Good Friday

It's Good Friday. The boys were asked to serve at the noon Stations of the Cross at the Church of the Assumption downtown. It had been I don't know how many years since I had actually been to a Stations of the Cross.

They (Catholics) usually do this on Good Friday. It got me to thinking how neat it would be to spend Easter in Jerusalem, and on Good Friday walk the real Stations. would also like to spend Christmas in Bethlehem sometime.

*sigh* When that numbers on that lottery ticket (which I never buy) finally get picked.

The Stations were very moving. What was said at most of the stations seemed so...personal. Almost as if they were talking specifically about my own life. The crosses that I am to bear. I know that what seems like giant heavy crosses I tug along are rather insignificant to a lot of people, but they are there nonetheless, and I (like most I believe) think how much better life might be without them. Pains, trials, reservations, resignations, regrets.

But without these personal crosses, I would be a completely different person. Without them my wife - whom I love with complete devotion - would be a different person. We are the sum of our personal experiences, and if any of those experiences were to change, we as we are now would cease to exist. We would become someone else. Perhaps not very much, perhaps just the vanity to splash some Grecian Formula on the gray around the temples, but enough that it would change us. Forever.

No, I don't want my crosses removed. I'll bear them, and hope and strive to bear them with pride. They are a gift. A gift which is given by God. Sure, they don't seem like a gift. How can one make a gift of pain and despair? But it is through these trials that we emerge as a better person.

Sheesh, this post didn't start out to be so melancholy, but it seemed to have ended up that way. Sometimes my mind gets to racing when I'm sitting at the keyboard, and what was going to be just a post, ends up quite the ramble.

I want to thank you for your attention, and for visiting.

Happy Easter everyone!









Technorati Tags: Easter, Good Friday, Stations of the Cross

No shaken martinis here

Hello again. It has been a pretty good week. The kids were all excited on Friday as each got to wear their Gi to Judo class on Friday. They received them on Wednesday, but they had to be washed at least once before worn. We did learn that to properly dry takes longer than 24 hours though. In case anyone was wondering. The Judo Academy did well last week in Nebraska competition - taking three or four first place slots. They are gearing up now for the Sunflower Games. The middle boy and Little Sister both are looking forward to knowing enough to compete. The teenager isn't so sure about the whole competition thing.

We were able to watch the new James Bond flick - "Casino Royale" - this weekend. I was, in a nutshell, disappointed. It was a good action film in and of itself...but it wasn't a good James Bond film. It was missing that certain James Bond flair that we have come to expect after 20 movies about the iconic secret agent for British spy house MI-6. I don't think I set my expectations too high to guarantee my disappointment. I knew, for instance, that this Daniel Craig fellow was not in any way, shape or form going to be as good a Bond as Sean Connery.

Bond films have always had a certain feel to them. It seems there were some things missing from this film. Namely things that made Bond, Bond. Like loads of beautiful women (there were two), fast cars, Q and his gadgets, and vodka martinis...shaken, not stirred. This seemed a much more politically correct Bond, along the lines of the Timothy Dalton Bond, and not the Bond most of us grew up with.

Gone was that distinctive Bond music that opened all of the other films (with the exception of "Never Say Never Again" - because the makers could not get the rights to the music). They managed to include the theme in the credits, but that music, those blaring of horns, were always the signal of good things to come. Maybe that's why they put it at the end. As if they were saying "don't worry, the next one will be better." Also gone from the opening credits were the silhouetted shapes of curvaceous women - instead we get South Park quality cardboard cutouts of Bond in various stages of fights or shooting his weapon.

Personally, I don't see Craig as a good James Bond. He is a good action figure though, but his face is a bit too...what is the word...mean I think. His appearance is too rough around the edges. He looks like he grew up on the streets and graduated Cum Laud from the University of Hard Knocks. Like he is more of a thug than a thinking man. Bond was always a thinking man. He seemed to have information on just about anything ready when asked. From diamonds to nuclear reactors to hydrofoils, he knew about it all. It was part of his mystique. Craig's appearance would fit better in Tony's crew on the Sopranos, than the fancy glitz and glamor top-dollar drawing rooms Bond frequents. He just doesn't have the right look. Bond always looked as if he was comfortable and right-at-home in his tuxedo. Not like he just got off work as a long shore man.

BTW: Bit of trivia. Most people think the first incarnation of "Casino Royale" was the David Nivens/Peter Sellers spoof of 1967. But the first actual film version of "Casino Royale" was a 1954 television adaptation for the "Climax!" television show. In it Jame Bond was an American spy for the CIA and Leiter was his MI6 liason (role reversal because the hero had to be American - this was American television after all). In it Barry Nelson played James Bond and Peter Lorre played Le Chiffre.

Thanks for visiting. Keep well and safe.







Technorati Tags: James Bond, Casino Royale, David Craig, Judo

New virus hiding as IE7 download

I'm just trying to spread the word here - I don't do this much, but I believe this to be very important



Trojan masquerades as IE 7 downloads by ZDNet's Ryan Naraine -- Spammers are using fake Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 2) downloads to lure Windows users into downloading a nasty backdoor Trojan. The fake downloads are part of a massive spam run that includes an official-looking graphic (see image below) linked to Web sites that auto-launch an executable named "ie7.exe." A copy of this spam that landed in my [...]



Technorati Tags: virus, IE7, trojan, zdnet

Nina and Paolo?!?!?! Are you kidding me?!?!?!

LOST this second half of the season has been getting good. I think the producers have discovered that if they keep exponentially increasing the number of sub-plots, with resolving nothing in the meanwhile, frustrated viewers are going to start leaving. And leaving in droves. Viewers can be forgiving, but one can only play them for so long before they get tired of being lead around by that ring in their nose.

Last night's episode, I can't quite figure out. Perhaps in the weeks to come some light will be shed on it. There are two characters that were essentially introduced this season, Nina and Paolo. They went with Locke, Sayid et al. to the Pearl hatch to find what they could find. (It was Nina who brilliantly pointed out in the hatch that possibly the blank TV screens connected to other hatches - DUH!).

That, until last night's episode, was it for the couple. But last night started with Nina and Paolo flashbacks (she was an actor, he a chef, and together they were scheming to steal diamonds form a rich movie producer in Australia). Anyway, their back story revealed to everyone who was left scratching their heads saying "so what, who cares about these two?".

These two die and get buried while their back story is being told. But at the end we discover they are not actually dead, just paralyzed via the bite of a very rare species of spider that has a paralytic venom which paralyzes one for about 8 hours, but does not actually kill them.

Questions remain, will Nina and Paolo dig themselves out of their grave? If so, how freaked out will Locke be that The Island has brought the dead to life?









Technorati Tags: LOST, ABC, Television, Nina, Paolo

smörgåsbord - I love that word

Luckily about 20 some odd years ago, I happened to meet Mrs. Right. I met my wife when I was attending the University of Kansas. I needed coinage, so I sauntered into Checkers Pizza (get it, Checkers, it was right across the street from Domino's Pizza). Checkers was a local owned business, and she was the weekend manager. I managed to get a job as a delivery driver. Oh, don't get me wrong, the qualifications were stringent and I almost didn't make it. But since I had a pulse, and a car, she decided to take a chance.



We knew each other for almost a year before we started dating. Then another two years of sometimes rocky on-and-off dating before she one day sat on my lap and would not get up until we set a date for the wedding. "Fine," I said, "how about September 31st." That lasted about 30 seconds...until she realized that September only has 30 days.



Nowadays one has a much more vast field of play when looking for dates, partners and life-time commitments. Back in my day, to meet someone usually involved going to a bar or other place where people gathered. I've never really been much of a people type of person. Stupidity really irritates me. And stupid drunks doubly so. Now people have the Internet for hooking up and hanging out. One can go online, setup their profile, and wait for the emails to just start rolling in. It is a virtual smörgåsbord of dating goodness.





This post brought to you by

justsayhi.com

Devil in the church

Don't blame me, I found this one on the 'net, but I also found it amusing, so I thought I would pass it on...

One Sunday morning, everyone in one bright, beautiful, tiny town got up early and went to the local church.

Before the services started, the townspeople were sitting in their pews
and talking about their lives, their families, etc. Suddenly, Satan
appeared at the front of the church. Everyone started screaming and
running for the front entrance, trampling each other in a frantic
effort to get away from evil incarnate.

Soon everyone was evacuated from the church, except for one
elderly gentleman who sat calmly in his pew, not moving... seemingly
oblivious to the fact that God's ultimate enemy was in his presence.
Now this confused Satan a bit, so he walked up to the man and said,
"Don't you know who I am?"

The man replied, "Yep, sure do."

Satan asked, "Aren't you afraid of me?"

"Nope, sure ain't," said the man.

Satan was a little perturbed at this and queried, "Why aren't you afraid of me?"

The man calmly replied, "Been married to your sister for over 48 years."

The Vista Premium Installation

I was using Windows XP Media Center - which I thought originally was a crock, but I have to admit I love the ability to record TV progs on my PC and the like - but I wanted to upgrade to Windows Vista. I purchased the Vista Premium upgrade from Academic Superstores (it pays to have kids in school) for $70.



I didn't really want to perform an upgrade upgrade because I don't believe that ever goes as well as a clean install. Plus, my XP came on the computer from the store, which means that HP put oodles of crap on it that I didn't ask for and didn't want (Netscape, aol, msn, earthlink - name something it was [unmentionable] on there).



At the DailyTech there is a work around for this here. This was a way to let me wipe out the HDD partition, format and install from scratch. The way Vista works is, if you have an upgrade key, you must run the setup from within a version of Windows that is upgradeable to Vista - these are Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP or Windows Vista only. That means, if you are still running Windows 98, or Me or NT I think you might be out of luck. But the work-around seems to negate that anyway, you don't even need a disc or your old Windows key to prove you had one of the versions of Windows in Vista's upgrade path.



The work-a-round is such.

1) back up all your stuff because you are going to lose it

2) boot from the DVD

3) do NOT put in your Windows Vista key when prompted

4) do the install

5) after it is all installed, pop the DVD back in

6) upgrade your Windows Vista Premium to...Windows Vista Premium - enter the Windows Vista key when prompted



The initial install took about 30 minutes to perform, including deleting the drive partition, making a new partition and formatting that partition.



The upgrade though, sheesh it took close to an hour to upgrade a clean install of Vista Premium to Vista Premium. One would think the install would have compared files and said "nothing to do here" but I believe it backed up the original file system, then installed the new file system, then removed the back ups.



My laptop came with two hard drives. I moved quite a bit of things (photos, videos, music, documents etc) to the D drive for safe keeping while I installed Vista. When installing Vista, I gave my laptop a new name - this may have been a mistake, let me explain. As stated, I moved stuff to the second HDD for the install. Well, when I opened up the drive in Vista, I couldn't see jack. I could not interact with anything, I had absolutely zero permissions on that drive.



This is the second day messing around with it, but still having some problems viewing/executing files.



Anyway, I'll figure it out eventually (hopefully it will not require giving 'everyone' full control of everything).



Other than that, things went fairly smooth. The only thing that did not work right out of the box (so to speak) was the audio. Actually, the sound worked, it was the sound controls that did not work. I could mute the speakers and I could un-mute the speakers, but I could not adjust the volume. After a lengthy perusal of the HP website and other places out in the web-o-sphere I resigned to downloading the XP version of the audio drivers from HP and go with that (at least until HP gets off their kiester and gives me my drivers).





Technorati Tags: XP Media Center, Vista Premium, Upgrade

The "Beautiful People"

Beautiful People - that term has come to mean people of means. People with money. It wasn't always that way. Once upon a time, way back in my youth, there were truly beautiful people. People like Lauren Bacall, Anne Margaret the starlets of old. They carried a natural beauty almost not available now-a-days in the era of plastic surgery.



Don't get me wrong. Personally, I have no problems with "augmentation procedures." Or nose jobs, or liposuction or any of the other plastic surgery procedures. But it used to be those of a truly natural beauty rose to the top in Hollywood. Now, with enough coinage, anyone can look like Dolly Parton or Britney Spears, or Cher.



Which maybe why there are even television shows (Nip/Tuck - which, BTW, i have never watched) about people giving and getting cosmetic surgery. I'm pretty much just following thoughts here. This is the kind of thing that happens when one forgets to pay the cable bill and actually has to think for an evening.



Thanks for visiting!



This post sponsored by:

Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon





Technorati Tags: Ann Margaret, Lauren Bacall, Plastic Surgery, Cosmetic Surgery

How cool is this?

As I have mentioned, I have another blog chronicling my attempts at making money via blogging. That blog is A Little More Income. Well, about two or three months ago I posted this post - in which I excitedly exclaimed that the blog had been visited by someone from Belgium and that my grandfather and great-grandfather were immigrants from Belgium.

Fast forward to just the other day, and I am contacted by a fellow who says his grandmother used to talk about relations in Crawford County, KS who shared the last name of my grandfather. Long story short, I found a new cousin.

How cool is that?