Hello, hello…

…is there anybody in there?

Hi kids!

Sorry for the long absence, but I have not been feeling particularly inspired lately so I took a break.  It would be a shame if I were to pump out poor quality posts just to fill pages.  My loyal readers are used to only the highest quality posts.  On that note, did you hear that the ghost of Elvis married another ghost?

Personally, I was shocked.  How could he do that to all of us loyal, living fans.  Whatever.

Noelle was in a her annual talent show at school.  Here is the video. 

It is really neat to see Noelle perform like that.  The best part is that she does not even seem nervous.  There were other kids who did similar acts, but none of them did it with her verve.  

Tonight we are enjoying a rare Sacramento thunderstorm.  The kids think it is great.  I don’t ever remember having these storms when I was growing up. Curse you global warming!

I am will be continuing my ‘This is my life’ section, with 1980-83 on deck.  Highlights include a six week trip to Kentucky, my first grade graduation and the time I boiled water to make tea and managed to trip while holding the pan and scaled myself.  All this and more, next time, on Fermatd.

And so it goes.

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Driving By Braille

As is my standard practice, I have followed up last months blogging binge with a blogging hangover. There has been a lot going on lately keeping my away from the keyboard. Ralphie and Steve were down for a visit. Casey’s computer died and I had to reload the OS and all the programs. My company laid-off 300 workers and I sat around wondering if I would be one of them. I wasn’t. My prayers go out to those who did get laid off. Having been through it just last year, I know it is never easy. I had an old friend and his family from high school over and we had a great time. It’s nice to know that he is still a great guy. His wife and kids are great, too. I always breathe a sigh of relief whenever I come across good kids.

Not having blogged for a while, I have found myself developing thoughts more than that writing them. This was due in large part to the then-impending job cuts. There is a sobering feeling that accompanies an event like that, though I don’t have to say that. Your lively hood usually depends on someone else’s decision and that is always a little unsettling. It’s nice to be the ‘master’ of your destiny, but it’s always important to remember that you are never really are. It’s nice to pretend sometimes.

Driving by Braille is a term my friends and I used when we were driving after we had perhaps a bit too much to drink. The idea was to let the driver side wheels run on the center road dividers.  That way you knew you were driving with the road.  In reality, it didn’t work like that.  I spend a lot of my life driving by Braille, but in a more philosophical sense. 

Leela is going to be baptized next week.  We are all looking forward to that very special occasion as she is joined the Body of Christ.  All sorts of family and friends will be in town for it.  Should be a very good time.

I bought a new Bluetooth headset, so I can call my friends and family again. 

That all for now. 

And so it goes.

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Bacon!

Those of you who know me, and now those of you who don’t, know that I generally eat raw foods as much as I can.  That being said, I still love one animal based slice of goodness.  I speak of course of Bacon.

Check out this story this story.  Note to my raw and vegan friends.  Don’t watch.  Just don’t do it.  If you do, don’t blame me later. 

A few years ago I decided to deep fry a turkey.  Just for fun, I bought a pound of bacon to deep fry afterwards.  Once the turkey was done, I dropped the bacon into the oil and it sank like a rock.  About two minutes went by and the bacon started to float to the top of the oil, looking golden and perfect.  I plucked it out of the oil onto a paper towel lined plate and let it cool for a minute or two before devouring.  Tasty.

Bacon has a very loyal following in other places than my stomach.  I became a fan of bacon on Facebook.  Then there is BacoNation.  If you like pigs that poop bacon, this is the place for you.  It was on this site that I first encountered the term, ‘food porn’.  Good stuff. 

Let me give you a brief history of bacon:

The earliest recorded history of bacon dates back to the year 3200 BC where cave painting show us pictures of man making bacon.  It was initially unclear as to what man was making, but microscopic images revealed that the man was smiling, so it must be bacon. 

Flash forward several hundred years to the area now occupied by the North Eastern United States.  One of the natives of the area was chasing a wild pig through the forest when it collided with a maple tree, felling the tree in the process.  The sap leaked on the pig as the man slaughtered it.  The maple syrup made the bacon extra tasty.

Moving on to June 14, 1215, the nobles and along with King  John prepared to sign the Magna Carta.  When it was discovered that no bacon was available for the signing, it was delayed to June 15. 

Prior to the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette was misquoted as saying, ‘Let them eat cake!’.  The French folks got mad and over threw the government (or something like that.  Look it up).  What she really said was, ‘Let them eat bacon!’.  Had they heard correctly, she would be been installed as Queen ruler over all the land. 

That brings us to today where bacon, better know as pork bellies on the CME, are traded daily. 

And that is about all I feel like making up tonight.  Good day.

And so it goes.

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Politics 101

Just for fun I thought I would blog about politics, more specifically my personal views in relationship to politics.  It seems everywhere I turn there is a story about it so I thought I would add my 2 cents.  

Most of those who know me are generally familiar with my political leanings, but I don’t generally like to discuss the subject.  The conversations quickly turn into to abstract discussions about how the current Farm Bill disenfranchises migrant workers who have their phones tapped by Homeland Security to monitor calls back to Greenland in regards to the war in Iraq.  

In truth, no politic party really represents me very well.  I suppose that can be said for everyone.  That being said I am going to hit my key points.  Please keep in mind that I am hitting highlights here, not making policy recommendations.  There is great potential to read all sorts of wrong information into this, making assumptions and the like.  I would clarify more here, but then it wouldn’t really be a political blog, would it? If you want to know more about my thoughts, just ask.  

If I got to design my own party, the platform would look something like this:

Plank One: Life and Dignity of the Human Person.  Everyone, regardless of state or circumstance or location has a right to live.  

Plank Two: Focus on the Family.  The family is the core building block of all society.  Preserve the family, preserve the society.  

Plank Three: Rights and Responsibilities.  All people have rights within society and they have the responsibility to observe and respect those rights.  

Plank Four: Protect for the Poor and Vulnerable.  Everything that we do must always keep the little guy in mind, the least among us, if you will.  

Plank Five: The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers.  Work is requirement in all societies.  I believe all who can work, should work.  Those who can work should have right to a fair wage, the right to organize to get that fair wage and the right to do so unmolested.  

I’ll pause here to offer some clarification to those of you who know me well and are wondering about plank five.  Most, if not all, of the the time when I ‘talk union’ with folks, it never has to do with the right to organize or to get a fair wage.  That has never been an issue of mine.  Those conversations always end up going too far afield for me to make the point I want.  A lot of that is my own fault.  I like to follow a thought up a rabbit hole and I loose the context of the conversation.  I’m working on it though.

Plank Six: Solidarity.  We are of the human race and we must all respect each other regardless of state, circumstance or location.  

Plank Seven:  Care for God’s Creation.  I know that would never fly in a real party, but here is what I mean.  This earth is a gift and we must all do a much better job of taking care of it.  That means ‘being green’ for lack of a better way to say it, though it goes far beyond that.  While I still hold to the belief that the most inconvenient truth is that most global warming theories lack the scientific rigor for me to stand behind them, I do think that our stewardship of the planet has been poor and must change.  We need to get off of fossil fuels and looks to sustainable, renewable and natural forms of energy and we need to do it now.  As for the ‘far beyond that’ part, we need to look at everything we do from gardening to breathing in terms of its effect on everything else.  

And that is my party platform.  One of my favorite passages from Isaiah sums it all up pretty well:

Cease doing evil; learn to do good.
Make justice your aim: redress the wronged,
Hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow

Isaiah 1:16-17

And so it goes.

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We know who you are…

Look at this sign:

The sign above is showing your internet address, the interweb service you are running, your operating system and the internet browser you are using.  When you are online, there is a great deal of information about you that just hangs out there for someone to pick up.

For example:

Have you ever looked at the left hand side of your screen when you are search Google?  There will be ads for your area.  Mine say things like, ‘Buy a home in Sacramento!’  They know that I am surfing from Sacramento because of that 10 digit number above.  The XX.XXX.XX.XXX number that Mr. McCain (which who should be holding the sign at this moment.  It rotates through the candidates) is holding is registered to an area of the country that can be referenced by the ad software.

So what else do they know about us?  Cookies.  They know about cookies.  Cookies are little text files that are stored on your computer so a website can more quickly identify you.  For example, you check your mail and go to bed.  You wake up and power your system on and go to your e-mail site.  It usually at least remembers your name.  All it did was read a cookie on your system.  These same cookies can be used to track your internet usage and send it back to companies to try and further evaluate your habits. 

Now when it comes to cookies tracking me, I used to believe that it was absolutely wrong and I would do anything to stop it.  I would wipe out my cookies every 15 minutes and routinely purge my browsing history.  But then I got to thinking: Why not make it harder to figure me out?  So now I get online, go to Woot, then to the Starbucks website, surf on over to AARP and pull up a few articles.  From there I head to my favorite bodybuilding website for albino midgets and wrap it up with a trip through the Green, Libertarian, Reconstructive Monarchist site just for good measure.  All in all, it make me feel better.

And so it goes.

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