music2hues.com) that sells "royalty-free" music. Which means you can purchase 5 CDs of music (about 23-30 minutes each) for about $150. I can use the music as much as I want in this project or any future projects. There's is a few restrictions. For example I can't add lyrics to the music and release it as a song. I also can't sell or provide mp3 versions of the songs. None of this is any problem since I'm just using it as background music. I also discovered that when you make an MPEG movie file for a DVD, any text has to be placed on the screen within a "TV safe zone". I had a lot of stuff that was getting cut off the screen, so I had to go back and redo that. Then I had trouble with the DVD menu. I am using Roxio Creator 2009. For some reason, the menu works properly with *some* DVD players and not at all on PCs. I took a different approach to the menu and I think I have it worked out now.

Evan had his first T-Ball game on June 1. He did very well, all the kids did actually. My whole family came to watch. We sat back away from the field in lawn chairs behind my truck. When Evan got up to bat, we all walked over to the fence to watch. We probably looked silly, but that's ok.

Having some problems with my neighbor. For a little background, I purchased my house from a guy who owned 26 acres of farmland around his house (except the south side). The yard with house was surveyed out (if that's the right term) and I purchased it. A couple years later, the owner sold his farm ground to the farmer who owned the land on all three sides of his field. Follow all that? So in other words, the farmer now owns and farms all the ground on all three sides of my yard. The problem I have is on the east side of my yard. I have fence posts in the corner of my yard to show where the property lines are. Last year, the farmer paid some attention to the fence posts, but he didn't plow a straight line between them, he curved into my yard and then back out around the posts. It wasn't a big deal I could handle that. The only trouble was he threw big clods of dirt in my yard and I couldn't mow there. This year, he honored one of the posts, but plowed over the other post and subsequently drove a few feet into my yard. I would like to point out that I have 1.34 acres and this farmer has 242 acres. The posts are actually on my side of the line within an inch or two of the surveyor steaks. Not only do I have fence posts, but I also had several concrete blocks and large rocks. I later found them scattered around his field. The previous owner burned a lot of trash in this corner and left a lot of metal trash laying around. I had a friend with a backhoe some over and dig a deep pit and bury the trash. I even had him reach across the line over to the farmer's side and scrape some of the metal trash on his side into the pit. So I helped him clean trash out of his field and this is the thanks I get.

It's been a while, but The Tonight Show changed hosts again. I saw the last few shows of Johnny Carson 17 years ago. I would say I watched the first Tonight Show with Jay Leno, but it memory serves me right, he actually subbed for Johnny for a while before he took over the show officially. I did see Jay's first show after Johnny left. So jumping ahead to last week and early this week, I watched Jay's final show and Conan's first. Jay Leno pointed out on his final show that when he first started The Tonight Show, his hair was black and the President was white. He also said while cleaning out his desk, he found OJ's knife.

Obama Tries to Restore Order on Gitmo, After Senate Blocks Closure Funds
One of the Gambler movies, I'm not sure which one, but I'm pretty sure Kenny Rogers was in it. Towards the end he had two or three guys at gunpoint. I think he had a small gun with only one bullet left. The guys start to move toward him and one of them says "he only has one bullet, he can't get us all." To which Kenny Rogers, still pointing the gun at them, says "but which one of you is willing to take it?" Then they all backed away.
Just like in the Fox News story above, no one wants to "take the bullet" and commit political suicide to close Gitmo. No one wants a new prison filled with terrorists in their back yard. Imagine trying to get re-elected with that on your rap sheet.
I heard a guy on the Fox News Channel the other day say it's silly to worry about having terrorists in US prisons when we have rapists and murderers already there. The difference is that rapists and murderers don't have friends that threaten to blow up buildings if they aren't released.
If they want to release these terrorists, then release them where we caught them. But before we do, we need to release a statement saying "We wish to thank mr whoever for all the helpful information he has voluntarily given us while at Gitmo. All of his drawings of Muhammad will remain on display at Gitmo."

A follow up and random stuff

2009-05-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

I have to add something to the last post and apologize for leaving it out. October 6, 2003, Beth's grandmother, Elfrieda Hislip died. This was during the eleven days that Evan was in the NICU.

Evan is playing T-Ball this year. His first practice was on Wednesday and pictures were last Saturday.

Not much new with Emma. She's seven months old now. We had some new photos taken and I have posted the best one's on Facebook. She's slowly but surely starting to roll over. She likes to jabber a lot. But here recently her jabbers are starting to sound like words. The other day I walked into the room, she looked up at me and said "Da Da". She also says what sounds like "hi" and "Ma Ma". I was feeding Emma in her high chair in the dining room the other day when Evan came in and said "Hi Emma" and it sounded like she said "Hi Evan". I know it's a stretch, but Evan and I both heard it.

I found out that both Evan and Emma have what's known as "Photic Sneeze Reflex". I normally see this when I take them outside and as soon as the sun hits their face they sneeze one to three times. I just thought it had to do with their nose warming up under the sunlight, but according to the article it's caused by their optic nerves.

If you think that's a weird condition, I know I've mentioned it before, but I used to have something called "Cold Urticaria" or basically "cold hives". If cold air or water would hit my skin and rapidly lower the temperature of my skin I would break out in hives. It was very odd. The article I linked to doesn't say it, but other articles I have read point out that the condition will go away over time. I'd say it has passed for me too because I didn't break out any this winter and it got pretty cold at times. For me, having that condition was rather ironic for two reasons. One is that I lived in West Lafayette for five years which is further north and gets much colder than here in southern Indiana. I never once broke out while I was there. The other is that Beth always tells me that I am "never cold". She could be wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt and still be freezing and I will be in shorts and a t-shirt and not feel cold at all.

My sister, Steph, wrecked her 2008 Ford Edge. She's just trying to be like me. She was heading to work one morning going south on highway 41 when an 84yo woman in a truck pulled out in front of her. The lady was in the median turning onto the street in between Dairy Queen and Fastbreak in Fort Branch. Believe it or not, on that day 12 years ago, Steph was involved in another car accident on highway 41 and 168 where my Mom totaled my car (a 1987 Ford LTD) by pulling out in front of a truck!

US churches use Twitter to reach a wider audience
Huh?
The church has held at least a dozen "Twitter Sundays", at which tweets are flashed up on to three large video screens during services.
I wonder if people say things like "wrap it up in 5 minutes pastor" or "would whoever is talking in the fourth row please shut up". This reminds me of MTV back in the day when they would show an AOL chat room during music videos. I remember seeing "Waterfalls" by TLC one time and when it got to LeftEye's solo part one of the chatters asked when did the chipmunks join TLC.

A couple celebrity deaths you may not have heard much about.
April 25, Bea Arthur, 86. She played Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak on The Golden Girls. Only two Golden Girl's left.
May 4, Dom Deluise, 75. I remember him as "Don Giovanni" in Robin Hood Men in Tights and his cooking stuff. Here's a clip. @2:20 "I will take these cotten balls from you with my hand... and put them in my pocket."

The economy is so bad... I didn't really have a joke, just an observation. I keep getting older coins as change. I think people are spending their old coin collections. I recently found a 1940 nickle, a 1955 wheat penny, and I've been seeing a lot of 1976 quarters.

This is one of the more disturbing articles I have read recently. You just have to see for yourself. And don't stop at the headline or the first paragraph, read the ENTIRE article.

2 Men Plead Guilty to Eating Family's Pet Dog
Huh?
"Palting and Domingo were employed by the golf course as groundskeepers."
Aparently they aren't paid enough if they have to steal and eat someone's dog for food.

10 Years Ago Today

2009-05-08T05:49:00.000-07:00

I have in my home office, two diplomas from Purdue University and they both say May 8, 1999. That's right, I officially graduated from college ten years ago today. I say two diplomas because I got both my Associates and Bachelor's degrees at the same time. Long story short, my counselor forgot to sign me up for a class my sophomore year and I had to make it up through an independent study course my senior year. Since I needed the missing class for my Associates, I didn't get it until I completed the independent study. Anyway, I headed home from Purdue for the last time on May 6, 1999 and technically I was to walk in the graduation ceremony on May 15, 1999. But instead I had a graduation party at my Mom and Dad's house. I consider my graduation from college as the single largest change in my life ever. So I thought I would use this blog post to recap my life for the past ten years. I'm sure you're thinking "wasn't getting married the largest change?" It was large, yes, but I hadn't even considered getting married before I graduated AND the change from schooling to career is a big step. You will notice that I cite exact days for most things. Let's just say I chronicle my life very well.

1999
On May 15, 1999, I had a graduation party at my parent's house, where I was living at the time. On May 22, 1999, Beth and I had our first date. We went to Applebee's on Morgan Ave in Evansville and then went to see Star Wars Ep1 at the west side theater in Evansville. The rest of 1999, I worked and dated Beth. In the summer of 1999 I bought my first car: a 1995 Ford Taurus. I had it paid off by October.

2000
Somewhere around the end of 1999 or the beginning of 2000 I started to get serious about finding a more "career oriented" job or basically a job that required the degree I earned. To make a long story short, I interviewed at 13 places before I found a job. I did NOT get turned down from every job I interviewed with. Some places I didn't want to work for one reason or another. There was one place that I interviewed and I seemed to be a great fit. I ended up saying something that they kept dwelling on. I didn't get the job, HOWEVER, within a year or two the place shut down. So I would have lost my job right off the bat. As always, someone was watching over me. On April 3, 2000, I started my new job as PC/LAN/Phone Administrator at Hansen Corporation. Previously I worked at Wilson Network Services in Fort Branch. The Wilson's closed up shop within two years of me leaving. The store, sign and all, is still across the street from Holiday Foods in Fort Branch. On May 20, 2000 Beth and I got engaged. I proposed to her under the bell tower on Purdue campus. It's an old Purdue tradition. Sometime in June 2000, Beth and I closed on the purchase of our first house. On October 28, 2000 Beth and I got married at the Fort Branch General Baptist Church. We had an 11am ceremony and then had everyone go downstairs directly afterward for a lunch reception. Beth's Aunt Mary fixed some good eatin' for our reception. October 30, 2000 through November 5, 2000 we went on our honeymoon. We went to St. Louis the first night to see Dennis DeYoung in concert (yes, the former lead singer of Styx). Then we went south to Memphis. On the way, we had trouble with one of the tires on my car. We stopped briefly in Cape Girardeau to get it fixed. Once in Memphis, we spent two nights in Elvis' Heartbreak Hotel and visited Graceland. Then we drove the entire length of Tennessee over to Gatlinburg and spent two nights. Then we drove back to Nashville and spent one more night near Opry Mills and headed home. In November 2000, Hansen sent me to Tempe, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico to our other divisions at the time (IMC Magnetics Corp and Power Systems Inc). On November 23, 2000, Beth's roommate from college died of cancer. She was supposed to have been in our wedding to read a Bible verse but couldn't make it. We went to Seymour for her funeral.

2001
In February 2001, Beth had surgery to remove her gall bladder. We had visited the ER several times over the previous months. In March 2001, Beth started working at Gibson General Hospital. Previously she worked at St. Mary's in Evansville. She stayed on part time at St. Mary's briefly after starting at GGH. Eventually the hours and the drive got to be too much. On July 3, 2001, Beth and I went on vacation to Indianapolis and Spring Mill State Park. Beth and I went to Nashville, Indiana on October 27 (my birthday) and then on to Indianapolis on Sunday October 28 for our first anniversary. The Brownsburg Holiday Inn became one of our favorite places to stay when we took our trips to Indianapolis.

2002
Working and taking weekend trips to Indianapolis becomes the norm. From June 30 to July 5, 2002, Beth and I go to a Sandal's resort in Jamaica. We had a good time, but had a hard time coming home. Our return flight was delayed a little due to a storm. They wouldn't let us board our flight from Memphis to Louisville without at least one hour in between flights. The flight we were supposed to be on was the last one of the day to Louisville unless we wanted to be rerouted through Detroit. So we ended up renting a car and driving to Louisville. On July 16, 2002, I purchase my first new vehicle, my first truck, and my second all around automobile, a 2002 Ford Ranger. The Taurus was traded in.

2003
On February 27, 2003, We find out that Beth is pregnant with Evan, and has been for about a week and a half. June 23-27, 2003, Beth and I go on vacation. We rented a cabin at the Four Seasons Resort at Patoka Lake and later we stayed at the Executive Inn in Paduca, KY. September 26-28, 2003, Beth and I went to Pigeon Forge, TN for the wedding of a friend of Beth's. We rented a cabin in the hills. September 29, 2003, Evan August Schleter is born at 2:30pm. He weighed 5lbs 6oz and is 19 inches long. Yes, within a day of returning from Pigeon Forge. In fact we got home around 9pm Sunday and Beth's water broke at 5:30am the next morning. We went to Gibson General at first, but since he was six weeks early, they sent us to St. Mary's in Evansville. Mom and Dad came down and took me to lunch. Within what seemed like minutes of me getting back to the hospital after lunch, Beth went into labor. Unfortunately he had to go to intensive care. The nurses in the NICU wondered why he was in there because, at 5lbs 6oz, he was the biggest baby in the room! Try to imagine that if you will. On October 10, 2003, Evan came home from the hospital after spending 11 days in intensive care. Having a baby in the NICU gets real old real fast. There were some babies in there that had been there for months and I can't imagine how that would feel. Beth took 9 weeks (I think) of maternity leave. In December of 2003, we took Evan with us to our favorite Holiday Inn in Brownsburg and he slept through the night for the first time. When Beth returned to work, this is when she started working weekends. We did this for several reasons. One, we wouldn't have to hire a baby sitter or daycare. Two, since Evan was premature, they told us his immune system may not be well developed. This way we kept him away from other kids. I even kept him out of church for many months during this time. Third and least important, nurses get paid more on the weekend. One major problem with Beth working at Gibson General was she had to work weekend nights, probably the least popular shift.

2004
In June 2004, Beth becomes a consultant for Tupperware. And our house started filling up with plastic containers. On July 6, 2004, we traded in Beth's car on a 2003 Ford Windstar mini-van. It seemed nice at first, but it's had it's problems over the years. September 13-17, 2004 We rented a cabin in Brown County for three nights with our friends the Sterczer's. They have a daughter a year older than Evan and was expecting another one at the time. During this trip, Evan took his first steps. December 3, 2004 we looked at the Holzmeyer homestead (the house across the road from my Mom and Dad's) and agreed to buy it. We rounded up some earnest money and gave it to the owner.

2005
On January 19, 2005 we closed on the purchase of the Holzmeyer homestead. On February 4, 2005 we officially moved into our new home, located in Snake Run! Over the next several months I moved our stuff to the new house and cleaned up the old one and got it ready to sell. We sold it on our own. I will probably post the story of how I sold our house sometime soon. April 2, 2005 I officially put the "For Sale" sign out in the front yard. June 20, 2005 I showed the house to the couple who would end up buying it. On June 15, 2005, Beth accepts job offer at Deaconess Hospital in Evansville and quits Gibson General. This was one of the smartest things Beth ever did. She didn't tell anyone at GGH that she was interviewing for a new job and when she resigned, everyone was stunned. Beth was still working nights at GGH with no relief in sight. Although her job at Deaconess wasn't the greatest in the world either, it was still better than nights at GGH. Finally on August 15, 2005 we officially closed the deal on selling our first home on Monroe Street in Princeton. Thirty days later we were completely clear of the old house. We never went on vacation this year because of the moving and selling of the old house, not to mention having to pay on two mortgages.

2006
January 22-27, 2006, Beth and I went to Disney World. My work sent me there for a Lotus Notes conference. Evan stayed at Beth's Mom and Dad's house. In February of 2006, Beth became a Mary Kay consultant and quit Tupperware. May 16, 2006, Beth stubbed her toe real good on the doorway of Evan's room. Beth thought it was broken so we went to the GGH ER. It wasn't broken. Right as we were about to leave, a guy came in and told us he backed into Beth's van. He paid for the damages, but it took forever to get it fixed. June 21, 2006 I took the day off of work and we all went to Corydon, Squire Boone Caverns, and Leavenworth for a quick trip. On June 30, 2006, my Grandpa, Bert Scales, died. I have previously stated I would write about him which I will still do someday. September 4-8, 2006, we went on vacation to Lake Barkley State Resort Park at Kentucky Lake.

2007
March 16, 2007 I dropped Evan off at Beth's Mom and Dad's house and headed to Brown County to meet up with some friends for the weekend. Before I made it to Brown County, my Mother-in-law calls me to tell me that my Father-in-law has fallen and hit his head on some concrete real bad. He hasn't been the same since. On June 2, 2007, My sister Stephanie got married. October 24-27, 2007 we went on an odd vacation to Crawfordsville, Indianapolis, and Muncie Indiana. We stayed at a hotel in Crawfordsville the first night, then went to Indianapolis to the Children's Museum. Then we stayed at a hotel in Muncie. We hadn't actually planned it that way, there was an FFA convention going on in Indy that weekend and therefore there were no hotel rooms available.

2008
On March 10, 2008, my Uncle, Lewis Schleter, died. He had been battling cancer for the past ten years. On March 12, 2008, I annouced via the old blog, that Beth and I were going to have a second child. On April 28, 2008, my nephew, Brayden, was born. And then on May 25, 2008, another Uncle, Mike Scales, died. He had a short two month battle with pancreatic cancer. June 23-30, 2008, We went on one of my favorite vacations to Pine Mountain State Resort Park and Cumberland Gap in south eastern Kentucky. October 10, 2008, 1:19am, Emma Elise Schleter was born. She weighed 6lbs 5oz.

2009
As everyone who reads this knows, on January 9, 2009 my 2002 Ford Ranger was totalled in an accident on I-164 outside Evansville. On February 2, 2009 I finally purchased a 2006 Ford F-150 to replace my wrecked truck.

And now you know the past ten years. There is more to tell, but these are the highlights.

$5 foot-blog

2009-04-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

Customer, Early for Lunch, Allegedly Fires Shots in McDonald's
Story time. One day I pulled up to the Princeton McDonald's drive-thru at 10:29am and ordered lunch food. They told me they were still serving breakfast. I asked for how much longer and the girl actually said "one minute". I thought about sitting there for one minute holding up the drive-thru out of protest. But then I remembered that Hardee's serves their lunch/dinner menu all day long. So I went there for lunch. I do wonder if McDonald's will be a little more lenient on their schedule since this shooting. Sometimes it takes a big wake-up call before businesses get the message.

At times I get angry behind the wheel when people do stupid things. If I wasn't carrying one or two children with me I wouldn't mind as much. But sometimes people do stupid things that I find amusing. Recently I stopped at a two-way stop. Another car on the other side of the intersection pulled up and stopped also. I was turning right and the guy on the opposite side of the street was turning left (ie. we were essentially turning the same direction). Being the first one to the intersection, I already had the right-of-way, not to mention I was the one turning right. My side of the highway was clear for me to turn, but there was a car coming for the guy turning left. As I started to turn, I observed the guy turning left "waving me on" as if he was granting me the right-of-way even though I already had it. I just shook my head and laughed.

I'm sorry for the delay in new posts recently. I try to look for interesting things to write about but recently I've been extra busy. At work I usually get some time to read the news. But recently I've been working on what I consider an important project. I think I may have mentioned it in the past. Back in August of 2007, Hansen celebrated their 100th anniversary. We had decided to put together a DVD movie of photographs and other stuff for the current employees and retirees. Since I'm so handy on video production on the computer, I've been working on producing this DVD. I will probably post some clips from the video on Hansen's Facebook fan page or on Youtube sometime. I consider this an important job for me because I am helping to preserve some of Hansen's history. Now I'm not single-handedly doing this. They have had a team of people scanning photographs from the photo archives and they have had retirees come in and try to identify people in photos.

I will be making a rather large post on May 8th that I have been working on. So be sure to come back and check it out.

Ahoy Me Hearties! argg

2009-04-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Pirates seen as not interested in raising violence

From the moment I heard that the Navy SEALS took out a few pirates, I was counting the minutes until there was an article saying that the pirates aren't actually bad people and that they weren't actually going to hurt anyone. Couple things from this article that I'd like to point out.

Hostages have even told of being fed "sumptuously," with pirates billing the shipping companies for the food and drinks.
Can you believe that? They demand thousands of dollars in ransom money AND bill them for food and drinks. I bet the insurance companies don't cover alcoholic beverages and pass those bills on to the hostages.

"We do not approve or support that crews be armed," said Noel Choong of the piracy watchdog International Maritime Bureau. "Once you start arming the crew, then the pirates will start shooting the crew, even an unarmed crew. ... Once that is done you will have more problems because the crew will start shooting at other (non-pirate) ships."
I disagree. If I were a pirate, I wouldn't fire on a ship if I knew it was armed. But the problem is, I don't know which one is armed and which one isn't.

Arming crews also would run afoul of international laws, and it could take two to three years to work out the necessary legal agreements for such security teams on private ships.
BUT SOMEHOW IT'S NOT VIOLATING ANY INTERNATIONAL LAWS FOR THE PIRATES TO BE ARMED.

In the meantime, shipping companies can train their crews in evasive maneuvers, swamp pirate skiffs with wake, or force them away with fire hoses, he said.
I can't resist. You get the drink from the FIREHOSE!!!!!

Instead, pirates more likely will avoid attacking U.S.- and French-flagged ships, said David Johnson of the British-based EOS Risk Management, which trains ship security officers.
I didn't have a comment on this line, I just wanted to point it out. I think it backs up what I said about which ships are armed and which ones aren't. The pirates also vowed to kill hostages. What good would they be to the pirates if they were dead? Duh.

Has anyone else pointed out the obvious here? Wasn't this a cargo ship bringing humanitarian food and supplies to Africa? So I guess the food and supplies aren't enough, they need ransom money too? That's like if I was taking food to the Lord's Pantry in Fort Branch and someone mugged me while I was carry stuff in.

We need to introduce the pirates to those Nigerian 419 scammers.

The only real solution: send in Chuck Norris.

Did you know that September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day?
Aparently here is how you talk like a pirate:
You know the routine. We'll free the hostages when your insurance company pays the ransom.

I haven't seen any photos of these pirates, but I think I found one:

You gotta find joy where you can

2009-03-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

I took Evan to New Lake on Tuesday(March 17). He caught his first fish. I was proud and he was excited. He couldn't wait to cast and catch another one. The first few times we went fishing I set Evan up with bait and a bobber. This time I decided to put a grub on his line from a kit I bought and let him try it out. And of all things he caught a bluegill.

I didn't catch anything because I spent most of the time fighting with my baitcast reel. I'm still learning. For those who don't know, baitcast reels are notorious for getting tangled if they aren't adjusted properly. I *thought* I had mine adjusted. I practice casting in my yard with weights rather than a lure and get the reel set up so it works right. Wrong. I tried some new lures and it turns out that they were much heavier than the practice weights. Physics, or more specifically angular momentum, was not on my side. A baitcast reel is known for being able to cast the farthest because the spool "unwinds" the line as it's casting. If you don't have it adjusted correctly, the spool will unwind faster than the line is going out. This causes it to tangle and to avoid it you adjust the friction clutch. Tighen it too much and it won't cast as far. When I tried casting my heavier lures, the extra weight caused the spool on my reel to accelerate faster than the line was going out and it immediately tangled. I don't think there is any way around this so from now on I'll have to use my spinnging reel for heavy lures.

Evan and I also watched the Space Shuttle fly overhead on Tuesday(March 17). Beth said on TV they said it would appear at 8:13 until 8:17 and boy were they not kidding. We went east of the barn and made sure we were in a shadow away from the dusk to dawn light. Right at 8:13 that thing came flying over our barn. We watched it until it went behind a cloud.

Emma has been sick recently. She only had a fever and didn't eat real well. But other than that she was still her smiling self. I've been sick too. I have not been smiling, but that's normal.

If you want to read about love and marriage you've got to buy two separate books. -- Alan King

It's been an annual thing for me and several of my friends to head to Brown County to a rental cabin. In year's past I was able to get someone to watch Evan and I could stay a night or two. This year I didn't attempt a sleepover since I now have two kids and one of them is only 5 months old. I did go for part of a day. Most of the guy's played paintball, but I didn't try it this year. The cabin they rented was a different one from year's past and this time it had a pond. So naturally I took my fishing gear with me. I didn't catch anything, but I think this is one of those places that the fish bite better only at certain times of the day. I took a video walkthrough of this cabin and posted it on YouTube. The place was unbelievable. And it's for sale for only $599,000!

My new truck must be the coolest truck ever. I get lots of compliments on it, but that's not why I claim it to be so cool. The other day, Emma and I stopped by the Women's Hospital to visit Beth while she worked. I parked way out in the parking lot where no one else was parked and there were pleanty of great spaces close to the door. I came out to find three cars parked on three sides of my truck.

Here's a repeat of a post I made almost two years ago. I know, why am I reposting things? I have new readers. And this one is about taxes since the tax filing deadline is coming up. I think the IRS needs to take a history lesson and learn from past tax collector's mistakes. Story time..
Around 60 or 61 AD, The Iceni inhabited the region that is now known as Norfolk, England. At the time it was under the control of the Roman Empire under Emperor Nero. The queen of the region, Boudica, inherited the thrown from her late husband Prasutagus. But since Boudica was a woman, the Roman Empire didn't recognize her as queen and annexed the region. Boudica owed back taxes, so the regional tax collector traveled from London to teach her a lesson. They flogged Boudica and raped her daughters. This is the origin of the phrase "getting raped by the IRS". To make a long story short, Boudica lead a huge army of her people across England killing as many Romans as possible. The Roman army lost a lot of soldiers and civilians during this campaign. Upon word of Boudica's rampage, the regional tax collector sought refuge across the English channel, because at this point he was about the most hated person in England. The top Roman general at the time went looking for him in London. He's already mad because of all the lost soldiers. I'm trying to imagine what this general would have said to him if he would have found him:
Roman General: Being the tax collector and all, you are familiar with the tax code and all the laws associated with it, right?
Roman Tax Collector: yes
Roman General: Can you show me where in the tax code it says that if someone doesn't pay you that you can flog their queen?
Roman Tax Collector: uhh...
Roman General: And where's the part about "rape their princesses"?
Roman Tax Collector: well.. I.. uhh... I think some of the code is left up to interpretation!
Roman General: Interpretation?? Well thanks to your "interpretation" we've lost the entire 2nd and 6th legion and she's burned three cities to the ground! Not to mention all the Roman civilians they've killed.
Roman Tax Collector: Oh drat, and now none of them will be able to pay taxes. At least I'll get their inheritance tax.
Roman General: You are going to live with Hades.

So to the IRS I say remember the lessons learned from other tax collectors through history.

I will be "on my own" for the next four days or so. Beth is attending a Walk to Emmaus women's retreat from Thursday til Sunday. I haven't made any specific plans for Me and Evan and Emma while she's gone yet.

Story and Updates

2009-03-11T12:53:00.000-07:00

I've posted this before a couple years ago. It's another one of those stories the pastor's sermon on March 1 reminded me of. This was in the South Gibson Star Times once also:
...the stressed out ‘Christian’ woman who was tail-gaiting a man’s car at rush hour on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light in front of the man turned yellow. Even though he could probably have beaten the red light, he did the honest thing, and stopped at the crosswalk.
The woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration at her missed chance to get through the intersection. Then in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the very serious face of a police officer. He ordered her out, hand-cuffed her and took her to the station where she is searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and locked in a cell.
In a while the cell opened and she was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.
“I’m very sorry for this mistake,” the arresting officer explained, “You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping the guy off in front of you, and cursing a blue streak. When I noticed the "Choose Life" license plate holder, the "What Would Jesus Do" bumper sticker, the "Follow Me to Sunday School" window-sticker, and the chrome plated fish emblem on the trunk, I just knew this had to be a stolen car ... ”

---------------

I know I haven't talked about myself and what's going on lately. So I'll try to bring things up to date. I noticed that I mentioned a new truck but nothing about it. In early February I purchased a 2006 Ford F-150 from Champion Ford in Owensboro. It is four wheel drive with the 5.4L engine, dark brown, tan interior, super cab, and a 6.5ft bed. It is by far different than my old truck. The steering on my old truck seemed much tighter than this new one and the suspension is much better. When I picked it up to take it home, the dealer told me the radio didn't work and that they would replace it for me for free. So about a month later they called me and had me bring it back down to replace it. I thought they were going to put in a new factory stereo, but they put in a Kenwood.

I also bought a boat. It's not much of a boat, it's just an eight footer with electric motor on it. It's a Sun Dolphin Sportsman 8. It's small enough to fit perfectly in the back of my new Ford F-150, big enough to hold me and Evan, and light enough for me to lift it in and out of the truck. Don't get me wrong, I have to unload everything out of the boat to load and unload it from the truck, but I can still manage it by myself. I've been looking at these type of boats for a long time. I passed up a couple of good ones in the paper, but this time I went ahead and bought it. Evan and I took it to New Lake in Oakland City for the first time on Friday March 6th. We had a good time. All winter long I've been watching the fishing shows on Outdoor Channel and Versus and have been impatiently waiting to go fishing. Not to mention stocking up my tackle box.

I know that none of you are interested in that. What you really want to know is how are the kids? We signed Evan up for kindergarten on March 5th. How about that sport's fans? Evan's going to school next year. Emma is now five months old. We've started her on cereal. She doesn't turn over yet. The other day I got her to laugh for the first time.

The economy is so bad... insert your own joke.

2009-02-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

I was watching Bill Dance the other day. He was doing a "viewer's question and answer" show. Someone wrote in asking about how male Bass in the Potomac river were found to be bearing eggs. I found a Washington Post story about what the guy was talking about here. Bill responded by telling about studies of the fish that found that polution from WashingtonDC was the cause. Stop and ponder on that one for a minute and then insert your own "crap coming out of Washington" joke here.

The economy is so bad that largemouth bass in the Potomac river are changing genders just to sell their eggs! (additional required reading for explanation of this joke: As Economy Falls, Egg Donations Rise )

And then of all things...
Microsoft wants refund from some laid-off workers
Microsoft made some sort of accounting error and paid about 25 terminated employees from $4000 to $5000 too much in severance pay. Not thinking any of them would publish the letter sent to them on the Internet, the multi-billion-billion dollar Microsoft boldly asked the employees to give the money back. I wonder what software Microsoft uses in it's accounting department.............. Insert your own "software company has a software glitch" joke here.

The economy is so bad, Microsoft can't even afford to upgrade their software with their own software!

A followup note.
Microsoft Lets Fired, Overpaid Employees Keep Extra Cash
Good idea. Understand I am not arguing the merits of whether or not the employees should give the money back.

'Loco' Thief Steals CSX Locomotive From Siding
In Miami-Dade Florida, someone went for a short joy ride on a train engine. Not only did someone leave the door unlocked, they left the key in the ignition too. Things like this happen more often than you'd think. I remember about 15+ years ago there was an engineer strike. Near Buckskin, there is an abandoned track in the woods. I observed a group of guys backing a train engine onto these tracks to a curve in the woods so it couldn't be seen from the road.

The economy is so bad people would rather steal trains than pay bus fare!

California lawmaker introduces bill to legalize pot
When they did the whole medical marijuana thing years ago, who didn't see this one coming??? I did. I get the whole reasoning here. If you legalize it you won't have to arrest and imprison so many people just for posession. Not to mention the drug cartels and gangbangers. It's still going to be illegal to smoke pot and drive just like drinking alcohol and driving. So how much do you want to bet the jails will just fill up again with DUI's. A year from now the headline will be "California residents mysteriously putting on weight at alarming rates!" I think I also heard someone say that the federal government will withold funding to California if this passes. That would basically erase any revenue they would gain from taxing it I would think. But then again, with this new Democrat congress and president, who knows if they would withhold money. On a more positive note, maybe all the pot heads will move to California! California's unemployment rates will shoot through the roof! Wonder how long it will take for someone to sue the "big marijuana companies" for getting them hooked on their product?

The economy is so bad California wants to legalize marijuana so they can TAX it!

Long Weekend

2009-02-17T10:56:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, two days in a row, I visited a certain gas station. Each time, as I was paying, I was asked if I wanted to buy a lottery ticket. The first time I didn't think anything of it. The second time was different. I had people before and after me in line this time. The guy behind the counter didn't ask the lady in front of me. There was an even older lady behind me and I walked slowly to the door and waited a little bit to hear if he'd ask the lady behind me. He didn't. I wanted to say "hey, maybe *she* wanted to buy a lottery ticket, how come you didn't ask her??" But I didn't. I'd really like to know their criteria on asking people if they want lottery tickets. What was it about me that fit their demographic for asking? I'm guessing lottery ticket sales are slow, but then why wouldn't you ask everybody?

This past weekend was once again the weekend of the Louisville National Farm Machinery Show. I took Evan once again and we went to Bass Pro Shops afterwards like always. I don't think I have ever written about the show so I'm going to this time. This year I saw a new trend. I think there were more families with children there. Since this show has free admission ($6 to park) this leads me to believe that people are looking for inexpensive things to take their kids to. The vendors have equipment sitting around that anyone can climb on. Many had lines of people waiting to let their kids sit on the tractors and combines. The parking lot is always filled with pickup trucks as far as the eye can see. This year I felt like I fit in a lot better since I have a full sized truck now. This year I also found "Gate 6". There are two or three main gates into the place and normally there is a huge line of cars backed up onto the interstate. Last year I noticed a gate that no one was using. So using Google maps, I found a route to get to this gate and no one was using it.

Another observation that always makes me laugh is "booth babes". There's a Dilbert cartoon about the concept but I can't seem to find it at the moment. Anyway, once in a while there is a booth that has an attractive female working at the booth. Now don't get me wrong, there's pleanty of nice looking women there, the difference is that these particular women are blatantly wearing something low-cut, tight, or just generally revealing. I find it amusing because of how obvious it is. And naturally there are guys standing around talking to them and the booth probably doesn't sell anything they are remotely interested in.

We had a baptism during church this past Sunday morning. I was pleasantly surprised to hear there were 6 total. I only mention this because I noticed something I want to point out. Three were young kids and the other three were teenagers. When the teenagers stepped into the water, they seemed to have a cheering section. I really think that's great. I'm glad to see our youth encouraging each other that way. If the teens had any reservations on their decision to follow Christ, at least they know their friends are behind them. Not to mention that it's a reason to celebrate.

Gillibrand removes guns from under bed
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) has moved the two rifles that she kept under the bed to protect her upstate New York home, her spokesman said Monday.
Gillibrand also has not replied to requests for a meeting by New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, said the group's executive director, Jackie Hilly.
You know, this is one reason why I like being a Republican. It's pretty much expected that if you are a Republican that you own a gun. If you don't own one, it's not really an issue.

Radomness for 2/10/2009

2009-02-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

Since the pastor has been talking about marriage and relationships, here's a one-liner I was reminded of:
"Married men live longer than single men, but married men are a lot more willing to die."

The pastor also made some remark about women remembering things their men did, even if it happened tens years ago. This reminded me of another one liner:
"Any married man should forget his mistakes-there's no use in two people remembering the same thing."

As I have said before, Red Green once said always agree with what your wife says by responding "yes dear" unless her statement starts with "you know what your problem is?"

I found out Thursday that my direct inward dial phone number at work is very similar to a 24 towing service in Princeton. A girl called asking if I was the towing service. There was a baby screaming in the background.

I found a really cool website: http://www.fordf150.net
I realize that not everyone finds this site cool. I just do because I'm a proud new owner of a 2006 Ford F-150!

A little late perhaps:
Conservative Groups Declare Obama's Stimulus Bill a War on Prayer
"The provision bans money designated for school renovation from being spent on facilities that allow "religious worship." It has ignited a fury among critics who say it violates the First Amendment and is an attempt to prevent religious practice in schools."
"According to some constitutional law experts, any complaint filed against the provision will gain little ground in court."
But it will gain all kinds of ground at the ballot box. Democrats take note.

Ex-husband told to pay slain woman's rent
She was 1 of 9 victims of the Christmas Eve shooting by man dressed as Santa. IIIFFFF this guy was a co-signer of the lease I can see this... a little. But it's still crummy of the guy and I'd say he's getting pleanty of harassment.

Huh??
Ads heighten pleasure of TV watching, study finds
The only ads I remotely find "pleasure" in watching are those infomercial type ads that I like to make fun of. I bet this study only took 20 minutes, because you know they can't do this all day!

Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

Snowmobile from 1926
I've seen a photo of one of these before on a tractor calendar. This is a Fordson tractor fitted with some spiral tanks under it. I don't think Ford made these, I really think they are a third party add-on. Pretty neat.

And in the rounds of researching the Fordson tractor above I found: The Antarctic Snow Cruiser
I'll take one of these! I did some searching and found out what happened to it. I figured it was in a museum somewhere. Nope. They parked the thing in Antarctica and basically turned it into a cabin. It was later abandoned due to lack of funding caused by WWII. It was buried by the snow like everything else in Antarctica. A couple of expeditions located it and they looked it over to see what was wrong with it. They thought it was fixable but never attempted to. It is suspected to have sank to the bottom of the ocean. There's also a rumor that the USSR dug it up during the cold war.

Evan was playing with his Spiderman action figures. He had Green Goblin and Dr Octopus versus Spiderman. I heard him say "Spiderman, we will BEAT you because we are the Beatles!"

No good deed goes unpunished and no lawyer goes unpaid.

Televisions 'to be fitted in contact lenses within ten years'
Doesn't look like I was too far off in my "future blog" some time ago.

Back on the Road

2009-01-30T08:14:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't written much lately. I've been busy on all fronts and just haven't sat down to type something up lately.

Followup on the truck situation.
- The guy who hit me does not have insurance. It's a long story but I had to use my uninsured motorist coverage.
- After many phone calls, State Farm FINALLY sent a field agent on the 21st to look at my truck. It was declared a total loss.
- In my last blog I mentioned that I got a packet of information from a lawyer's office. The next day I got three more. Two from Indianapolis and one from Bloomington firms. Every other day since then I have received some kind of flier in the mail and I even got one phone call. I've also got advertisments for other insurance companies.
- On the 23rd, I went to Evansville to visit my truck one last time. I got the plates off the back and took a few more things from the cab. I noticed that the tow yard hasn't been treating it that well. I said my goodbyes. I have let go.
- The BMV sent me a notice that I needed to file some form stating that I had insurance at the time of the accident. They also sent me a notice stating that they received my form stating that I had insurance at the time of the accident.... on the same day.
- If I have said anything negative outloud about State Farm, I take it back. I got my check on the 29th. And while it did take 20 days, they voluntarily gave me a bit more money than what I was expecting.
- Now to purchase a new truck. The dealership I'm wanting to look at may not have power at the time of this posting.

Another semi-humorous exchange between me and Evan
Evan: Did you get to watch Bill Dance today?
Me: No
Evan: Well... that's too bad.

This reminds me of something else I've been wanting to post for a while. If I were a fish, I wouldn't mind being caught by Bill Dance. At least I know I was caught by a professional fisherman..... and I know he'd throw me back in the water.

I'm getting stir crazy as I always do during the winter. I've visited Bass Pro Shop in Clarksville and Gander Mountain in Evansville stocking up on new fishing gear and now I'm itching to try it out. Getting a new truck will only make matters worse because now I will have a full size truck capable of pulling a boat. I've also found some new spots to fish at. I've gotten permission to fish on a lake in a home owner's association. It's good to know people. Evan and I will be getting out of the house in a couple weeks for the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, KY.

More Google Maps street view links.
Here is Hansen Corporation, where I work.
For those on Facebook, Hansen Corporation now has a fan page.

Here is our old house in Princeton.

Hopefully by the next post I will go back to commenting on the news and other things.

End of the Road Part 2

2009-01-14T08:07:00.000-08:00

I had a lot more to say about the accident last Friday but I didn't get the chance to write it all because I was in a hurry to post something to clarify what was going on. I've learned much more since then.

I'll give some more details from my perspective. I was driving along when I spotted this car coming across the median. At first I thought it was a police car turning around. Sometimes police will do this if they have clocked someone on the opposite side and turn around and pull them over. But then I noticed that it wasn't turning AND the front bumper of the car was smashed in. That's when I realized it was an accident in progress. Unfortunately since I was going 70 miles an hour and who knows how fast he was going, it didn't give me enough time to react to avoid the accident. I'm guessing though that I managed to turn to the left a little bit to head toward the median. The remarkable thing is that he hit me on the passenger side. That means he had to cross in front of me before he hit me. This is where the miracle happens. He only clipped my front bumper about in the middle of my right headlight. I'm guessing that I might have rolled up on his vehicle a little bit and then it ripped my front tire off. Factor 1: the median was muddy. Chances are it slowed him down. Factor 2: where he hit me caused me to spin. Had it been a few inches closer to the center of my truck, things would have been so much worse. If his car had hit the frame of my truck, we may have come to an abrupt stop. At 70mph, I can't even imagine the damage and injury that would have caused. Factor 3: the tire tore off. This helped in two ways. It caused the truck to pivot on the area of the missing tire. It also helped to stop us in the median. If we had rolled all the way over into the south bound lane we probably would have been hit by yet another vehicle. Factor 4: we went into the median. The highway was dry. If my tire hadn't come off and we had stayed on the road, there's a chance we would have spun around and flipped.... possibly several times. Being in the left lane at the time helped with this also. Had I been in the right lane, he might have hit us more directly in the front or on my side and who knows what that would have done.

This incident reminds me of two things. One is a Family Circus cartoon I saw a long time ago in the Sunday paper. In it, the father was visiting a big city. In the first frame was the mother and one of the kids saying a prayer before bed. The kid says something like "watch over Daddy while he visits the city". In the next frame was a picture of the father in the city. He's crossing a street and the outline of a huge hand coming from the sky is reaching down and pushing him back onto the sidewalk as a taxi cab speeds by that would have ran him over. The father has a surprised look on his face. Friday, that hand was there guiding that other car and my truck. I may not have seen the hand, but I know it was there. Someone might say "Well if the hand was there why didn't he stop the accident altogether???" Because there was a reason for the accident. I may never know what it is and I'm not even going to try to speculate. The other was a news report that I once saw years ago while I was in college. A guy decided to commit suicide by wrecking his car. So he goes out on a two lane road, drives about as fast as he can, then pulls over the into the other lane as a van approaches him and hits them head on. I don't know if he died, but he killed a family of four in the van. As I was driving and saw that car coming at me I thought "this could be it". This just goes to show that no matter how good of a driver you are, anything can happen to anyone at any time. I've heard people at my church say that they are ready to go because they know where they are going. Well, that's fine, I know where I'm going too, but I can't say that I am ready. I am a husband, father, son, and brother and I still have a lot of responsibilities (that GOD gave me) that I have to take care of in this life. So I'm not ready to go.

Monday afternoon the Indiana State Police published the report online and my insurance company bought a copy of it for me. The determined cause was "following too closely". Now I have to say that I have had people tailgate me before, but no one has ever spontaniously ran into me and barreled across the median. The car was a white 1992 Toyota. I don't know if he was taken to the hospital but from the report it sounds like he was. It said he had a possible neck injury. He was given a ticket and it was listed as IC 9-21-8-14 which reads "Following other vehicles; distance restrictions Sec. 14. A person who drives a motor vehicle may not follow another vehicle more closely than is reasonable and prudent, having due regard for the speed of both vehicles, the time interval between vehicles, and the condition of the highway." He's 27, from Princeton, and turns out he is the son of someone I work with. Therefore I won't talk about him much. The girl in the van was 34 from Loogootee. She was not injured but her van was towed. My insurance agent filed a claim with the other driver's insurance company which happens to be Farm Bureau. I am taking the option of being paid fair market value for the truck. I'm not going to try to have it repaired, mainly because I think it will exceed the value of the truck.

I have been looking online for a new truck. I have narrowed it down to two I like. As soon as I get my check, I will head to the dealships to look at them. I am going to get a Ford F-150 this time instead of another Ranger. Things have changed since I got my Ranger. 1 we live in the country on a gravel road. 2 I have two children. So I am getting a full size truck with back seat and four wheel drive.

A funny thing to note. The police report was published Monday afternoon. Mail is deliverd to our house around noon. Tuesday I recieved a large envelope from a lawyer's office (I won't say which one) with a copy of the police report in it, a refrigerator magnet with their name and number on it, and a letter saying "we see you've been injured in an accident". Talk about ambulance chasers!!

Here's a photo of the truck Saturday morning after the accident:

I was going to post this in a blog I was just about to post before the accident. My truck has been immortalized on Google Maps Street View. Immortalized at least until they come through Francisco again.
Click here to see it. (Note it may take a few extra seconds for the Street Level View to load).
Me and Evan were in Frisco when I saw the Google car with the camera on it driving by. I stopped and watched it, that is why it looks like I'm off the street.

End of the Road

2009-01-10T15:15:00.000-08:00

Friday, Me and Evan went to Evansville at lunch time. We played putt-putt golf and went grocery shopping and headed home. Around 6pm we took I-164 like we always do. Just north of Boonville-New Harmony road, a car crossed the median and hit us head on. It turns out this car was traveling south on I-164, rear ended a van and then crossed the median and hit us. I'm not sure where his car came to rest. All I know is my airbag went off and my truck spun around and stopped in the middle of the median. I pulled a muscle in my leg holding the brake down. I was worried that we would cross the median ourselves and hit someone but we didn't. The median was rather muddy and stopped us. The cab of the truck filled with smoke, or so I thought and I started to panic. Turns out it was gas from the air bag. But I struggled to get Evan and myself out because he was coughing and scared. I couldn't get his door open from the inside so I jumped out and ran around and managed to get it open and pulled him out. Several people stopped and ran over to check on us. One even gave Evan a toy hoping it would calm him down. There was an off-duty police officer not far behind us that stopped to check on the driver of the car and to check on us. I called 911 on my cell phone but he had already called it in to dispatch. The off-duty police officer told me that the driver of the car didn't remember any of the accident. I don't know much about the specifics of the driver of the car. They may have taken him out in an abulance. Eventually police and rescue people started to arrive. They blocked off one lane on each side of the highway. Me and Evan were ok so I refused treatment on the scene. I had to fill out some paperwork in the back of the rescue truck for that. About that time a channel 14 news car arrived. They took some footage of my truck. Aparently I managed to swerve to the left just a little and the car only hit us on the passenger side corner. The impact ripped the front wheel off. I saw the wheel laying on the side of the road and I got some gloves out of my truck and went over to pick it up. I was going to throw it in the back of my truck when I noticed that it was very heavy. That's when I noticed that the brakes and everything was still attached to the tire. A sheriff deputy had Me and Evan sit in his car. We made arrangements for Beth to meet us at the Sunoco station at highway 57 and I-64. A tow truck came to load up my truck. About that time, the channel 14 car got hung up in the mud in the median. The sheriff yelled to the tow truck driver to get the accident vehicles out first. I asked the sheriff if I could get a few things from my truck before we left. So I ran over and turned Evan's car seat over and filled it with some stuff. I got Evan's toys, some stuff that I had got from Gander Mountain earlier, a box of Slim Jims that I had bought for Evan earlier, and some of the food that I bought. We ended up not eating any of it for supper that night, but at least we had it. The sheriff blocked off the highway while they loaded up my truck. We finally met up with Beth around 8 and went home. I watched channel 14 news at 10, but aparently we didn't make the cut.

It is an absolute miracle that we were not hurt. Evan said Saturday morning that his neck was mildly sore. I am sore in a few places, but mainly because of the air bag. I have a small bruise on my belly where the air bag hit me. God was watching over us that day. When you consider all the factors that could have made this so much worse. I'm actually surprised at myself for not being angry. I was very attached to my truck and Beth once said she was going to feel sorry for the person who ever hit me because of what I'd do to them. I think I'm not mad because I am too thankful at this point to be mad. I'm thankful that God was watching over us. I'm thankful that my truck was strong enough to resist the impact and keep us from harm. The fact that we didn't even have a scratch is remarkable. I'm mainly thankful that Evan is ok. I'd probably have an entirely different attitude if Evan was hurt. The image of that car coming across the median straight for us will forever be etched into my brain.

Saturday morning I took Emma over to my sister's house and then Evan and I went down to Hemrick's towing to get some suff out of the truck. I am operating under the assumption that the truck is totalled. I'll try to post some photos here, but for now you can see them if you are a "friend" of mine on Facebook.

2008 Passings

2008-12-31T08:33:00.000-08:00

As always, at the end of the year I write a post remembering those that passed on throughout the year. Some personal, some famous. So here is my review of notable deaths in 2008 (in chronological order).

Bobby Fisher - January 17, Legendary Chess player

Heath Ledger - January 22, How many times have we heard about this one? And an article about the case still pops up once in a while. For those who missed it, he's an actor and his final role was the Joker in the movie "The Dark Knight".

William F Buckley Jr - February 27, conservative columnist. I'm not actually that familiar with his work, but I hear his name among conservative media circles.

Jeff Healey - March 2, from "The Jeff Healey Band". This guy had a pretty rough life if I understand. Adopted as an infant. Blinded by a rare cancer of the eyes. He's probably best known for one of my favorite songs of all time "Angel Eyes" (What did I do? What did I say, to turn your angel eyes my way?). To add insult to injury, he died of cancer this year.

Lewis Schleter - March 10, my uncle. Uncle Lewis died after battling cancer for about 10 years. He was a teacher, so like most all teachers, he had a major impact on a lot of people's lives.

Charlton Heston - April 5. Those damn dirty apes. Actor who played Moses in "The Ten Commandments" and was president of the National Rifle Association.

Mike Scales - May 25, my uncle. Yes, it was a bad year to be my uncle. My Uncle Mike, who was my Mother's brother, died after a very short battle with pancreatic cancer. He spent most of his life in Lynnville, but lived in Florida the last few years of his life.

Harvey Korman - May 29, actor, "that's HEADley". Appeared in many Mel Brooks movies and did the voice of "The Great Gazoo" on The Flintstones.

Bo Diddley - June 2. Blues guitar legend.

Tim Russert - June 13, TV journalist. This one shocked the news media for a while. The host of "Meet The Press" died suddenly of a heart attack.

George Carlin - June 22 comedian. I've never really been a huge fan of George, but he was well known and I think his death was unexpected as well. Another heart attack victim.

Tony Snow - July 12, former White House spokesman, Fox News host, columnist. Tony Snow's passing was somewhat unexpected. He had cancer, but there was little information given about how advanced it was when his treatment started.

Bernie Mac - August 9, actor and comedian. You don't understand. Been in lots of movies including the Transformers movie and he had his own TV show. He died of "complications due to pneumonia".

Isaac Hayes - August 10, musician and actor. Isn't it interesting that Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes were in a movie together right before they died. Hayes is probably best known for the theme to "Shaft" and the voice of "Chef" on Southpark.

Don LaFontaine - September 1, voice actor (that movie voiceover guy). They say he did over 5000 film trailers. You may remember seeing him recently in a Geico commercial. Bob and Tom said on September 3 that if you wanted to go to his funeral, there will be showings at 1:30, 2:45, 4:30, and 7:00pm.... I know, bad joke.

Richard Wright - September 15, Member of Pink Floyd. When this happened somehow I missed it for a month or two. Yes, a member of my favorite band passes away and I didn't hear about it for months. And he was the keyboard player! Did you know that at one time they actually kicked him out of the band, only to hire him as the keyboardist during a tour? He ended up being the only one paid on that tour because he was hired to play instead of being a member of the band.

Paul Newman - September 26, actor. Known for many movies such as Cool Hand Luke. Not to mention his charity work and salad dressing.

Michael Crichton - November 4. Author of books such as Jurassic Park and creator of the TV show ER.

Majel Barrett - December 18. Who? She was the widow of Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek. She was also the voice for all Star Trek computers and she played the character of Lwaxana Troi.

Judy Croft - December 26. Judy was a co-worker of mine at Hansen Corporation. She was head of the purchasing department. Like my Uncle Mike, she had pancreatic cancer.

The ShamSnuggie

2008-12-22T13:35:00.000-08:00

For anyone looking for something to get Jamie Rowe for Christmas, look no further than the ShamSnuggie:

From the Blog Department

2008-12-18T13:09:00.000-08:00

This will be my last update on Nurse Elizabeth I think. She is back to work at the Women's Hospital. Things aren't perfect, but she continues to improve.

I've mentioned infomercials in the past, such as the ShamWow. I was going to talk about the Snuggie, but changed my mind. Instead I want to point out a web site that I've been enjoying lately. This one does not review the products, it only points out the silliness of the infomercials themselves. It's at http://www.infomercial-hell.com

From the Huh? department:
Little 'Adolf Hitler' Denied Birthday Cake at New Jersey Grocery Store
I refuse to believe that the parents of this kid didn't name their kids this way for the attention. One is named after Hitler himself, one named "Hinler" which is obviously a reference to Heinrich Himmler, and one named "Aryan Nation". I mean, come on.

From the Global Warming news department:
Scientists Call AP Report on Global Warming 'Hysteria'
This is a response to this article:
Obama left with little time to curb global warming
This is my favorite paragraph from the second article:
Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.
Isn't is amazing how when we have some sort of record high temperatures that we're supposed to believe this is evidence of global warming. BUT when we have a cooler year that's not evidence of global cooling. In fact, in some twisted logic, it's evidence of warming. I actually had no problem believing that the Earth is warming. The part I don't agree with is whether it's a man-made problem and I also disagree that there's anything we can do about it, our fault or not. But from some of the latest articles on the subject, now I'm not even sure the Earth is warming at all.

From the financial news department:
Ford declines Gov. bailout money
I didn't want to talk about financial stuff or any of the bailouts, but I wanted to mention that Ford backed out of asking for a bailout. While this is a good move, I think it's a little too late and I think I know why they did it. First off, they shouldn't have asked for one in the first place, the PR from that would have boosted sales. Second, they probably backed out when the government started asking for shares in the company. In other words, they didn't want to be taken over by the government like the banks did.

From the DUH department:
Study: Romantic Comedies Can Ruin Your Life
I have GOT to figure out how to get grants to do stupid studies. The conclusion to this study? Movies create an unrealistic expection of reality in women! WOW! Who would have guessed? Just about any married man (presently or formerly) could have told them that!
Researchers studied 40 films between 1995 and 2005, including "You've Got Mail," "Maid In Manhattan," and "The Wedding Planner," and identified common themes in them which they believed were unrealistic.
That's because all of these movies are Science Fiction. If I owned a video rental store, that's where I'd keep them.

Back on my commercials kick, I looked up information on "Flo" the Progressive Insurance girl. Her name is Stephanie Courtney and she's made quite a few apperances on TV and in movies. She's part of an L.A. improv group that Saturday Night Live sometimes gets their cast members from. It's interesting to note that she had a role in the short-lived Cavemen TV show. Ironically the Cavemen got their start in Geico Insurance commercials. My favorite of her commercials is the one where the guy is buying motorcycle and boat insurance with his wife there wondering why. To which Flo yells "SURPRISE!!.... I'll just bag these up...." According to the article I linked to, she has signed on to do 12 more Progressive commercials. I've also spotted her in some web ads recently too.
Here's a video of her doing standup.

Some Cool Toys

2008-12-16T07:06:00.000-08:00

At work and at home I get a catalog for a place called Cyberguys.com. They have a lot of cool stuff. The last catalog I got has some exceptionally cool stuff I'd like to share.

Have you ever seen on Facebook or MySpace a profile picture of someone where they held their digital camera at arm's length of themselves? Well here is the solution for these people:
Quikpod Pro Plus Extendable Handheld Monopod

Have you ever wanted to speak your mind to someone while driving? Well now you can with the Roadmaster RRDS100 Rear Deck Scrolling Digital LED Message System

Might want to restrain yourself on this one. It also notes on the page that it may not be legal in some states.

Possibly the coolest tech toy made thus far!
iTech BTVKB Bluetooth Virtual Keyboard

That's right, this is a bluetooth keyboard (so it can be used with a Blackberry or PDA) that is projected by a laser onto any surface. You just type on the image of the keyboard and it detects your key presses. Couple this with the 3M MPro110 microprojector and you won't need to carry a laptop anymore.

Roadmaster VRBT400 Hands Free Bluetooth Rear View Mirror

This is basically a bluetooth speakerphone that fits over your existing rear view mirror. Note in the picture that it has a display on it that shows the caller ID.

IronKey D20402 Secure Flash Drive 4GB
"Military grade" usb flash drive that "self destructs" if the incorrect password is entered more than 10 times.

Mark Feldstein VL8C Gadget Charging Valet

This is just a nice looking box you can set on your nightstand to hold any PDA or cell phone and neatly hide away the charger transformer and cords. Comes in Cherry wood or Satin Black

Sensor Guard Telespy Intrusion Detector White
I'm not going to include a photo of this one because it's just a simple telephone. But it also has a motion sensor on it that will call whatever number you have programmed into it so that you can listen in on what's going on in the room.

Coolit USB Beverage Chiller

Now I don't know how this works and I'm a bit skeptical, but it's supposed to be able to cool your drinks and it is powered by your computer's USB port.

Venus V-OIBA-B Scrolling LED Name Badge Blue LEDs

This one reminds me of that Progressive Insurance commercial where that lady says "that's the price of a new pair of shoes!" and the other one says "or a big tricked-out name tag." I've seen these in stores, but I thought I would include it here anyway.

Art. Lebedev Studio 213 Optimus Mini Three V 2.0 Black

This is definately a toy and not hugely useful but it is a keypad of sorts that you can program the image on the keys. The company that makes this also makes an entire keyboard of programmable keys, for only ~$1600!

The Delayed Blog

2008-12-08T07:10:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this over a week ago but I kept adding to it and believe it or not I've actually been busy at work. Also enjoy the Christmas music playlist I put on the side bar.

Took Evan to the Circus on Friday(Nov 28) for the 7pm show. A couple notes and/or observations from the show. First off it was the 75th annual show. I mentioned to Beth that I can remember going to the 50th annual show. This year the "special guest" was Spongebob Squarepants. I'm willing to bet at the 50th annual show it was one of the cast of "The Dukes of Hazard". Back when I was a kid the special guest came out at the end of the show and did some little performance. Not Spongebob, he only posed for pictures during intermission and in the lobby after the show.Being a "three ring circus" they had three rings going at once a couple of times. One time they had dogs in the outer rings and goats in the middle ring. Now that was a first for me, trained goats. The goats didn't do much when it came to tricks, but I have to say that whatever they did was much more impressive than anything the dogs did. Why? Have you ever tried to train a goat? The only thing you can really guarantee to get a goat to do is eat something. Dogs are a piece of cake to train compared to a goat.

Friends of mine on Facebook may have noticed that I set my status to "Ed is dreading putting up the Christmas tree." I only say that because the vast vast majority of ornaments that Beth and I have are specialty ornaments. In other words, each one has it's own box. Beth and I collect ornaments. Beth's largest collection is Barbie and Elvis. My largest collection is the Carton Cards' annual Frank Sinatra collection and John Deere ornaments. This year I did order the Sinatra ornament, but I have stopped buying the John Deere ornamants because THERE ARE SO MANY OF THEM. Everywhere that sells ornaments has John Deere ornaments now: Rural King, Lowe's, Wal-Mart, Hallmark, Carton, and so on.

We have Dish Network at home. Living way out in the country there's no cable, so satellite is it. Some time ago, Dish Network started offering Sirius music channels. Over the years they have changed and lately there are several channels devoted to one artist:
Elvis - The "All Elvis All The Time" was the first I think. I have no doubt that there is pleanty of Elvis recordings for a channel of his own. This one is Beth's favorite.
Frank Sinatra - This channel is called "Sinatra" but it's actually Frank, his friends, and "music from his era".
AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Greatful Dead - These are three separate channels but I included them all in one because I have the same comment for all of them. I don't believe that any of them have enough recorded music to last longer than 24 hours. Even with their live material.

I am just as guilty as anyone about opening my mouth and speaking before thinking about it. But first thing Monday morning I get a call from someone saying "did you steal my keyboard?" First off, unless it was reported as broken, I would not have done anything with their keyboard. Secondly, if I had, I would have replaced it with another one. Turns out that this was a keyboard inside of a machine and it was taped with double-sided tape to the inside of the cabinet. It's been hanging there for a long time and the tape just gave up and the keyboard fell inside the machine. That would have been the first thing I would have checked and I told them that. Another thing to point out: I'm not even responsible for the machine in question.

I found this Knight Rider screen saver on Youtube some time ago. The link goes to a demo video of it and there is a link to the actual file to download in the info box. I checked the file and it is virus-free.

If you haven't tried the new flatbread sandwiches at Subway you should because they are pretty good.

I try to do my best to be patient with people. And if I do get mad I try not to take things out on the wrong person. Recently I got a letter from State Farm Insurance telling me that my life insurance policy had been canceled "per my request". Now I know I haven't canceled my policy. I called my agent and he knew I hadn't canceled it either. He says there is only two ways for a policy to be properly canceled: me coming in and filling out a bunch of paperwork OR if I didn't pay my bill. I filled nothing out and my payments are direct withdraw from my checking account and I know nothing bounced because Beth's policy was still active and they were still withdrawing for her's. So all that's left is someone made a typo. Someone else canceled their policy and when they went to cancel it, someone at State Farm typed in the wrong policy number. The agent called State Farm numerous times and he said "no one wanted to take the blame for it". I told him I don't really care who was to blame, I just wanted it fixed. It took about three or four weeks, several phone calls, and three trips to the agent's office for everything to get cleared up. Then I discovered that they stopped direct payment on my policy. This time I emailed them and told them to fix it. All of this over one person's typo. On top of that, some other poor soul out there who tried to cancel their policy didn't get it canceled. Wonder how many calls, agent visits, and extra paperwork they had to fill out. Imagine if the guy's checking account overdrew because the policy was not canceled properly. Wonder who would pay the overdraft charge. I'm seriously thinking about writing a letter to someone at State Farm's main office over this.

Then the other day I was amazed at something I saw at Wal-Mart. I went in and it didn't seem to be that busy but for some reason there was an unusual number of people at the checkouts. They scrambled to get more people up there to help. I had under 20 items so I went to the express lane (and no I did not have 19 items, it was more like 13 items!!). Anyway, the poor girl working the checkout lane had to get a manager for something. I'm not sure if it was a price check or a problem with some old woman's check. Anyway, a guy about third in line just started getting really vocal about his displeasure in how long it was taking. He even told the checkout girl that while she was talking to the manager to get him or her to get some more checkout people! Then the guy even proceded to pick up the phone at one of the other registers! I don't know if he was trying to call someone to say things were taking longer than planned or if he was trying to call the manager. Either way it was an amazing show of childish impatience. I wanted to yell to the guy "hey you, shut it." but I didn't. This particular checkout girl, Beth and I have agreed is one of the best one's Princeton Wal-Mart has and we usually make it a point to go to her checkout line if we see her working. I ended up going to another line before it was all said and done. Unfortunately I don't think it actually saved me any time.

Thanksgiving Blog

2008-11-26T09:47:00.000-08:00

With Thanksgiving coming up I thought I would share some things that I am thankful for. Number one is my family. I am blessed with a wife and two healthy children. While my Dad may not be healthy, I am still thankful for having him as my father all these years. And of course my mother, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and Grandmother. While I have pleanty of other family members, there are too many others to go through them all. I am thankful for where I am in my life such as my job, our home, my church, and my county. I am thankful to have the friends that I have, though sad that I don't get to see them nearly as much as I used to. Everyone have a happy Thanksgiving and eat as much as you want.

As a kid at Thanksgiving time, I remember making pictures of turkeys by tracing my hand on a piece of paper and then drawing turkey features on it. Evan recently did this at pre-school and they asked the kids what they were thankful for and wrote it at the top of their paper. Last year, Evan's turkey picture said "I am thankful for Transformers". This year, however, his paper says "I am thankful for my baby sister".

Got an update on Nurse Elizabeth. For those who missed the story a few blogs ago, Nurse Elizabeth is the nurse that delivered Emma. She was involved in a horse riding accident resulting in a head injury. Currently she's in Virginia with her parents. We were told that she is doing better and she will be returning to her residence in the Evansville area soon. No word on if she'll be returning to work yet.

I have been having fun using my twisted sense of humor to make funny pictures lately. If you are a friend of mine on Facebook you may have noticed a few in my "humor" photo album. So I decided to include some links to the sites I've been using to make these pictures:
http://www.faceinhole.com - lots of celebrity pictures you can use to put your face in.
http://www.says-it.com - this place has tons of stuff you can generate such as church signs, logos, and even concert tickets.
http://www.yearbookyourself.com - Similar to faceinhole except you just put your face in random black and white yearbook photos.
http://www.sonicshack.com/DesignYourOwn - this place is actually a store that you can make customized t-shirts and many other things. Not intended to be funny, but you can always design something funny and save the image.
http://wigflip.com/automotivator - make your own "motivational" poster
http://www.ewatchfactory.com - design your own watch. I ordered a watch from here as a gift to Beth on our first anniversary. The face had one of our wedding pictures on it.

Have you heard about the toolbag that astronaut lost in space during a space walk?? I have, about a million times and I'm tired of hearing about it. It's not that big of a deal. I'm sure some kind of a joke could be made here. How about "I hope they didn't give her the keys to the shuttle or they would never get home!"

So the new Guns N Roses album has finally been released. Many times I have stated "I'll see it when I believe it.[sic]" So I guess it's finally true. After this long, this album is going to have to be the greatest album ever made or it may end up the last album Axl Rose ever makes. Dr Pepper is giving away a free can of Dr Pepper to everyone in America due to it's release. I had heard about this before, but I thought they had said if it was released in 2007.

I am a fan of old silent films. I think that they were a challenge for directors to get across their message or whatever they were trying to present without sound. I'm not saying that directors today are no good, butyou have to admit that it took great talent to make a good silent film. One of the most well-known silent filmstars is Charlie Chaplin. I'm hoping to get a few silent films on DVD for Christmas. Also in the next month orso I'd like to try making a short silent film. I will post it on Youtube and link to it here if I do. I just recently figured out how to add a grain or "scratched film" effect with Roxio Creator 2009 to a video file to make it look old.

My favorite silent film is Fritz Lang's "Metropolis". If you haven't seen it you should. I have two copies of it on DVD. One I picked up used a long time ago and the other is a newer restored version (by Kino International). Until last summer, there was around 20 to 25 minutes of the original film missing. It's a long story on why it was missing but it had to do with the average length of movies at the time. In July ofthis year the missing scenes were discovered in a private collection. Here's an article about it: Long-lost Metropolis scenes shown
And according to this article, Kino International will be re-releasing the DVD to include the lost footage AND they will also release it for the first time on Blu-Ray. I expect to purchase this new DVD next year.

The calm between the blogs

2008-11-19T12:57:00.000-08:00

I was told today about a joint effort by Life Magazine and Google to put 10 million photos on the web. You can find out more about it here:
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
As it says on the page, you can go to Google's image search (image.google.com) and then add "source:life" to the end of your query to search just the Life magazine photos. You can also search by decades such as "1950s source:life".

I saw this dress in the window and I just had to have it!
(that joke is a reference to the Mary Tyler Moore show in case you don't get it).

I had the unfortunate opportunity the other day to watch Oprah. I'm not sure how many guests she had, but I only saw three of them. A 7ft 3in tall 12 year old kid, a 3ft 3in tall 24 year old woman, and a woman that remembers EVERYTHING. I know what you are thinking: what makes this woman any different, right?
Joke Timeout
Any married man should forget his mistakes-there's no use in two people remembering the same thing.
End Joke Timeout
There was a guy with each of the three people talking about each person's condition and he pointed out something about the woman who remember's everything that I hadn't thought of. He said we never really realize how good forgetting things can really be. For example if someone makes you mad for whatever reason, you can get over it and eventually forget it ever happened. This woman never forgets no matter how hard she trys. This woman kept a journal on her wall calendars of what she did every day. So when someone would quiz her about what she had done on a certain day, they could reference the calendar to see if she was right and she always is. She was also recalling episodes of Oprah and who was on what day. The producers kept looking up what she was saying and she was always correct. It was amazing to me. So my point in bringing all this up is: imagine being able to forgive, but never forget. As the guy was saying, we never realize what a blessing it is to forget some things.

I hesitated to post this, but I guess I will. Another exchange between me and Evan. Sorry this one is kinda gross. Why do I do this? Because someday Evan will read these and I'm hoping he'll be embarassed.
Me: What are you doing in there?
Evan: I'm poopin'
Me: Great *sarcastic tone*
Evan: Why do you say "great" like that? Is it because you don't like to smell my stinky butt?
Me: No, it's because I get tired of wiping your butt.
Evan: Well... you'll do it and you'll like it.

The Lost Episode

2008-11-10T12:02:00.000-08:00

I have gotten compliments on my blog. Now I feel pressured to keep posting quality material. Not that I shouldn't always try to do my best. So today I have decided to do something a little different. Through the week, when I think of something I might blog on, I open a text file I have on my PC and quickly type in my idea. Later I come back and expand on it and eventually post. HOWEVER. There are ideas that don't make the final cut so to speak. Either the subject has become old, I just don't feel like taking the time to write on the subject, or I just don't find it interesting myself. But I still keep the idea in an archive. So today, I'm going to post some old stuff that "didn't make the cut" when I first came up with it.

Charity Worker Shot Dead in Afghanistan for 'Spreading Christianity'
This one I am not sure why I didn't post this story. However, the message I wanted to get across was that I am glad that I live in the USA. Sometimes we don't even realize how good we have it as Christians in this country.

Study: Half of American Doctors Give Patients Placebos Without Telling Them
Back when I was doing my comedy thing on WSWI (you know, USI's radio station, 720AM), I wrote a parody story that I read on the air about how placebos cause cancer. It went on to say there were a lot of red-faced researchers that would have to start from square one on a lot of chemicals thought to cause cancer. Probably the reason I didn't post this one was because I wanted to look up that old story but never got around to it.

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Teen Pregnancy Linked to Watching Sexy TV Shows
AND
Violent video games linked to child aggression
WOW, Earth-shattering news. I NEVER would have put two and two together like that!
These two stories I just didn't feel like taking the time to write about. Mainly because there are always conflicting studies on these things. I think a good conclusion to such a discussion would be that they both effect people differently and that there are other factors involved. I could have gone on and on.

The US population was 303,460,218 per the population clock on 11/26/2007. Have you ever stopped and wondered then, why we have only have 435 people in congress representing 303 million people? That means 1 rep per 697,609 people. Can that ratio really represent the interests of the people? I say no. So I did some reading. By the constitution as it is written (1 rep per 30,000 people) there should be 10,116 representatives! Representatives are paid $165,200 a year, which would cost a total of $1,671,163,200/year (1.67 billion). By the 1792 congress (1 rep per 33,000 people) it would be 9,196 representatives and $1,519,179,200/year. Thanks to the constitution, every state must have at least one representative, otherwise some states like Montana would probably have to share one with another state. I can't say I have a solution to this, while 10000 representatives seems excessive, 435 seems way too low. I found this blog post that gives a nice history of the "435 representatives" which seems to be a law rather than in the constitution.

If you try your hardest, you too can be offended by anything.

Emma is a month old today. She has put on over two pounds and grown two inches since she left the hospital.

All I can say is.. some random things.

2008-11-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

Saw a commercial the other day and I had to do a double take. It was for Interstate Batteries but the subject of the commerical was "God's Love". The commercial only lasted what seemed like two seconds but they had a web address at the end: http://www.interstatebatteries.com/godslove So I checked it out and they have the full commercial posted online if you'd like to see it. I've noticed that my truck battery is starting to go bad, so guess what type I'll be buying next? And by the way, they have a location at 6505 N Interchange Rd in Evansville.

Wednesday Oct 29th at around 7:40am all the phone lines and data lines where I work went down. I later found out that a fiber optic line in Evansville near Main and Fulton was cut and had to be replaced. They had it back up by 2:30pm. In the mean time I had to switch us over to our cable modem. It was not a good day.

Try to imagine all the text messages that were sent via cell phones Tuesday night during the election. I know I recieved a few and know people who were sending them left and right. If you don't have unlimited text messaging on your cell phone plan, then try to imagine how much money the cell phone companies made Tuesday night. This was probably going on the last election or two, but I bet it was used much more this time. Same way with the Internet. In the last four years streaming video has become way more popular. I'm trying to imagine how clogged the Internet was last night with people streaming video all over the world watching the coverage. How about the "Star Wars" 3D hologram thing that CNN was doing last night? If you missed it, see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thOxW19vsTg
I'd love to see them do that on Special Report with Brit Hume and put someone on the Fox all-star panel via hologram.

A Sunday school teacher asked the children just before she dismissed them to go to church,
"And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?"
Annie replied, "Because people are sleeping."

I'm sure you've all seen that stupid commercial for "ShamWOW". I've made reference to it before. Anyway, I've decided that it's going to go down in history as one of the more memorable commercials of all time. I'd say the most well known commercial (most of us over the age of 25 probably remembers) is "Where's the Beef?" from Wendy's. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug75diEyiA0
Another one is the "Cha CHING" commercial for Rally's Hamburgers featuring Seth Green:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYekh1MSIVg

I did some short research on the ShamWOW guy. His name is Vince Offer. What a last name for the guy to have and I have found no evidence that it's a stage name. Believe it or not, he is the same guy that made/acted in the movie "The Underground Comedy Movie". I have not seen this movie and the only way I had heard about it previously was they once tried to sell it by TV commercials. I mainly remember it because Joey Buttafuoco was in it. Prior to the movie, he used to host an L.A. cable access channel show called "The Underground Comedy Show". He seems to be sue-happy. He sued Anna Nichole-Smith for backing out of her appearance in "The Underground Comedy Movie". He used the makers of "There's Something about Mary" because he claims 14 scenes were taken from his movie. He had a stroke in 2001. He is a former Scientologist and even sued the Church of Scientology because they had declared him a criminal which caused him to lose his business. Here's a bunch of pictures of him from "The Underground Comedy Movie":
http://www.hotflick.net/celebs/vince_offer.html

Problems with this commerical
1. Who spends $20 a month on towels?
2. Can you imagine if this was made in China and he said "made in China, you know the Chinese always make good stuff"?
3. Watch carefully as he does "this in real time. Are you following me camera guy?". As he's rolling up the cloth he's pushing down on it.
4. The headset mic. Why would you even need one?? A lapel mic would have worked.
5. He reminds me of this guy I see every year at the Lousiville National Farm Machinery Show that demonstrates some welding solder stuff. He's got a mic on his head while he demonstrates it just like Vince does in the commerical.
6. All I can say is Sham.. WOW!
7. I don't know, it sells itself.
8. If Billy Mays had done this commercial, I would have bought one by now. That guy can convince me to buy stuff I don't even need!
9. There are several Facebook groups, some fans, some haters, of the Shamwow guy.
10. All of this over a 2 minute commercial!!

A Blog posting from the Future!

2008-10-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

The other day I was given the chance, I won't say how, to peer into the future to read a blog post of mine. I was really hoping that it would be a long post about what was going on in my life, but unfortunately it was a series of computer questions. So here's what I saw:

My great granddaughter asked me the other day why computers use drive "C" as the first drive letter instead of "A". So I will explain. Long before we had our cerebral implant computers, computers used to be a box that sat on a desktop. In the 1970's and early 1980's, these PCs used to only have one or two drives that were known as "floppy disk drives". These drives came in the form of a disk either 8, 5.25 or 3.5 inches in diameter. The 3.5in disks held a whopping 1.38Mb of data. Yes, you read that right, megabytes (A "megabyte" is 1/1000000000 of a petabyte). Under the operating system at the time, DOS (disk operating system), these floppy drives were drive A (and drive B if you were rich enough to own a second drive). As time went on, "hard drives" were added. These are drives that used stacks of metal platters to store data, and they started out as drive "C". It wasn't until the early 21st century that computers stopping shipping with floppy disk drives as standard equipment. Even though they were gone, the computers still used "C" as the first drive letter for the hard disk drives and later solid state drives. And believe me, the hard drives and solid state drives never held nearly the amount of information that a standard quantum plasma storage unit holds today.

I also got asked what a "camera phone" was. Again, long before we had our tympanic membrane implanted communication devices, people communicated with what were called "telephones". Originally, believe it or not, they were hard wired devices people kept in their homes! Eventually they got to be wireless, or "cellular" as we called them, and we could carry them in our pockets or hooked to our belts. Also, before we had our optical nerve cameras, people used to have what were called "digital cameras". And instead of carrying around both a cellular phone and a digital camera, they put the two together, hence a "camera phone". One other thing to note about these phones: they used a battery to power them. A battery generated power by using an acid-based chemical reaction, and they constantly needed to be recharged. Thank goodness for neural power transducers or else we'd still be lugging around batteries!

Wow! Sounds like we're all going to be cyborgs or something in the future!

Ed's News and Views for October 28, 2008

2008-10-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

I need to post more often. Perhaps I should do more smaller posts instead of few big posts. I guess that's called "digest" form. I know that none of you are the least interested in what's on my mind. You all just want to know about Emma and how she's doing. Well too bad. Just kidding. Emma is doing great. We took her to the doctor for the first time the other day. Turns out she has put on almost a pound since she left the hospital and has grown an inch in height. She's two weeks old as of 10/24/08. It's amazing how much we've learned about her and how different she is from Evan. For example, when Evan was a tiny baby we had no problems putting him in his bed and shutting the lights out. He'd go straight to sleep. Not Emma. She wants a nightlight on. Also when we feed her, you don't stop to burp her. She doesn't like to stop eating. If you stop, she won't finish, or at least she will have to rest for a while before she starts up again. She'll happily burp, a lot, after she's finished the bottle. She's a smart one too. She will open her mouth like a little bird, not just when she's hungry, but all the time. If you put a pacifier in her mouth, she'll imediately spit it out because she already knows the difference in the shapes of the pacifier and the bottle.

Recall my previous post about Emma's birth. I mentioned Nurse Elizabeth and what a wonderful job she did delivering Emma. Friday, Beth took Emma down to the Women's Hospital for an appointment (I'll explain this part later). Anyway, she saw a note stating that Nurse Elizabeth would be off work indefinately. Beth asked around about what was going on and what she found out has Beth and I really bummed out. Nurse Elizabeth was injured in a horse-riding accident sometime in the last two weeks. She was kicked in the face by the horse and spent a day in the hospital. Her family lives in Virginia and came to check on her after the accident. Her family noticed she was having problems with her short term memory. We were told that her short term memory is improving, so that is a good sign. Like I said, Beth and I are really bummed about it and we wish her a speedy recovery.

Emma has been enroled in a study on baby formula. For participating in this study, we get free formula and free diapers. At least three months worth from what I understand. They are testing an ingrediant in the formula that is supposed to make it easier for the baby to digest. All we have to do is take her down to the hospital once a month and they also want a "used" diaper once a month.

Got a funny quote from Evan. To set this up, we keep a box of those short Slim Jims in a cabinet in the kitchen. We don't call them Slim Jims though, we call them "beefsticks". The other day I had to open a new box of them for Evan and he said:"I think the box says to go to beefstick.com" I told Beth and she once again said "he really is your son".

Have you noticed that there are a lot of shows with "naked" in the title. I think it's just an attention grabber. Here's a few examples and the network they are on: The Naked Chef - Food Network, The Naked Archeologist - History International, The Naked Brother's Band - Nickelodeon, Naked Alaska - Travel Channel, and Naked Science - National Geographic Channel.
So I've come up with a few "naked" shows of my own and the network I think should pick them up:
"The Naked Hunter" - Outdoor Channel - a show about a guy learning to hunt
"The Naked Meteorologist" - The Weather Channel - I have no idea what this would be about
"The Naked Feminist" - Lifetime - *shudder*
"The Naked Sportscaster" - ESPN - This would probably just be a one on one talk show where they interview athletes.
"The Naked Standup" - Comedy Central - A reality show like "the last comic standing"
"The Naked Cowboy" - Country Music Television - again, no idea
ok enough.

I have talked about "reality" shows in the past and I think back then I thought I had seen it all. One day I was watching The Outdoor Channel and lo and behold they have a reality show too. It's kind of like Survivor where people can be voted off of the island, but they are two teams competing in a fishing tournament. It's called "The Catch: Costa Rica" Believe it or not, Cartoon Network has a "reality" show, though I would consider it more of a spoof on reality shows considering it's a cartoon and all. It's called "Total Drama Island". Now you know I can't mention something like this without giving some ideas of my own.
BMV - This would be similar to reality shows like "Airline" only it takes place in the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. After thinking about this one a little, I would imagine it would only last one season because how many driving tests would you really want to watch? How many times would you want to watch people get mad when they don't have every single piece of paper they need to get their plates or whatever? You get my point.

DNR - Just like COPS but they follow Department of Natural Resourses officers. State and national parks should really consider this one because it would be great advertising. I think the possibilities would be endless. They could follow game wardens as they "police" the hunters. This would teach people what's legal and what's not legal about hunting. Same with those guys who patrol the lakes. They could also follow park rangers as they put out forest fires or give cave tours. As I said, the possibilities are endless.

Nurses - Again, this would be like "Airline" only they follow nurses around in a hospital. Only trouble with this one is I can't imagine the mountains of paperwork they would have to have the patients sign to avoid HIPAA violations. This would also be great to educate people on what to expect (or not to expect) when staying at a hospital.

Yesterday was my birthday and today is me and Beth's 8th wedding anniversary. For my birthday, Evan got me a "Mace Windu" Star Wars action figure, Emma got me a set of Batman PEZ dispensers, and Beth got me the new Indiana Jones movie.

The weekend Emma was born

2008-10-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

Well, what a weekend. For those who haven't heard, Emma was born last Friday morning at 1:19am. Here's how it went down. I have to start on Wednesday though.

Wednesday, Beth's Mom and Aunt came by to paint Emma's room. They took Evan with them when they left because Beth had a doctor's appointment on Thursday afternoon and since she had an ultrasound, I was going along. Thursday afternoon we have the ultrasound. The ultrasound tech said that Emma was really low. She took some measurements and said everything looked fine. Then Beth had an exam by the doctor. He checked her and said that she was completely closed (ie. not dialated at all). After the appointment, we ate supper at Ponderosa, filled the van up with gas at Marathon (remember this part), then I went to Wal-Mart and Menard's and Beth went to Bicknell to get Evan. We put Evan to bed early because he had pre-school the next morning and subsequently we went to bed too. At around 11:30pm, Beth got out of bed to go to the bathroom. Suddenly, while she was sitting on the toilet, I heard a big SPLASH. I narrowed it down to either she had diarrhea or her water broke. I heard her say "Ed......." Her water broke. So I got up and got dressed. She called her doctor and told him. He asked if she was having contractions and at the time she wasn't. Ten minutes after she got off the phone she did though. I called Mom and she came down to help with Evan. Evan was well asleep so I picked him up and carried him out to Mom's car and rode down to Mom and Dad's with him. Meanwhile Beth is packing her stuff up and getting ready to go. I walk home from Mom and Dad's. I had a little conversation with God on the way back home. Once back home, Beth was ready to go. I carried her stuff out to the van. It was a good thing we filled up with gas earlier, because the van would have been out of gas by this point. So we drove down to the Women's Hospital. It was foggy out and very few cars. I didn't speed because I didn't feel like getting pulled over at that point. In the past Beth has told me that there can be several hours between when a woman's water breaks and the actual delivery. So I wasn't too worried. However as we were going down 550E, Beth informs me that her contractions are less than 2 minutes apart. Great. We make it to the Women's Hospital by 12:30am. Now I think that's pretty good considering her water broke at 11:30 and we had all that other stuff to do and drive down there. They fill out some paperwork and move her into a room. I move the van to an actual parking space away from the doorway. Once Beth gets situated in bed, they check her and she's dialated to "4 or 5 centimeters". They call the doctor right away. It turns out that when Beth called him earlier, he had just gotten back from delivering a baby at St. Mary's. He said he was on his way at that point. They decided to move Beth to her room, which would also be the delivery room. The nurse started her paperwork and Beth had her check her again. At this point, 15 minutes after the last check, she is dialated to 7 centimeters. They called the doctor again. He says he's 10 minutes away. Beth's nurse, who also happens to be named Elizabeth, called in the surgical tech with the cart. When the surgical tech came in, knowing the doctor wasn't there, looked at Beth and held back a panicked look on her face. Nurse Elizabeth checked Beth one more time. She was fully dialated. The doctor still had an ETA of five minutes. Beth kept contracting. Nurse Elizabeth coached Beth along. One or two more contractions later, Emma came right out at 1:19am. Yes, 50 minutes after we arrived at the hospital. Nurse Elizabeth was a pro. She didn't flinch, she didn't hesitate. She knew exactly what to do and did it without getting panicked and/or nervous. She may have been nervous on the inside, but it didn't show on the outside. Nurse Elizabeth and the surgical tech cut the cord and got Emma over to a warming bed. Just then the doctor came in. He finished up the delivery and had to stitch Beth up a little bit. I forgot to mention that while on the phone, the doctor said that Beth could have an epidural, but the baby came so fast that there was not enough time to get one put in. Not only that the baby came so fast Beth didn't get ANY pain medicine. Beth didn't scream or moan or anything. I asked her later if it hurt and she said it did. I told her I only asked because she didn't act like it did. Emma came out crying only once in a while. For the most part she had her eyes open looking around. It wasn't until after we fed her that she quieted down and went to sleep. So how do you like that? Evan wouldn't eat when he was born but Emma wouldn't sleep until she got something to eat. I got on my laptop and uploaded some photos and posted a short story of the events that night. I don't remember much after that because I laid down on the couch and dozed off. Beth had too much of an adrenalin rush to sleep. The nurse was in and out of the room overnight doing paperwork.

Friday morning around 7 the nurse came in and told us goodbye because she wasn't scheduled again until after we would leave the hospital. I left and went to Burger King for breakfast. Then I went home to do a few things and take a shower. Mom took Evan to Preschool. After I got ready, I picked Dad up and met Mom and Evan in Fort Branch and we all went to lunch at McDonald's. I went back to the Women's hospital while Mom and Dad and Evan went to BabiesRUs to get a gift for Emma from Evan. After Evan got to meet and hold Emma for a while, I took him over to Golf-N-Fun across town to play puttputt golf. Beth and I had promised him we'd take him on Friday. I took him despite the events the previous night. When we got back to the hospital, Beth's Mom and Dad were there visiting. When they left, they took Evan home with them for the rest of the weekend. I stayed a little while longer, then went home. I got supper from Taco Tierra and then went to bed.

Saturday morning I got up and started working on Emma's room again. Steph, Brian, Mom, and Brayden came over to help me get Emma's room done. Steph and Brian put Emma's bed and dresser together. I got the shelf and clothes hanger pole installed. I also wired up the lights in the closet. Later in the day I cleaned up and headed to Evansville. I stopped at Schnuck's and picked up some flowers and candy for Beth. I made it to the hospital by 7 I think. I ended up leaving around 10 and went to Los Bravos for supper.

Sunday I went to church. Some were surprised to see me. After church I quickly ate lunch at Arby's and headed down to the Women's Hospital. Beth was pretty much packed up and ready to go. We loaded everything up in the van and headed out. We went directly to Bicknell to pick up Evan. We visited a little bit and had a few visitors while we were there and then headed home. For the first time the four of us rode in the van together. Mom and Dad had fixed supper, but we didn't go down there to eat it. I took a multi-chambered Tupperware containder down and filled it up and took it home. At home we scrambled to get things ready and get try to get used to taking care of a tiny baby again. The excitement didn't start there. Beth took some old meds that she had stopped taking when she found out she was pregnant back in February. She ended up having a weird reaction to them. She was scared that she had a blood clot. So Mom came down to watch Emma and Evan while I took Beth to the Gibson General ER. We were there for little over an hour. It was a long first night but we survived.

So that's about it. The weekend that Emma was born.

Eds News and Views for 10/9/2008

2008-10-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

As previously stated, I've been living at Menard's lately. I made a couple of observations while I was there on Oct 6th.

What part of the word "Out" do people not understand? They have an "In" door and an "Out" door and I don't know how many people came in through the out door (I know, there's a Led Zeppelin album of the same name). While waiting in line, I had to move over several times so people could get through the checkout lane to get into the store. I'm not a fan of their checkout lanes either. Normally the cashier is standing on the other side of the conveyor.

The other is not really about Menard's. It's about checks. While I was in line I had to wait on two people to pay for their stuff with checks. Each one took a while because a manager had to come over and ok the check and then they had to run it through a scanner/printer thing. I use very few checks these days. Almost always to pay for bills I have to send in the mail. Dave Ramsey and Clark Howard would have a fit right now, but start using cards in checkout lines people!! Just once I'd like to hear someone who's using checks complain about how long it takes to pay using them. If you don't like it, don't use them! I almost have the feeling that stores make it take a while just to discourage people from using checks.

Here's a question I have about checks. My Mom works at the bank. She says that once a month, when social security checks come in, little old people come into the bank and CASH their checks. They want that money (ie. cash) right there in their hot little hands. I always attributed this to memories of the great depression, but given the situation right now, they may have a point. Anyway, if all these old people are cashing their checks.... WHY DO THEY WRITE CHECKS WHEN PAYING AT STORES??? How does that work? If they cash all their checks they shouldn't have any money in their checking accounts! Right?

I've got two words for ya: Sham WOW

I have decided to include this article in this post today. There's a quote in it that is just plain ignorant: Beach sex trial highlights Dubai cultural divide
This article is about a couple who are on trial in Dubai and how Dubai is still middle-eastern regardless of the westerners that visit there. This quote is what cracks me up:
If the law changed to suit Westerners, said one Emirati woman, it would be her who lost her freedom. She already forbids her daughters from going to Dubai's malls and hotels.
I'm not saying the law should be changed but she said "it would be her who lost her freedom". Changing the law "to suit westerners" would be to relax the existing law, which would mean more freedom. I think what she meant was sovereignty rather than freedom.

"It is up to the person who comes here to be informed," said the woman, who like most declined to be named on a topic which they feel is too sensitive to discuss in public."If there is an open trading system which draws people from all over the world, it is not fair to ask why they are not free. You have to follow the rules of wherever in the world you go."
I wholeheartedly agree that people need to respect the laws of any country they visit whether they agree with them or not. Remember the kid who spraypainted cars in Singapore in 1994? I had no sympathy for him. I do think it's difficult to be informed when going to these countries. As for Dubai, as I said I think travelers need to respect their laws. On the other hand, if Dubai is trying to be this huge tourist destination, they may want to relax their laws to make it a bit more appealing. If I was given a free vacation to wherever I wanted to go, I wouldn't choose Dubai out of fear I'd be put in jail over some weird law. I guarantee it would not be for public sex, just had to point that out even though it should have been implied and/or understood.

Here's an interesting article about how cell phones and text messaging works: http://db.tidbits.com/article/9796

Going to teach you a new word today hopefully. The word is: Apophenia
- The experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.
In other words, the tendancy to see connections where none exist. There are several people where I work that suffer from apophenia. You may know some too. In the TV series "The X-Files", Agent Scully would probably claim that Mulder suffers from apophenia. On an episode of "Justice League: Unlimited", Huntress accused The Question of having apophenia. And here is one of my favorite Dilbert cartoons about a guy with apophenia which is basically how things are where I
work: http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd245/qode/apophenia.jpg

From my old blog on June 1, 2005:
If you're an IT professional like myself, you probably get calls all the time from leeches er.. I mean salespeople wanting you to buy stuff. A lot of them ask "how can I get on your vendor list?" The response I'd like to give is "don't call." But a lot of places these days have "account reps" for businesses and they do give the businesses better prices than what's available on the web.

The one's I REALLY get tired of are the "hi I'm so-and-so from company and we are a marketing research firm. I assure you I am not calling to sell you anything." I usually tell these folks that we don't do surveys because it's a company policy. Mainly I don't have time or even want to take the time. The "research firm" sells the information they retrieve from us to vendors and they promptly call saying "hey, I heard you're upgrading your network" or whatever.

For these "research firms" I encourage you IT folks out there to give them really really bad information. Then when a vendor does call they'll realize that the "research firm" gave them bad information. If the "research firms" become unreliable, maybe they will quit calling. Who knows.

I still get calls day in and day out. Seems like there are new one's all the time. I even get double the calls from one company because somehow we have two accounts with them and one of them is classified as "Goverment/Education." I have no idea why. A new tactic they are doing is hanging up on my voice mail. They will actually wait until after my outgoing message is finished before they hang up the phone. Then my voicemail light will come on and I will have to take the time to call to my voicemail and delete the "message". All I end up hearing is someone hanging up their phone. I guess they think I'll get tired of doing that and just answer the phone. I changed my outgoing message to have a long pause at the end. Now THEY have to wait. I have one vendor that set up a special account on their web page that I can log on to and automatically get the "account rep" pricing. The other thing I don't like about account reps is that they usually mess up the order. I tried a couple of times to order computers using a rep over the phone and there would usually be at least one thing wrong.

Ok I apologize. It seems like all I did on this one was gripe in one form or another.

Eds News and Views for 10/6/2008

2008-10-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything and I'm sorry about that. I have a couple of reasons. One is that I have been way busy at home, details to follow. Another reason is that I've been busy at work. Various reasons there, but I have been trying to keep myself busy there, even though things are slow, by teaching myself PHP programming. I have big plans for this if I can get things rolling. And lastly and probably the most important reason is because I've been trying to find something to write about to make this blog more interesting.

An update on baby Emma. I guess the baby wasn't as far along as the doctor thought, so the induction day has been moved to October the 19th or 20th. This is assuming she will make it that long. Beth will admit herself into the hospital, right after getting off work at 7pm on Oct 19th. You read that right. And she's ok with that, so don't jump my case. They will start her on an induction drip and I predict that it won't take that long and she'll be pushing. I don't even think she'll make it to midnight. As for the baby's room, I'm still behind on it, only working on it a little bit at a time. I have one more coat of primer to put on the walls an then they will be ready for Beth and her Aunt Mary to decorate. I need to change out the ceiling light. The closet needs work, but I put it off until the walls were done. I'm going to put base wallpaper in the closet. Then put in the shelf and hanger pipe. Then I'll put in the lighting in the closet. I bought a pretty cool light for the closet. After the decor on the walls are done I will need to put in molding. I'll need to clean the floors really good too, put the baby bed together, and we still need to shop for some furniture. We'll probably do that on Friday. I've been living at Menard's it seems like. I can't wait to get this all done so I can go back to fishing and other activities like going to Spring Mill Park. Check out this picture I took a few years ago:

I have been told by four independent sources that I look like NBC's Chuck Todd. What do you think? I think we have different hair color. His is a little lighter brown than mine.

I was pointed to a website the other day here: http://thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan.cgi
It's basically a slogan generator. You can even order shirts of your slogan. I typed in "Ed" and it said "We All Adore an Ed". "Beth" returned "What's In Your Beth?" A baby. And the creme de la creme, I typed in Evan and it said "Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh, What an Evan it is!" I'm sure there's a joke for that one in there somewhere.

One of my favorite webpages, The Indiana Leafcam, is back online. See it at http://www.in.gov/visitindiana/leafcam/
The French Lick cam is not working at the time of this posting.

Richard Wright of Pink Floyd died on September 15. HOW ON EARTH DID I MISS THIS????

Extreme Truck Stops!
I saw this show some time ago on the travel channel and I wanted to say something about it. So here is something mildly interesting about me. I like truck stops. Why? I don't know. My favorite being Flying J in Haubstadt. They are kind of like a mini-city in a way. I used to have a CB in my truck and I used to listen to the truckers on it while visiting Flying J. Anyway, I saw this show one day and thought it was great. The first one is unbelieveable.

Iowa 80 Truck Stop, Walcott, Iowa - Dubbed "The World's Biggest Truck Stop," Iowa 80 parks 800 trucks and has 15 fuel stations and 450 employees to manage the 5,000 visitors that come through the truck stop each day. Iowa 80 is the home away from home for the truckers, boasting a 50-foot salad bar, 24 private showers, two game rooms at the Driver's Den Lounge, a business center, a 60-seat movie theater and a barbershop. What's not to love?
If I were to ever travel to one of the stops on the list, this would be the one.

Seven Feathers Truck and Travel Center, Canyonville, Oregon - Has a 22,000-square-foot convention center and Hotel/Casino Resort

Mid-America Truck Show, Louisville, Kentucky - Not really a truck stop, but it is a truck show held at the same place the National Farm Machinery Show is held. I think I'll try to take Evan to this in 2009

75 Chrome Shop, Wildwood, Florida - truck stop that sells everything you could possibly want to "trick your truck"

Billy Bob's Texas, Fort Worth, Texas - Not really a truck stop but is popular with truckers. Forget mechanical bulls, this bar has REAL bulls!

Lee Hi Travel Plaza, Lexington, Virginia - Said to be the place truckers will rearrange their schedules for. Their web site needs some help.

South of the Border Truck Stop, Border of North and South Carolina - Has a Mexican-themed amusement park. I can't figure out the appeal of this one.

Trapper's Kettle, Belfield, North Dakota - This place has stables where you can house your horse for the night.

Little America, Cheyenne, Wyoming - I think this one is a resort with a truck stop rather than the other way around.

So next time I promise to have something more interesting to say.

Most overplayed songs for 1995, 1996, and 1997

2008-09-26T07:14:00.000-07:00

Most overplayed songs for 1995
"Run-Around" Blues Traveler
I actually heard that MTV called these guys "the next Greatful Dead". And since I've seen this video and subsequent live performances way more times than I wanted to, I give them the title this year.

Honorable mentions
"Bullet With Butterfly Wings" The Smashing Pumpkins
Despite all my rage I am still just an overplayed song. The more popular radio station in Lafayette, IN played this song every single morning while it was popular. This one is proof that I can't find any really good examples for 1995.

"You Oughta Know" Alanis Morissette
Ok, I'm sorry, but ANYTHING by Alanis Morissette is overplayed as far as I'm concerned. They say "Well-behaved women rarely make history" and I think she has taken that a little too seriously. Poorly-behaved women rarely make good music, you oughta know. And once again, MTV overexposed her and that's why she makes the list for 1995. You you you oughta know.

Most overplayed songs for 1996
"Macarana" Los del Rio
Indisputable. This one was destined to be overplayed. Since it had it's own dance, it was played at clubs, beach parties, etc. Not to mention the radio and MTV. So this thing was EVERYWHERE. And by the time it's "15" minutes were up, who can say they weren't tired of it?

Honorable mentions
"Crossroads" Bone Thugs-n-Harmony
Now I know I'm stepping on someone's toes putting this one up. I think part of it's overplay is that they used the ghost of Eazy-E in their video. So naturally MTV hyped it. (I don't think real highly of MTV, have you noticed that?)

Most overplayed songs for 1997
"MMMM Bop" Hanson
Indisputable. Whatever happened to Hanson anyway? Maybe the Crash Test Dummies need to sue for some kind of royalties on this one because of the whole "mmmm" thing. I read articles about this group and they interviewed a fan who basically liked this group solely for this song. It's signs like that where you know it's going to be overplayed and "hated" later on.

Honorable mentions
"Tubthumping" by Chumbawumba
I think I've mentioned this one before too. I can say this is one I was never a big fan of. These days you can find dozens of used copies of these guy's album in used CD stores. There was an episode of Family Guy where they did a spoof of Willy Wonka and instead of Oompa Loompas they had "Chumba Wumbas".

"Wannabe" Spice Girls
The Spice Girls' debut song and video. Oh joy. Released in 1996 in the UK, it was a hit in the US in 1997. And being a best seller, it can't help being overplayed.

"Fly" Sugar Ray
I probably shouldn't include this but you have to admit you've heard it a few times. I still catch it frequently on the radio. (But Ed! But Ed! You said you don't listen to the radio anymore!?! While at work, I don't have a choice since it's played over the PA.)

My weekend Sept 19-21, 2008

2008-09-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

I know people say that blogs can be used for therapeutic reasons, but for the most part I have tried not to turn mine into a big "cry me a river" blog. I didn't have that great of a weekend and I just feel like writing about it today. This is going to be a long one so go grab some popcorn or something.

Friday I took the day off of work. Those who know my work schedule know that I only work four hours on Friday so taking Friday off doesn't use up too much of my vacation time. I took the day off because Beth worked. She needed to work Friday because she traded someone for Sunday due to her baby shower. That means I got to take Evan to preschool. No big deal, it's two hours or so without him. I went home and I wanted to mow the lawn but it was still dew-soaked because it was early. I had sold our old freezer to some guys who were moving into the rental house that Steph and Brian used to rent. So I needed to get the new freezer into the house, the food moved over, and then the old freezer out of the house and defrosted. The problem with the new freezer is that it's way taller than the old one, so I had to take a cabinet off the wall/ceiling. Two screws came out ok. The other three, for no aparent reason, refused to come out. I thought I had stripped the heads out of them, but it turns out they were very hardened screws and just ruined my screw driver attachments. I fought with it until it was time to go get Evan from preschool. We ate lunch at the Flying J restaurant. Then we went to Sears in Princeton to get a "screw-out" set. That's those drill attachments to remove screws with stripped-out heads. The "check engine" light had been on in my truck for a long time and it has been having trouble idling. A friend told me to take it to AutoZone and they would hook a computer up to it to see what was wrong. So we went to AutoZone. It's the "Mass Air Flow" sensor and some other errors caused by the sensor. So I looked into getting a new sensor. Not only did AutoZone not have it in stock, they didn't even carry the part! So we went to NAPA. They had one. $123 + $77 core charge. I wondered if maybe it was dirty, so they also sold me some cleaner for it. On the way home I realized it might be my air filter was dirty. Either way, I had to work on it later. I went home and got back to work on getting the cabinet out. Not even those "screw out" things would work. I tried to drill around the screws thinking that might loosen them up. I thought perhaps they had been glued in or something. I ended up breaking at least four drill bits and a small grinding stone in the process. Finally, I gave up all hope of saving the cabinet in tact and drilled through the side of it. FINALLY I got the thing loose from the wall and ceiling. But then then it was too tight to pull out! It was so tight up against the wall and the other cabinet that it had to come straight out, but there was some corner trim in the way. Luckily the trim didn't go all the way to the floor and I eventually rotated the cabinet enough to get it out. FINALLY! I moved the the new freezer into place and plugged it right in with no problems. I moved the food over and even put some of those blue ice things in the freezer to help cool it down faster. I moved the old one out of the house, again with no problems. I left it on the porch and opened it up to defrost. At that point I mowed the lawn. Again, no problems there. On the way home from returning the lawn mower to Mom and Dad's, I noticed a giant sink hole in the driveway. It seems the tile under our north driveway collapsed and now I'm going to have to dig it out and repair or else the hole will get bigger and bigger. After I came in from mowing, there was a message on the answering machine from NAPA saying they had forgotten to charge my credit card for the tax on my purchase. I called them back and told them what they needed to know. Later Beth called on her way home from work and me and Evan went to get food from Taco Tierra to bring home supper. When Beth got home a tire on the van was low. Wonderful. After supper I took Evan to Seedtick raceway to watch the go-cart races for a little while. Evan had been asking me to take him there for a long time. He's even been known to cry when we drove past and didn't stop (remember that fact). When I did take him there, he did everything but pay attention to the race. Now I'm sure someone is saying that I have too high of expectations for a 4/5 year old, but remember: he was the one who's been begging to go there for so long. He climbed all over the bleachers pretending to be Spiderman. He even fixated on a bottle cap on the ground behind the race track fence. He was more interested in a bottle cap than the race. When we went home, I was so mad I told him it would be a while before we went back. Once back home I checked on the van tire. The pressure gage hardly moved when I checked the tire. I took the van down to Mom and Dad's to use their air compressor. While I was there, I wasn't feeling well. Probably the Taco Tierra, however I had a sore throat, which is a prelude to cold for me. Dad tried to help with the tire. He may have thought I was going to try to patch it, but I didn't want to because we have road hazzard waranty on them. He still kept offering to help which irritated me a little. Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't mean to him. I know that since he's been sick he feels like he doesn't do much to help me much anymore and he was trying to do what he could and I appreciated that. I went home and put Evan to bed. Beth was already in bed since she had to work Saturday. I didn't sleep much because of my bad day. I know it may not have sounded like much, but that cabinet really got on my nerves in a bad way. I apologized to Evan before I put him to bed for being such a grouch that day.

So that night I had weird dreams. I had a dream that Beth and I bought another house somewhere near our old one in Princeton. I think it was some kind of foreclosure sale or something. Either way, the previous owners had left a lot of stuff in the house. Everything they left in the house they put a price tag on to sell stuff to the people who toured the house if they wanted to buy anything they saw. This house had a huge stone fireplace in the living room and it had a log cabin type appearance to it on the inside. It's actually quite similar to the way Beth and I would like a house to look. It also had a huge play room for Evan and he was excited about that. But again, the weird thing was the previous owners had left a lot of stuff including children's clothes laying around everywhere. Throughout this dream I worried about how we were going to afford this house. It had some kind of enclosed front porch and in my dream I was awoken early in the morning to a noise. I went to see what it was and it was a paperboy inside the porch bringing the paper to the inside door. I went outside and the previous owners had left furniture on the front lawn they were selling. While I was out there, a group of neighbors came by with some house warming gifts. I told them it was 5am and that didn't seem to matter to them. So they came in and admitted that they were just nosey and wanted to see our house. At this point I think I woke up and had trouble going back to sleep.

I was starting to write about Saturday, but the only interesting thing was I took Evan to a birthday party at Build-A-Bear on the mall. One of Evan's friends from church was having the party. We had a cookie cake in the food court afterwards. Later in the evening I started getting the chills. I really thought I was getting sick but so far today I'm fine.

Sunday Beth was off of work as previous stated and went to church with us. Since it was pouring down rain, she suggested that I bring the van around to the back door since it was closer. When she got in the van she tells me that when the lightning stuck a few seconds ago, something on the entertainment system made a loud "pop". I went in to check it out. Everything seemed to be working and ok. So the rest of the morning I worried about fire breaking out because I may have missed something. On top of that, since all of Schleterville was at church, the house would be completely enflamed before anyone saw it and called the fire department.

So once in church, the Pastor's sermon is on "worrying". How ironic is that? If Pastor Steve reads this, he's probably surprised that I remember. Kind of an inside joke there. On a side story here, I have reminded him of things he's talked about during a sermon. Every time I do he's either amazed that someone remembered, or it makes him feel good knowing that someone was listening and remembers. I do my best to listen and remember things. I always fill in the blanks on the notes he provides in the bulletin AND I keep a notebook with me that sometimes I write down bible verses that I want to remember. He said there is a statistic that says people forget 95% of a sermon within 48 hours. I wonder if there is a statistic for what percent of a sermon a pastor forgets he preached after 48 hours. Anyway, on the subject of worrying, I would like to have added something to his sermon. I think people laugh at me for liking Ernie Haase and Signature Sound, but at most every concert I have seen of them, Ernie talks about worrying. Long story, but Ernie was going through some hard times and Bill Gaither gave him some bear that played the song "Don't Worry Be Happy" As seen here. Ernie plays it on stage for a little bit and the guys sing along. Anyway, he passes along a phrase he heard and I have mentioned it in my blogs before, but I am going to write it again. It goes like this: "Today is the tomorrow I worried about yesterday." I should remember that every time I go to bed, only saying it as "Today was the tomorrow I worried about last night, so there's no reason for me to lay here and worry about tomorrow again".

I know this is huge so I will wrap up quickly. Later in the day while Beth was at the baby shower, Evan and I visited the creek outside of Mackey that we like to go to. We also made a swing past "New Lake" in Oakland City and I think I have found my new favorite fishing spot. Soon as I get the baby's room done I'm going to try to spend some more time there.

Most overplayed songs for 1993 and 1994

2008-09-16T08:45:00.000-07:00

Most overplayed song for 1993
"Informer" Snow
Yo Snow man, they said you were a one hit wonder. Oh wait. I saw a headstone on TV once that said "Snow: We barely knew you". By 1993 I REALLY quit listening to the radio and I have to admit that I didn't actually hear this song all that much. But I did hear people talk about it alot and many people had the single or album.

Honorable mentions
"I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" Meat Loaf
So Meat Loaf did a sequal to his 70's album and to my surprise they overplayed it. And yes I did have this one and played it a lot myself. I enjoyed the rock opera style of MeatLoaf.

"Seven" Prince & The New Power Generation
I can remember people trying to figure out what this song meant. And again, I think this is another one of those groups that was overplayed, but I'm going to mention this one song specifically.

"Whoomp! (There It Is)" Tag Team
A close second for 1993. There is at least one person I can think of who would make fun of me for mentioning this song. I had the single and used to listen to it in my car while cruising Princeton and it was one of the few that made my factory stereo actually shake a little. The trouble was it distored so much.

Lots of gems in 1994 and believe me it was hard to pick one!
Most overplayed song for 1994
"Waterfalls" TLC
I had to get this song out the other day to play it. I mentioned that I saw two rainbows on Sept 4, 2008 and I think each time this song came in my head. Mainly for the line "I seen a rainbow yesterday But too many storms have come and gone". Seems like this one was still being played on MTV in the summer of 1995 because I can remember watching it at Purdue that first summer I was there. I put it in 1994 because I saved a special song for 1995. So I'm blaming MTV for this one.

Honorable mentions
"Black Hole Sun" Soundgarden
I know I've mentioned this one before. I heard it about everywhere I went. I realize now that I've gotten off track on how I wanted to do this project. I wanted to only list the songs that were played so much you hate them now, but I can't say that for this one.

"Amazing", "Cryin'", "Crazy", and "Livin' On The Edge" Aerosmith
93 or 94. But I can say that for these four. Actually I say that for about any Aerosmith song, which is no fault of their's. I also think MTV overdid it because of Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone being in some of the videos. Though nothing compares to the Aerosmith pick I made for 2001 coming up soon.

"No Rain" Blind Melon
93 or 94. Now don't get me wrong, this is a good song and I always enjoyed it. I have a hard time believing that this song would have been played as much as it did were it not for Shannon Hoon. My sympathies to Mr Hoon's family and friends (even Axl), but I just think this one was played way too many times.

"Are You Gonna Go My Way" Lenny Kravitz
93 or 94. I just heard this one on the radio the other day! I was about to say that it seems like this was Lenny's breakout hit and it almost typecasted him. But then I remembered the song "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over". Luckily he's had many more hits since then. But this one had much play on MTV, therefore making my list.

"The Sign" Ace of Base
That fresh new group out of Sweden that just happens to look a lot like ABBA. I'm sorry, this song was EVERYWHERE. And that's all I have to say about that.

"Baby, I Love Your Way" Big Mountain
A reggae remake the Peter Frampton song. Though some may not remember this one, I think it was overplayed because it was what I call a radio cross-over hit. It was played by a wide variety of radio stations (ie different stations in the same market that played different types of music). I also heard it playing a lot in the dorms in college from those guys who had neon posters of Bob Marley and black lights in their rooms.

"All I Wanna Do" Sheryl Crow
Another reviewer gave this one the title for 1994. So I'm going to put it as a mention because I sure remember how tired of it I got. Course this one may be because of my dislike of Sheryl Crow.

"MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM" Crash Test Dummies
I know that's not actually the title, but you know the one I'm talking about. I actually didn't hear this one all that much, but I know it was played a lot. I know that the CTDs call this song "a joke", but it certainly proves you don't need lyrics to have a hit song.

"On Bended Knee" Boyz II Men
Baby, I'm sorry, Please forgive me for all the wrong I've done. Please come back home girl. I know you put all your trust in me, I'm sorry I let you down. Please forgive me.
Your's Truely,
Ike Turner
I told you I had more BoyzIIMen! A critic I found online said "This is a much more tolerable song, though, than "I'll Make Love to You," and won't give you nightmares afterward, but these Boyz are really starting to get on my nervz." I don't know how many timez I've heard someone say they are sick of hearing this song.
"I’ll never walk again, until you come back to me, I’m down on bended knee"