I'll start with a bunch of articles that I found interesting this morning:

This is a different take on the Bloggers V. Big Media uproar. I'm on the side of the bloggers. Betting on history repeating itself is usually a good bet.

This is a good article on micro-radio stations. I think this would be fun to play around with. For twenty bucks, why not? Even if you are talking about a radio station that only transmits 200 feet and on AM. It would still be a good way to annoy a few people in your neighborhood.

Here is some new information on the Miller-Urey experiments that were done in the 1950's.

And still more water on Mars. Everywhere the rovers go, more evidence of water. Damn NASA; without them we would have a team of geologists up there doing this, not a couple RC golf carts.

I'm having fun right now trying to do this update. I'm at work right now running a REXX job to upload between 4,000 and 5,000 documents (spreadsheets and .pdf files, mostly) into our archiving system. As I'm typing this, nothing happens on the screen for a long time, then a whole line of text shoots on the screen. That's not so bad, although a bit disconcerting; using the mouse is an exercise in frustration. It jerks around on the screen so bad that it's hard to hit even great big push buttons. Closing a window is impossible without using the shortcut key (Alt-F4, if you've never been told that).

Only one more class session to go. Last night was interesting; my paper I had turned in last week became a point of discussion. I didn't think it was that great, mainly because I had thrown it together at 2am, but the instructor kept coming back to it. It made me a little uncomfortable. I have always done very well in school, but I don't like having it pointed out publicly. I only have three chapters of reading (about 40-50 pages) and a 10-12 page paper on one of the other books we read. Our study group seems to be about finished up on our group project (45 minute presentation on ethical dilemmas arising from abortion), we should be setting pretty for the end of the program.

I did get some bad news. Well, annoying news, really. I had used the materials that I had been given at the beginning of the program to select classes I needed to take through Moody Bible Institute's independent study program to fulfill my last 15 credit hours for Cornerstone. Last night, I was given an updated form and discovered 4 of the 5 Cornerstone classes no longer exist. Understand, I sent the list of Cornerstone classes I had selected to finish my degree, along with what I felt were corresponding Moody classes to my so-called academic advisor. "Looks good," he says. Right. Looks good other than the 4 non-existent Cornerstone class numbers. Feh. In any case, I'll be trying again with the updated information.

Debbie just found out today that our grand-niece's first birthday party is tonight. I love the way our family communicates so well. We will be late; Debbie is meeting me here in Traverse City at 6pm to grab dinner and a gift over at the mall. Then we will be scooting into Kalkaska as quickly as possible. The birthday girl will probably already be in bed for the night by the time we get there. Lovely. Just lovely. We also have about two weeks to plan for my parents 50th anniversary party the first weekend of November. At least I will have some time between the end of my classes at Cornerstone and going back to 40-hour weeks at work and starting the Moody independent studies. Not much time, but some.

Tomorrow is generator swapping day, plus some other odds and ends like running a phone line into the house. We still have to search through all our boxes and find our cordless phone/answering machine. That will save us another $8 a month because we can shut off the voice mail we've been using for the last 5 years. We will be normal people yet...

Well, I need to wrap things up here.