Category: mostly unimportant

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Skip the turkey, have a dinosaur!

For those of us that figured all the true nut-jobs are found in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and, yes, even Missouri…let’s not forget Kentucky!

According to this blurb at Slashdot, there’s a new museum opening next year in Kentucky, close to the Ohio border. It’s going to be devoted to Creationism. The article at The Guardian describing the “venture” states:

The Creation Museum – motto: “Prepare to Believe!” – will be the first institution in the world whose contents, with the exception of a few turtles swimming in an artificial pond, are entirely fake.

And perhaps more amusing:

As you stand in the museum’s lobby – the only part of the building approaching completion – you are surrounded by life-size dinosaur models, some moving and occasionally grunting as they chew the cud.Beside the turtle pool, two animatronic, brown-complexioned children, demurely dressed in Hiawatha-like buckskin, gravely flutter with movement. Behind them lurk two small Tyrannosaurus Rexes. This scene is meant to date from before the Fall of Man and, apparently, dinosaurs.

The museum has a web site, of course…feel free to browse…they have a lovely walk-through of the proposed plans… The thing will cost $25 million, and all but $3 million has been donated. (personally, I think I could find plenty of other things to do with $25 million, like, oh, feed all the poor people in New York City for the next decade?) Apparently, the museum gift shop is done up like a medieval castle…’cause knights used to fight dinosaurs (read: dragons) all the time!

These shenanigans remind me of a show I watched at Brooke’s parent’s house a few weeks ago…I was flipping through the TV channels on a Saturday morning and ran across a show discounting evolution on one of the religious channels…using “real scientists”! Of particular note, one of the historians they had on the show was recounting the story of Beowulf, referring specifically to the description of the monster in the story. This shrub said that the existence of a dinosaur in Beowulf was proof that dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time, thus the Bible must be correct. So now, not only should the Bible be sacred, but so should Beowulf and accounts of sea merchants sighting monsters in the oceans…and how knights of the Middle Ages fought dinosaurs daily…I mean…dragons… (which the historian also referred to…this is a trend, apparently).

So, this Thanksgiving, you should go find a dinosaur and eat it instead of a turkey… Turkeys have too much tryptophan (the amino acid that makes you sleepy after Thanksgiving dinner) and you certainly get more meat out of a Velociraptor…

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An AUDIO ADRENALINE Concert

(not a Mercy Me Concert)

So, last night, we had tickets to Mercy Me, Audio Adrenaline, and Phil Wickham. The concert started at 7:00, so we thought if we got there a little after it was supposed to start, we wouldn’t have to hear a bad opener or wait for a whole bunch of stage changes. However, we got there at about 7:15 and only caught the end of the last Phil Wickham song, then Audio Adrenaline was ready to go on in about 5 minutes. We went to the concert because it was Audio Adrenaline’s last tour stop in St. Louis ever, since their lead singer’s voice is shot. They were pretty good, but the set was only about 35 minutes long and it’s pretty obvious that the singer’s voice is not doing so well. After the reason we went the the concert, we decided to stay to hear Mercy Me do “I Can Only Imagine.” Of course, they sang about a bazillion other songs first and talked and preached and talked. Their show was so polished and timed and had synced videos and way too much preaching. Andy and I were both bored and ready to go, but were waiting for “I Can Only Imagine” and stuck it out, then got out of there before the masses. So, the moral of the story is Audio Adrenaline=Good, Mercy Me=not-much-better-than-average.

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Happenings…

Brooke and I went and visited Kristen down in Springfield over the weekend… We hadn’t seen her apartment yet, nor had we really seen much of her since the summer, so it was a good opportunity to get out of town and see how she’s doing. We went out to dinner at her local hangout and then went to a piano bar (while the Cards won the World Series), both of which were quite fun. The piano bar largely involved dueling pianos (and a drummer) playing music mostly off of my parents Adult Contemporary radio station in Columbia, but it was still a good time… Thanks for hosting us, Little Sister!

Otherwise, we got back to St. Louis and had a message waiting on the machine from Lou Fusz Toyota… Our Scion xA arrive late-Friday night, so we can go pick it up on Monday. So, finally, I won’t have to drive Brooke’s Altima anymore and I can have my Elantra back… 😉 Now we just have to figure out how/when to get the Altima back up to Hannibal…

On another note, I had a doctor’s appointment on Friday, which was mostly uneventful…but he did notice my blood pressure is a bit high (145/82). The sad thing is that we’ve been learning about anti-hypertensive drugs in school (and I have a test over it tomorrow…that, and kidney function, which is quite related to blood pressure), so I generally have a good idea what high blood pressure means over the long-term. So yeah, I’ve made yet another resolution to try and work out more… I don’t think my eating habits are particularly terrible, especially compared with the national average, and I come in at or below 2000 calories per day… I just don’t exercise…ever… Therefore, I’m going to try and jog 3-4 times a week and bring that blood pressure down. That, and I’m gonna get some blood work done to check out my cholesterol levels, which I probably ought to do at this age anyway… Regardless, I jogged 20 min straight today, which was better than I thought I’d do after not really exercising much since summer. A good start, mehopes…

Time to get back to studying for tomorrow’s exam. Hopefully it doesn’t raise my blood pressure much more…

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Just a thought…

Pumpkin

As I was watching Brooke brutally attack and disembowel a pumpkin yesterday for our jack o’ lantern, I had a thought: can one be a “meat-itarian” (or carnitarian)? As in, one who only eats meat and no plant products. …’cause, logically speaking, if you’re against the eating of defenseless-creatures, aren’t pumpkins and carrots more defenseless than cows and bears? I mean, cows and chickens can run away and fight back…not effectively, but they can do so more than, say, a potato. On the other hand, potatoes and carrots are able to hide underground from predators and try to use root systems to chain themselves to the ground, but that’s even less effective than a deer trying to evade a hunter.

So yeah, I think it makes more sense to be a meat-itarian than a vegetarian…that, and meat tastes better, besides… Just think of the horrible scene played out in my kitchen when Brooke sacrificed an unknowing pumpking and you’ll understand.

Just a thought…

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Fooling around…

“We’re like the Cleavers…except we’re religious…and we like to fool around.”

Rev. Eric Camden; “7th Heaven”

Yes…that kind of “fool around”… What a show… I certainly never thought it’d last 11 seasons…and I certainly never thought I’d hear a pastor say such things…

Keep in mind, he was also in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and became a non-corporeal life form…

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Of Facebook and Big Brother…

So, Slashdot had a posting discussing the new changes on Facebook, which many of you use frequently… As many of you noticed this morning when you logged on to change your status, there’s a new “feeds” feature that really ramps up the stalking factor to a whole new level… Personally, I didn’t really care that much, besides the fact that I can’t seem to find a way to disable it.

Well…apparently more than a few people are rather annoyed about it, pointing out a variety of privacy issues…according to Slashdot, though, many “protest groups” have formed, the largest of which has 10,000 members… I link to CampusProgress.org and a student homepage at some university I’ve never heard of (University of Mary Washington, anybody?) as examples of just how irate some people are over the changes. A few quotes from the latter link were kinda amusing, regardless:

“When we join facebook, we automatically give up a little bit of our privacy. To use Facebook has always been ‘socially-acceptable stalking.’ Now, though, they’ve just gone too damned far. No one wants their girlfriend or boyfriend knowing when they’ve commented on a photo, written on a wall, or anything else. No one wants people to see that they’ve left a group; it could offend someone. No one really wants to see the change in status of someone’s love life.”

And from the CollegeProgress article:

“A Facebook profile now displays your online social exploits since mid- August. It notes when you wrote on someone?s wall, and when you commented on a photo, along with other new details such as your responses to event invitations, your new friends, and what groups you join. Before, as many of us know, you could write on a wall in relative privacy. It could be a sneaky affair. And commenting on someone else?s photo was something that few would notice. Wall and comment communications, while public, were not advertised.

Now, every time you do anything on Facebook, you issue a bulletin for all of your friends. Now no one will miss the fact that you think you look horrible in a picture, or that you didn’t accept an invitation to someone’s event, or that you wrote what you considered to be a funny item for your list of activities (‘Trying not to incriminate myself on facebook to all my future employers’) and then thought better of it ten minutes later and took it down.”

I dunno…personally, I figure that if you’re posting this kind of information on Facebook in the first place, you’re just asking for trouble…but at the same time, I can understand where problems can and will arise. Needless to say, I’m a). glad I’m not in college anymore, and b). glad I’m married.

Any thoughts?

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You gotta know when to hold 'em…

So, I played poker at Jeremy/Ben/Dave’s tonight…been almost a month since we last played, so it was much-needed, so far as I was concerned… Anyway, I can’t say I started out too well. Early on in the game (like, within 15 min), I flopped a straight and tried to “slow-play” it so I’d trap someone else into staying in. Problem was, I “trapped” Jeremy into getting a flush (which beat my straight), so I lost some money right then and there. That play kinda set the tone for the next few hours and my $$$ dwindled…

Fast-forward to 9:30 (2 hrs later). I’ve gone up and down a little bit, but I’m still down to $1.50 from the $5 I started with. I knew I had to get some cards quick, otherwise I’d be in serious trouble. Well, I pick up a pair of aces, so I go “all-in.” Ben follows and so does Jeremy (but there’s a split-pot between the two of them). Anyway, long story short, my aces hold up and I win my “all-in,” and I end up $1 in profit by the end of the night. I go from -$3.50 to +$1.

Needless to say, I got pretty damned lucky… Now I just need to find me a casino…

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You gotta know when to hold ’em…

So, I played poker at Jeremy/Ben/Dave’s tonight…been almost a month since we last played, so it was much-needed, so far as I was concerned… Anyway, I can’t say I started out too well. Early on in the game (like, within 15 min), I flopped a straight and tried to “slow-play” it so I’d trap someone else into staying in. Problem was, I “trapped” Jeremy into getting a flush (which beat my straight), so I lost some money right then and there. That play kinda set the tone for the next few hours and my $$$ dwindled…

Fast-forward to 9:30 (2 hrs later). I’ve gone up and down a little bit, but I’m still down to $1.50 from the $5 I started with. I knew I had to get some cards quick, otherwise I’d be in serious trouble. Well, I pick up a pair of aces, so I go “all-in.” Ben follows and so does Jeremy (but there’s a split-pot between the two of them). Anyway, long story short, my aces hold up and I win my “all-in,” and I end up $1 in profit by the end of the night. I go from -$3.50 to +$1.

Needless to say, I got pretty damned lucky… Now I just need to find me a casino…

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Ok, Ok…

…Here’s your update…

Two weeks ago, Mallory and Leland visited on Thursday night. We went to Blueberry Hill with them, then they went to a Carninals’ game and then came back to stay at our place. Of course, by the time they got there, I was asleep and I left for work before they were even thinking about getting up. Then, that Friday, Mom met me in St. Peters after work and Rachel came back home with me. We went mini-golfing, shopping at St. Louis Mills (where we bought too many matching things), to dinner at the Olive Garden for her birthday, and then Mom and Dad came for dinner on Sunday. As you’ve surely read in Sam’s blog, we also picked out new food for the cat and a new brush.

I’ve had 3 job interviews and 1 more to go in the past couple of weeks. So far, I’ve been offered the one that pays the least but might be the most fun, so we’re still waiting to hear back from the others before a decision is made, since I want a Yaris and to quickly pay back my student loans from last year.

That’s about all, except for some reason I have had an ear ache for the past few days which caused a slight mental breakdown that Andy is not very happy about….I just don’t want to get sick when I have so much going on right now! I’ll let you know more when I know more, myself!