Still crazy-busy with no end in sight. Friday was about the only day we had any significant time at home. Saturday, was running to Traverse City in the morning, then Trout Festival festivities until around 11PM. Sunday was typical and we didn't have anything going on between services, but we were so wiped out from Saturday that it felt like we were running all over the place.

Monday was a sick day; Nestina and I were both down for the count and stayed home. She had another soccer game, and she was feeling somewhat better, so she went, but she didn't end up playing much. She was just not in the game. Her team lost 2-1 to TC Central; a team that was supposed to mop the field with them. They weren't even on their schedule until they started beating everyone they played. Central called and asked to be put on the schedule some time last week. So the winning streak is over, but they are getting the opportunity to play better teams. On the way to the game, Nestina picked up her prom dress. It needed some modifications, so we stopped by one of the other youth leader's place for some last-minute alterations. It looks much better now, so prom crisis number one was dealt with.

Tuesday was school and work, soccer practice, and a youth leaders meeting. Today is school and work and youth group, except for Debbie who took today as her sick day. I don't know what this thing is going around, but it really kicks your butt. Tomorrow and Friday have a soccer game and soccer practice. I think. But I don't know which is on what day. Or maybe it's two games. I dunno. Saturday is prom, so that day will be pretty full. Blah, blah, blah.

There doesn't seem to be much in the news lately other than a bunch of yapping about Laura Bush telling naughty jokes. If that's all that the news can find to report on, then I'm not sure what use they are.

In any case, I have been reading a lot of yapping lately about the new Pope and what direction he will be taking the Catholic church. OK, now I'm going to reveal something incredibly shocking to all the talking heads here in the United States and over in Europe. I know this will be hard to believe, so you might want to sit down.

The Pope is....

Catholic!

I know, I know. It's really hard to believe that the Catholic Church elected a Catholic Pope that intends to stick to Catholic doctrine while he is Pope. I'm not sure what this world is coming to. I mean, to think that the Catholic Church wouldn't clear their choice for the top spot with the Western media.

OK, end of sarcasm.

Note to said Western media: I know you think you know everything, and that your opinions on every social and political issue are straight from the mouth of God, but you really need to get a grip. Catholics, like most other people that profess Christianity, really don't care what you think about their beliefs. Your opinions are irrelevant to the Catholic leadership and, most likely, about 99% of the laity. Just like your opinions are irrelevant to 99% of, well, everybody. Get over yourself.

And that's all I have time for right now.

(heavy sigh)

Long week so far.

Tuesday, I did work, then headed straight to Nestina's soccer game. It was right down to the wire, so I ended up being late for the deacon's meeting. They won again. It's a pretty good streak they have going right now with five wins in a row. Blue is hot!!

Anyway, Tuesday was also the night we feed the carnival workers, so me being late didn't matter much as we did the meet and greet thing at the door, served coffee, cleared tables, etc. for the first hour or so. Then the actual deacon meeting, some time with pastor and one of the deacons for the meeting after the meeting, then pick up Nestina from a friend's house and head for home. We got in around 10:30PM and crashed.

Wednesday was another soccer game and another win. That is now six in a row! Go Blue, GO!! This was the Wednesday for our quarterly business meeting, so I grabbed some videos, with Courtney's help, and went out to the meeting. Normally, a business meeting is pretty boring stuff, but this one shook some people up. There has been a group of people in the church taking pot shots at the church leadership and they got nailed. Not by name, but those involved were left with no doubt that their actions have been noted and they have been warned. The next few weeks could prove interesting. Afterwards, we just hung around and talked for a while, then headed home. With an extra body, that is.

Today was Take Our Daughter's to Work day and one of Nestina's friends wanted to job shadow one of the other youth leaders that works in graphic design. It made sense for her to come stay with us and get picked up from here. Nestina went to work with me and now knows what she does not ever want to do for a living. But she thought the food was good. Her friend loved the work, but hated the food. Between them, they had a good day. After work, Nestina was supposed to volunteer for the Shady Belle. Every year during the Trout Festival, Kalkaska (the Home of the National Trout Festival) uses a building somewhere in town for local talent to show off and to sell food to raise money for the schools. Nestina and several of her friends had been recruited to help out, so I dropped her there after work, then went home to kill a few hours, then back into town to pick her up.

Tomorrow and Saturday look to be more of the same. I haven't had much time to look at anything else, so everyone gets a break today on the reading assignments.

I finally did it!

Well, I finally took the time to look up my blog id again. I guess this may be one of the ways I can talk to my husband. Anyways ..... HI! to all of you that read Ric's blog. I promise not to be as long winded as he is some days.

Life is....that is all I can say right now. I don't want to get everyone depressed like I am right now.
ttfn

Another weekend down the tubes. For those of you reading this from places other than Michigan, let me just say that if you want to live in a place where the weather follows some sort of rational pattern, do not move here. Tuesday, April 19, the temperature was 85 degrees F. By Wednesday afternoon, it was 45, and Saturday we woke up to snow on the ground that did not melt until today, when the temps almost made it to 60.

Saturday, I tried to work on the networking and all that, but I kept running into things I needed. I finally gave up and we cleaned up and drove into Traverse City for a run to Home Depot and something to eat. Sunday was another typical Sunday. I had a chance to talk to a teen who was staying with her grandparents. It was a good reminder of why I do youth ministry. We didn't really have much time to get into anything heavy, but it was a chance to reach out to someone that was looking for another person to notice they existed. Kinda cool.

Today was just work and getting ready for the deacon's meeting tomorrow night. It must be time for me to stop this whole deacon thing; I found myself counting how many meetings I had left before my term is up.

Tomorrow looks to be busy. Debbie found out that the owner of a company she worked for in Flint died over the weekend. She is driving down tomorrow for the funeral. Nestina has a soccer game and I have a deacon's meeting. We think we have everything choreographed, but something always happens to throw a monkey in the wrench.

And that is about it. I didn't see anything out on the net that was particularly interesting today, which is somewhat odd. Probably just me.

Last night was Nestina's first away game. I had wanted to go with them on the road trip, but the game was moved up and hour and I had things I had to finish at work. But they won again even without my moral support. That makes 4-1 on the season. Go Blue!!

Anyway, I made a few stops on the way home last night and pulled in the driveway just as Nestina called for one of us to drive into town and pick her up. Her and a friend were trying to find formal dresses for this weekend's Key Club District Conference in Battle Creek, so I sat in the truck and read while they played dress-up at Nestina's mom's place. Two hours later, they were both set up for the weekend, and Nestina and I headed home. She showed off her two choices for formals to Debbie and myself. Of course, I liked one, Debbie liked the other, and Nestina doesn't make decisions. She just packed both of them.

I played taxi driver this morning and took Nestina to school. We won't see her until Sunday evening. This is only the second time she has been out of town since moving in with us. And just like when we went on vacation, I felt compelled by the god of parenting to say all the usual stupid things parents tell there kids, including the oldie but goodie, "Be careful." Uh, yea. Thanks dad!! If you hadn't said that, I'm sure I would have run out in front of a semi! But say them I must. Trying not to is like trying to keep your dog from licking himself when you have company.

I stumbled across a good web site run by an organization of Christians who are scientists (as opposed to Christian Scientists, who are in reality neither). The American Scientific Affiliation "is a fellowship of men and women in science and disciplines that relate to science who share a common fidelity to the Word of God and a commitment to integrity in the practice of science." I haven't had a chance to read very many articles here, but this one on radiometric dating needs to be required reading for every Christian in the United States. Yes it's long, and yes it has big words. Read it anyway. This article makes an important distinction between evolution and evolutionism. It also includes a call for everyone in the origins debate to do some growing up.

Debbie is meeting me in Traverse City for dinner tonight while we are kid-less, then home for a quiet evening of movies and early bed-times. Yes, I know: we are officially old.

I got busy last night and never got around to blogging. I was helping Nestina on an art project, then dinner, then watched Nestina's Dark Angel episodes until bedtime. Tonight, Nestina had another home soccer game (they won; that makes three in a row), and then youth group. Had a decent group and covered some interesting things. Nothing that I had prepared, mind you. Which isn't unusual.

I was cleaning out my e-mail and found some interesting stuff that I had never posted here. At least I don't think I have. Some of it may be a repeat.

Martha Stewart again. The message from this case is clear; never help the police in any way. Never give them any information. The key phrase to remember anytime a cop asks you anything is, "I invoke my right to counsel." Then clam up. I'm sure that isn't what the government intended in prosecuting this case, but it is the result.

Being a Christian is now sufficient reason to be committed to a mental institution. Something that was predictable and in fact was predicted when mental health became an industry. If Christians want to raise a stink about something, why not this rather than all the useless posturing about homosexuality?

The strength of any republic rests on informed and empowered citizens. Empires depend on experts. According to the 9/11 Commission, the attacks would not have happened in a republic. The fact that they did happen tells you what we are (or a least what we are becoming).

Paul Graham explains how to start a startup. And also, how to not start a startup. During my time in public accounting, I saw a lot of startups. I also saw a near-100% crash-and-burn rate.

Churches in Europe are mostly empty these days. The services are only attended by tourists who take pictures of the services like they were at a Civil War reenactment or something. The same thing will likely happen here, unless churches in North America make some drastic changes.

And finally, An article about the new pope. And another. And another.

I am playing with some new software called FreeMind. It is called "mind mapping software" and it is supposed to make you more organized and junk. We'll see. I have tried many times to make some sense out of the masses of junk that just pile up on my desk and my hard drive. I have never found anything that works for me. Maybe this will do it? The best part is that it is free, as in beer. What reviews I've read rank it as high or higher than the commercial packages that do the same thing. As I said, we'll see.

And that should just about do it.

We have a new pope. More later.

Well, we survived another weekend and are back at school and work so we can rest up for the next one. Saturday was practice with the men's trio and praise team for Sunday, then home to work on building a stone retaining wall with Nestina and one of her friends. We all had dinner, then sat around and chilled for a while before I drove Nestina's friend home.

Sunday was stressful. I felt like it was the Ric Frost show or something. All the various schedules came together so that I was on praise team, special music with the men's trio, and was on the schedule to preach Sunday night. I made it in one piece, even the preaching part. A few people came up and told me I was OK, and as far as I have heard, there is no petition to remove me from the church.

And so, back to work.

In other news, me niece now has a blog. It's called Everyone Loves Courtney, and if you know Courtney, you know that she really believes that. The rest of us just humor her. Anyway, welcome to blogging, brat.

Jerry Pournelle gives a very good tax day summary of the state of the republic.

And that's about as much as I have energy for.

Yesterday was another soccer game (and another win! Go Kalkaska!!). We also had the youth group meet at the church right after school to do some spring clean-up. And I had to take my truck to the garage to switch back to my summer tires. And, of course, youth group. In all, a pretty hectic day.

Today will likely be just as chaotic. A lot of stuff going on that I can't go into details about, but stressful. Plus a half-day for Nestina at school and parent-teacher conferences.

Tomorrow looks to be much the same. And I am supposed to go to soccer practice with Nestina Friday night for "parents night" at the coach's house. This is one week I will be glad to see gone.

A lot of articles on the sorry state of our schools today. None of this should surprise anyone as it was predictable and indeed predicted 150 years ago when compulsory government education was first instituted. Having more direct contact with the schools through Nestina has made me even more cynical of any chance we have as a constitutional republic. In any case read this, this, and this, then plan accordingly.

Jerry Pournelle reports on the death of our republic. When I was in school, I heard a lot of talk about courage. Americans had the courage to face down the Soviets, the courage to send men to the moon, etc. Today, a sizable percentage of high school students don't believe we ever went to the moon. Given that our government is cowering behind concrete barriers, I can see their point. When everyone around you acts like a complete coward, it becomes difficult to believe anyone is capable of having the courage to do anything as bold as send men over a quarter of a million miles through hard vacuum to walk on another world.

I think this is supposed to be funny, but I have to wonder. Working in the medical field, I can tell you that our part of this is completely doable right now. We can deliver your complete medical history to anyone, anywhere via the internet.

And that should do nicely to start the day. I've managed to depress myself and it isn't even 8am. Enjoy!

Another soccer game tonight. This one was a win. Yesterday's game was against one of the best teams in the area, so it didn't end so well. The girls played pretty well, but the lack of experience and time playing together showed. They did much better tonight.

Just a few things off the net:

Jerry Pournelle had this observation:

EverQuest II is so addicting that apparently some players are in danger of starving to death. Lest this happen, Sony Online Entertainment has built in the /pizza command. This opens up a web browser aimed at a pizza delivery service.

One reason I have avoided the on-line games. I have enough time wasters in my life.

This is an interesting article on Pharyngula. The concept of deep time is hard to wrap your brain around. Human history is a lot longer than people realize. The ten thousand years of recorded history is an eye-blink.

This is an interesting clock for your desktop.

And that is all I have.

Today is Nestina's first soccer game. The schedule is killer; three games and one practice every week for the next six weeks. I'm not sure who will drop first; Nestina, or us while we try to keep up with her.

Other than that, not much going on simply because we don't have the time.

I do have to wonder what planet I'm on: Cookie Monster is going on a diet. Who are the freaks of nature that come up with this crap?

Learn how to build a vortex ring generator. Smoke rings on a big scale.

We are definitely on the slippery slope. Expect more of this.

Since education is high on the national agenda, here's a pop quiz that every American should take.

Question: What group of students makes the lowest achievement gains in school?

Answer: The brightest students.

In a pioneering study of the effects of teachers and schools on student learning, William Sanders and his staff at the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System put in this way: "Student achievement level was the second most important predictor of student learning. The higher the achievement level, the less growth a student was likely to have."

Mr. Sanders found this problem in schools throughout the state, and with different levels of poverty and of minority enrollments. He speculated that the problem was due to a "lack of opportunity for high-scoring students to proceed at their own pace, lack of challenging materials, lack of accelerated course offerings, and concentration of instruction on the average or below-average student."

While less effective teachers produced gains for lower-achieving students, Mr. Sanders found, only the top one-fifth of teachers were effective with high-achieving students. These problems have been confirmed in other states. There is overwhelming evidence that gifted students simply do not succeed on their own.

Question: What group of students has been harmed most by the No Child Left Behind Act?

Answer: Our brightest students.

The federal law seeks to ensure that all students meet minimum standards. Most districts, in their desperate rush to improve the performance of struggling students, have forgotten or ignored their obligations to students who exceed standards. These students spend their days reviewing material for proficiency tests they mastered years before, instead of learning something new. This is a profoundly alienating experience.

Question: How well is the United States preparing able students to compete in the world economy?

Answer: Very poorly.

Of all students obtaining doctorates in engineering in American universities, just 39 percent are Americans. According to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, "The performance of U.S. physics and advanced math students was among the lowest of the 16 countries that administered the ... assessments."

Question: What group of special-needs students receives the least funding?

Answer: Our brightest students.

And it's getting worse. For example, Illinois, New York, and Oregon recently cut all state funding for gifted programs.

We must all be equal at all costs. America is most certainly in decline, but like the citizens of the Roman Empire, no one will notice until the barbarians come through the gates.

I didn't seem to get anything done last night, but I was busy all night until after bed time. Just one of those things, I guess. A lot of the night was taken up with fetching all the updates to Windows 2000, anti-virus software, and spyware checkers. I swear I spend half my time on-line trying to keep the bad guys out of my PC.

I am continuing to tweak the dial-up connection. It isn't as painful switching back to dial-up as I though it would be. Probably because out "high-speed" connection never was. In any case, I will be configuring a PC as a router, firewall, and a proxy server. That will be fun as a project and will also be something I can set up for some other people. I need to find some sort of use for all the junk PC's setting around the house. This is as good as any other.

Not much planned for tonight. Nestina has soccer practice and Key Club stuff after school, so I will meet Debbie for dinner so we can kill time and avoid extra driving now that gas is inching up to $2.50/gallon.

Some thoughts on Iraq. I've never thought much of the "Bush lied" campaign primarily because (1) we know Saddam had chemical weapons, (2) we know he was perfectly willing to use them and in fact used them on his own population, and (3) certainly did his best to convince everyone in the world that he had chemical weapons and was trying to get nuclear weapons. Still, I do find it distressing that the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in human history depends on dumbed-down verbal reports.

Fred on democracy. Many have said that no form of participatory government is stable in the long run because the people eventually learn to vote themselves money and influence. It appears we are seeing that play out right now.

Stupid is as Stupid does. The signs are all around, but is anyone reading them? A cashier that is too young to remember 2-dollar-bills is hardly surprising, but is there no one on the Baltimore police department over the age of 20? Why did they have to hold someone three hours in cuffs until the Treasury department showed up? Should the local Baltimore bank branches start giving lessons to the police department on how to discern legitimate currency from counterfeit?

And I have to run.

Very small group at youth group last night. (Is two a group?) But it was still good. I just did a very informal Q&A thing. Not much other than that.

I got a bit of a break from the routine today. My Pastor came by the hospital and picked me up for a presentation by Baptist Bible College and Seminary out at Lake Ann Camp. They fed us well, and the presentation was good. The best part was the admission that (1) the traditional way of doing things no longer works, and (2) we are not really sure what does, but we are trying to find out. That sort of honesty is surprisingly rare in many Christian organizations. In any case, I got out of the cube farm and out in the nice weather for a bit.

From the web today:

13 Things that do not make sense. One issue I have with this article (and others like it) is how they report that some phenomenon "violates the laws of physics." Sorry, folks; reality cannot violate reality. What may be violated is our understanding of certain physical mechanisms. Our model of a particular law of physics may not hold up well under new or more accurate data. Our measurement of a phenomenon may not be accurate. But a physical event cannot violate the laws of physics. My second gripe is how everything is being presented as "overturning the world of physics/chemistry/biology." Einstein did not refute Newton; he refined Newton as the result of new, more accurate data. Steven Hawking is not refuting Einstein; he is refining the model Einstein left us (which was acknowledged by Einstein as incomplete). Science is tentative: Model X best explains what we know now. That model may be tweaked, revised, or rebuilt based on new data. But no scientist speaks of his discovery "overturning" or "refuting" anything. Only non-scientists, like the anti-evolution crowd, are that arrogant.

And the politics surrounding Terri Schiavo continue. I expected this. The best part comes from the mouth of Senator Mel Martinez (R-Fla.):

I never did an investigation, as such. I just took it for granted that we wouldn't be that stupid. It was never my intention to in any way politicize this issue.

Yea. Right. Please excuse my cynicism, senator.

The focus of this article is creating a $100 laptop for children, but I think that misses a big part of the picture. Sure, every school-aged child owning a laptop would be revolutionary, but I think this could profoundly change how computing is viewed by society. Computers are already becoming ubiquitous; knock the price down to 100 bucks and they will be everywhere. When I was growing up, the typical household had a TV. Today, it is not unusual for every person in the household to have their own TV. I see the same thing happening with computers. Ten years ago, everyone talked about getting a computer in every household. Get the price down to $100, and it will be a computer for every person.

And I need to pack it in and go pick up Nestina from soccer practice.

I worked late last night and had to stop at Sam's club on the way home for a couple things, so I didn't get home until nearly 8pm. That didn't leave a lot of time for anything else.

I did spend several hours setting up the laptop to use the new Earthlink dialup connection. It worked pretty well except I was never able to download all the Earthlink software. I'm not that interested in most of it; all I want to take a look at is the accelerator they distribute. I used one of those a long time ago and didn't have a lot of luck with it. I figure it is time to see if the state of the art has advanced.

Tonight is youth group. I know that a couple people will be missing due to driver education, so I expect a very small group.

Other than that, not much else is going on.

This is an article on running that is really about much more. It explains why the Space Shuttle is on the ground, and why the last Saturn V was turned into a lawn ornament.

And back to work.

I think Blogger is trying to drive me nuts (and yes, I know that would be a putt, not a drive). I was not able to post anything on April 1, so I saved my post in an e-mail. I just posted it to that date, when like magic, all my previous attempts surfaced. So a little cleanup later, we have a normal April 1 posting. I have also posted back-dated entries from the last couple of days, so you may want to scroll down some and make sure you haven't missed one of my exciting posts!

Well, I should probably do something for my employer now. They get funny about that sort of thing. Especially when they pay you. I find that attitude rather strange.

I ordered a dial-up connection through EarthLink today. I had considered going with a local outfit like last time, but I think I'm tired of dealing with incompetent local businesses. EarthLink will cost a little more a month than some of the local outfits, but at least I'm pretty sure they will still be around in five years. I'm also certain they have fatter pipes connecting their local access points to the internet. The account will be active in 20 minutes of my phone call, so I should be able to get to the internet tonight and finally catch up on my posting.

Speaking of incompetence, I am trying to order a second phone line from Verizon, my government-protected monopoly phone service provider. They have this slick web site that lets me put in my phone number, some other personal information to verify my identity, then order all kinds of stuff like extra phone lines, long distance, etc. I need a second phone line if I am going to go back to dial-up. So I go through this long process filling out all kinds of forms for all kinds of options, get the last page that tells you what your new phone number is and how much it all costs (almost half the cost is taxes; and people wonder why I'm libertarian...), and.... Service Unavailable; please try again later. Over and over. No matter how many times I try, I cannot get past the last screen and finalize the deal.

Aha! I found the trick. Criticize the company on my blog and like magic, the web site begins to work. Of course some bright college-degree-holding web programmer decided that no one would ever need more than 90 characters to give directions to their house. Stupid.

Yesterday was another beautiful day, even if I had to watch most of it through a window. We didn't have much time to do anything other than the usual running around, food, relaxing, then bedtime. We live such extraordinary lives.

This is pretty funny. It is one of my biggest peeves about education. The problem, of course, is that only about 20% of any high school graduating class have any business in a university, but we as a society have decided that college education is a right like freedom of speech, and therefore must be available to everyone regardless of their mental ability. So the entire class suffers by being slowed down by morons like this.

Here are some thoughts on the future of the US. I tend to agree, although, like any prediction, there is more uncertainty than certainty.

That's it for today. I'm calling the phone company to have our second phone line reconnected. The wireless is, as far as I'm concerned, dead.

Our internet connection is still down. Our wireless company did work on their towers on Saturday. All that did was increase the frustration by almost working as opposed to there not even being a glimmer of connectivity. We are simply too far away from the tower, or there are too many trees in the way. That is all there is to it.

The weather has been beautiful lately. The daytime temps have been in the 50's and sunny. Debbie was downstate visiting her mother, so Nestina and I spent the entire day wandering around the property, digging a small pond, and setting a couple rocks that will eventually form a retaining wall. I am reserving all my Saturdays from here until snow flies next winter for such pursuits (yea, right).

Sunday was church in the AM and the afternoon spent on small projects. The church had a group come in for the evening service that we used before. Nestina worked the phones and got a fair-sized group of teens to come. The problem was that the group had gone through a transition of sorts with the result being a dramatic shift in musical style and ability. I guess the nicest thing I can say is that neither change was positive. In any case, we hung out afterwards with the teens, ate pizza and junk food, and played soccer in the gym until after 9pm. The rest was home, then bed. Even though it felt good to work hard Saturday, then play hard on Sunday, I am pretty sore today.

Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) died on Saturday. Others have commented far more eloquently than I ever could. This is one Protestant that will be praying for the Roman Catholic leadership and laity. Whatever I may think of his theology, he was far closer to God than I can ever hope to be.

Jerry Pournelle says it best:

The Republic is safe. Martha Stewart is still on probation and has served prison time for telling investigators she did not do an act that turned out not to be criminal if she had done it. Sandy Berger will pay a fine for removal of national security documents and for destroying some of them; and will not be charged with lying to federal officers when he said he hadn't done it, then said it was inadvertent. We will not be safer for jailing Sandy Berger.

And from Jerry's mailbag:

Subject: Political Correctness rules our schools

In Oregon, McKay High School principal Cynthia Richardson has banned a picture of graduate Bill Riecke from an exhibit showcasing past McKay graduates. Cpl. Riecke, USMC, is serving in Iraq, and the picture was taken there. Ms. Richardson prohibited the photo because Cpl. Riecke is armed. She offered to post the picture if the weapon was digitally removed with Photoshop.

Full story here: http://www.katu.com/stories/76079.html

Beth Macknik

I wish that were an April Fool's Day joke, but alas...

Clearly what the schools need is more money and higher salaries for principals. That will fix everything.

Subject: Dark days indeed

http://space.com/news/050331_hubble_deorbit_plan.html

NASA Review: Hubble Headed For Deorbit-Option Only

"A major review last week of servicing the Hubble Space Telescope has led NASA officials to a 'deorbit only' position."

There was a time some at NASA dreamed of walking not just on the moon, not just on Mars, but on other worlds circling other stars. We now can't even fix a telescope orbiting our planet and don't even have the will to try. Spend all the money on ISS and Shuttle. Damn all the rest. Didn't they learn anything by turning the most powerful machine ever built into a lawn ornament just to get a poor excuse for a spaceship? This hurts.

My promise to any politician reading this (as if they care): I will never vote for another politician that squanders my money on NASA.

Braxton S. Cook

NASA has done some good. But mostly that was long ago.

And as if we needed it, one more reason to hate what NASA has become since the Apollo days.

Another indication just how far out of synch with reality the average adult is with reality. This should not come as a surprise to anyone paying the least attention to our kids.

And another Vox Day column hits the mark. I don't agree that what was done in Florida was clearly legal, but it is certainly within the bounds of what could be legal, given current political reality.

And a reminder from Vox Day about priorities. It is truely amazing that the western world is so fabulously wealthy that we can afford to pay people unimaginable sums of money to play games for our collective amusement. But at the end of the day, they are still just games.

That's it for today.

Another week slips by. We were busy without much of anything going on. Nestina is on spring break, so things ought to be less hectic, but somehow a normal week continues to elude us.

Monday was the kick-off meeting for the church's web design team, Tuesday was a deacon's meeting, Wednesday was youth group, and yesterday we had invited a half-dozen or so people over to our house for dinner (two showed up). So now it's Friday, and I'm not sure what happened to my week.

In any case, tonight is supposed to be just the three of us relaxing at home, having a home-cooked meal, watching movies, etc. I'm not betting the bank account that it will actually happen, but it sounds good in theory.

And if you have sent me e-mail that I have not responded to, I am sorry. We still have no internet connection at home despite my taking Wednesday off work to be home for yet another technician to come and swap around equipment. The connection is just plain dead. In the past when we had problems, there would at least be a few packets that would get through, or things would work sporatically as the connection dropped in and out. Now there is nothing. As I said before, this has been an expensive experiment. I will be signing us up for a dialup connection and a second phone line today. I am all done with wireless.

Terry Schiavo is dead; executed by the courts of Florida and these United States by dehydration (in less enlightened times, that would be called torture). For her, it is over and one can only hope she has finally found peace. For those of us left alive, I am afraid that this is just the beginning. I hear a lot of posturing and hot air, but what I don't see is anyone actually defending the concept of a republic ruled by the people. I'm not sure what the technical name is for a nation ruled by judges holding lifetime appointments, but it is certainly not a republic. There are some people in this country that think this may prove to be important somewhere along the way. Not many, but some.

At the very least, I would like to see Jeb Bush, acting fully within his constitutional powers, fire Florida probate court judge George Greer. It won't happen for reasons I have already stated and have been proven true by the complete lack of any effective action. There was lots of action, but none of it accomplished anything. There was only one thing to do; remove Judge Greer and reinsert the feeding tube until qualified medical personnel (not hand-selected by her husband who clearly wished his wife out of the way) could determine her condition. If the National Guard needed to be used to accomplish this, then so be it. Instead we have the Bush Pussies running around doing nothing of worth while a woman is tortured to death over nearly two weeks.

The Bush Pussies. Sounds like the name of a punk rock band.

Anyway, back to work.

I put up a quick summary of our cruise yesterday. I dated the entry for March 20, which is when we officially returned home. I can't add any pictures yet due to our still-broken internet connection. When that gets resolved, I will stick some photos into the post.

I started looking for a new ISP today. It's a painful process. Our old one used to be pretty good, but I just called there and had a fairly painful conversation with a no-nothing dweeb who had to put me on hold for every question and ask someone else for the answer. Why do places do this? I understand having front line people to allow the technical staff some time to actually do technical stuff, but when Front Line Guy is clearly in over his head, take the phone and talk directly to the customer. Hearing every question you ask repeated by Front Line Guy to someone else, then hearing a muffled response, then hearing that response repeated by Front Line Guy back to you, is just plain annoying. Besides, I already knew the answer to my question as I had previously talked to the owner. The answer I got this time was different. This is called a test. You failed.

I tried a couple other places: one has a disconnected phone line (never a good sign), and the other is closed for Good Friday. I guess I will start over on Monday.

Other than being pissed that my $65/month internet connection has been down for a week, there really hasn't been much happening. We are just marking time until the snow melts. We did have a friendly letter from the code office that all the permits on our house have been canceled and all work must cease on the house. To which I respond: screw you, asshat. You want to stop me from working on my house, Bob, you come and try. I have a .44 Magnum and a swamp. And no one I've met that lives or works construction in Antrim County would bother to look for you.

Speaking of killing people, the Terri Schaivo case has become positively surreal. Here are my thoughts on the case in no particular order.

1. Terri is not in a persistent vegetative state. She responds. Regardless of how you view her "quality of life," at least get the basic facts of the case right.

2. No one is really sure what her long-term prospects are (although they certainly don't look all that great) largely because anyone who could evaluate her condition has been prevented from doing so by a judge. I know judges like to think of themselves as God's Anointed, but this is completely ridiculous.

3. The Florida judge has ruled that the legislature is not allowed to pass any laws that he personally doesn't approve of. Not that the law is unconstitutional, just that he personally doesn't like it, so therefore, he is ordering hospice personnel to starve Terri to death in direct defiance of the Florida legislature.

4. If Jeb Bush had any balls (and it doesn't appear he does), he would send in National Guard medical personnel to reinsert Terri's feeding tube under the guard of armed, National Guard soldiers.

5. If George Bush had any balls (and it doesn't appear he does), he would send in Army medical personnel to reinsert Terri's feeding tube under the guard of armed, Army soldiers.

6. Neither Bush has balls. There is a joke in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to find it. I leave it as an exercise for the reader.

7. It is unlawful in every place I know of to kill or even, through neglect or ignorance, allow harm to come to any animal by starvation and dehydration. Yet this is what we do to a human being that has become inconvenient.

8. Expect more of this as Medicare/caid comes to eat an ever-increasing share of the economy. We kill the unborn in the name of economic efficiency and convenience. We are now killing Terri in the name of economic efficiency and convenience. If you are over 70, be afraid: you are next. Don't think so? Do some research on medical rationing practices in Holland.

9. If the husband had any balls or sense of decency, he would walk into Terri's hospital room and shoot her in the head. It can't possibly be considered murder as she is already being executed by thirst, one of the most painful ways to die. Shooting her would be the equivalent of hanging a charge of black powder around the neck of someone being burned at the stake.

I could go on, but why bother? No one cares and we all get to watch Terri slowly die on cable TV. The ultimate reality show. What this case has shown is just how far from a republic we have drifted. We are now ruled by an aristocracy of judges who only permit the state and federal legislatures to rule inside carefully proscribed boundaries that the judiciary can change on a whim. The last time this happened, a little dust-up typically referred to in history books as the Revolutionary War took place. I doubt that would happen today. I mean, what would happen to my 401k?

Enough. It's time to head for home.

No updates for a while mostly because we spent 6 wonderful days in warm, sunny weather on board Carnival's Inspiration. We made port in Grand Cayman and Cozumel. Then we had to come home to snow and cold.

I was going to put up a quick run-down of our trip at some point, but our internet connection has been down since we got home. The whole wireless thing looks to be a rather expensive experiment in technology that doesn't quite work. I will be contacting our old dial-up service provider about getting set up with a dual-modem router and a nailed-up connection. It won't be as fast, but I know it will work. It's hard to call a 300+ kbp connection that never works a "high-speed connection." The dual modem setup will cost more, but I have to have something that I know I can use at any time day or night without having to wait until normal business hours and make a bunch of phone calls, wait several days for a tech to come out to the house, etc. I get calls from work at 3am that require that I have a working internet connection to fix. Either that, or I drive 70 miles round trip to Traverse City. The first time I have to do that I will be well and truly pissed.

This week so far has been just going to work and going home. Tonight is youth group, which means I get to see all the kiddies. For some reason, when I miss a Wednesday night, it seems like I haven't talked to them for weeks. I am hoping several specific people show up; one I need to yell at, the other three I need to follow up with regarding questions they had at the retreat a couple weeks back. We won't be doing the usual youth group thing; I volunteered the teens as slave labor to stuff the several thousand plastic Easter eggs for the community Easter egg hunt we are doing on Saturday.

That's it for now. I will work on a trip report today and possibly post it before I leave work this afternoon. I will try to post more routinely now that our lives have gone from absolutely crazy to just chaotic.

Debbie and I go Cruising

Saturday, March 12, 2005

We frantically pack stuff and try to get ready to drive down state. We make sure we have the two most important things: our passports and a credit card. Everything else you can buy as you need it. Yea, right. At long last I throw three very full suitcases and three very heavy carry-on bags into the truck. We both give Nestina big hugs and say all the stupid things adults say to their kids (be good; be careful; no drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sex, or fun; yada yada yada). We made it down to Debbie's mom's house in Burt. The three of us started warming up for the cruise by heading to a local buffet for dinner.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

We got up early and went to the 8am Mass with Debbie's mom. Strange church; their 8am Mass starts at 8:30... We came home and organized luggage, then, realizing we had over an hour to wait for Debbie's aunt who was riding with us, we sat and stared at each other and the clock. Luckily for us, Debbie's aunt showed up an hour early because she was just sitting around her house staring at her clock. Cool. With the help of a complex packing algorithm and a bungee cord, we got the four of us and our luggage into Debbie's mom's car and off to Bishop Airport.

We got there and got ourselves and all of our group on the plane without anyone being arrested by the TSA goon squad. My 92-year-old WASP grandfather, who closely resembles the profile of a typical terrorist, was singled out for the full once-over. At least they spared him a body cavity search. Thank you TSA for terrorizing my grandfather the first time he ever stepped foot on an airplane.

The flight was uneventful as we were saved the trauma of someone hijacking the airplane with a pair of tweezers by the ever-vigilant TSA. The in-flight meal was excellent primarily because we stopped at Subway on the way to the airport and bought lunch for ourselves. Otherwise, we would have had to be content with a bag of nuts (complete with warning label that it may contain nuts). There was more chaos at the Tampa airport getting everyone herded off the plane and into the ground transport to the hotel. Once there, all was more or less quiet until one of our party decided to start singing loudly by the pool at 2am. We suspect alcohol may have been involved.

Monday, March 14, 2005

Early morning chaos as we loaded over 60 people into vans and busses and shipped them all to the port. We managed not to lose anyone, although it was a close call. I don't think there is an orderly way to transport that many people and their luggage without a lot more organizational skills than either Debbie or I have. It doesn't help when you are not really sure just what will be showing up to transport everyone. If we had known that there was going to be one bus that held n people and n2 vans that each held n3 people, we could have had everyone grouped up and ready to go. Unfortunately, that information seems to be classified.

At the pier, more chaos mainly because all the front line people that work for the port authority don't speak English. At all. I know I don't follow the news very closely these days, but I am fairly certain Tampa is part of the United States and, it follows, that the port employees are employed by the United States government. If you are going to make a living off my tax dollars, then you best learn to speak my default language. I know saying that makes me a horrible person and I'm sure to burn in Hell for eternity, but there it is. We also had to endure an organized shake-down by the porters who first ignored our luggage, leaving it lying in the middle of the street for 20 minutes, then using force to prevent us from taking our own bags into the gate, then holding our bags hostage until they had been given sufficient "tips." I thought our van drivers had missed their exit and dropped us in some in Central American banana republic. That certainly would have explained the lack of English skills.

Once through the gate and in the hands of the Carnival people, everything changed. Service was prompt, efficient, and polite. In no time we were on our ship and waiting to leave port. We stood with a good percentage of the rest of the passengers on the far forward decks and watched Tampa Bay go by. It wasn't very scenic as it was largely oil terminals, but it was warm. For the first time in 6 months, I actually felt warm. We had our first meal in the main dining room and the first show. That was pretty much the day.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

This was a full day at sea, which meant for us that we sat in the sun and read, sat in the sun and napped, and sat in the sun and ate. We didn't participate in any of the activities on board or even make an effort to watch them. Snow became a distant memory; something we had heard about once, but couldn't quite wrap our brain around. Another excellent dinner and a pretty good show.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

We "docked" in Grand Cayman very early. The harbor isn't deep enough to allow cruise ships up to the piers, so we anchored off shore and rode a tender to the dock. Debbie, her mom, her aunt, and I all went on one of the tours to Stingray City, a sandbar populated by very friendly stingrays. You can feed them, hold them, pet them, swim with them, etc. Very cool. The surprise to me was how cold the water was. It wasn't like Torch Lake or anything, but it was obvious we were a long way from the Gulf Stream. That took up most of the time we had in port. In fact, we were technically late getting back to the pier, but as we had booked the shore excursion through Carnival, we were in no danger of being left. That didn't prevent one lady from absolutely freaking out that she was going to be left in Grand Cayman because her ship was leaving at 2pm. No amount of talking could convince her that half the people on the bus were on the same ship and no cruise line is going to leave several dozen passengers stranded on shore. Besides, I was trying to figure out why being stranded in Grand Cayman would be a bad thing. There was a lot of construction going on due to the last hurricane and I can swing a hammer as good an anyone else. The climate is such that you can essentially live in a tent.

Anyway, when we got back to the pier, about 1,000 other people from our ship were standing there waiting for tenders to take them back. Another ship had "docked" and all the tenders were busy shipping those people on shore and left us with no way back to our ship. Another of the ships actually used its lifeboats to retrieve passengers. We got to stand in the hot sun and bake for a couple hours. If anyone tried to complain, I just said, "Think snow." We got back on the ship in time for another awesome dinner and a show.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Today we docked for real in Cozumel. Debbie was staying on the ship to relax and the rest of the group were doing various beach, snorkel, scuba, and drinking packages. I wanted to swim with dolphins. So I went on a shore excursion all by my little self. It was absolutely awesome. I always knew dolphins were way cool, but this really proved it for me. We spent a good half hour swimming with, petting, and kissing dolphins. I bought the DVD of my group for around $35 bringing the total cost of the excursion to $190. Worth every penny.

I will digress here to make some observations. I've figured out why Mexico is stuck in chronic poverty in spite of the billions in US dollars that pour into the country through tourism alone. I was always told that Mexicans were lazy. I didn't see any lazy Mexicans in my time in Cozumel. What I did see was a lot of very busy Mexicans not accomplishing much. My first example is when I walked on shore, found where my tour group was supposed to meet, and tried to purchase a bottle of water. Now this doesn't seem like a hard thing. But this is Mexico. I found a store that sells bottled water easy enough, but then I tried to pay for it. First, stand in line for 20 minutes only to find out that the register I was standing at was credit card only. Well, I wasn't going to charge a bottle of water on the Visa, so I moved to the cash-only line. There were only two people there and none of them had that much. How long could this take? Did I mention I was in Mexico?

It turns out that it can take a very long time. The reason was not the fault of the people at the registers, but in the procedure they had to follow to accept US currency (which despite all appearances, is not the national currency of Mexico). Ring up the sale in pesos on the register. Calculate the exchange to US currency on a small hand calculator. Fill out an 8.5x11 form. Staple one copy of the register receipt to the form and place in a pile with several hundred other forms. Fill out a smaller form. Staple the yellow copy of the register receipt to that form and place in a second pile. Finally, take my money and give me my change. All of this was for a $3 bottle of water. Now understand that this was not because I was some sort of arrogant American that refused to change my dollars to pesos. The person in front of me attempted to pay for his purchase with pesos and was not allowed to because this was the US-currency-only register. There was yet a third register if you wished to pay in pesos.

Purchasing the DVD of my dolphin swim was even more painful. There were over 70 people in our group. We were divided into smaller groups of 10 or 11 and assigned a letter. We were group "D" as in dolphin. Easy enough. We do our swim, then head back to shore to watch our DVD. We never find it. Several people point us in several directions, but we never do find where our video is being shown. I head into the gift shop and ask where the group D photos and DVD's are and get directed to the correct line. Wait in line for several minutes only to find out that our stuff isn't ready yet. I have time; no problem. Numerous times while I am waiting, the same person asks what I am waiting for. I respond "Group D's DVD." This would spark a flurry of shouted Spanish to other workers in the gift shop and into his two-way radio. After several minutes he would tell me, again, that it would be ready soon. Understand that this is the same guy asking every time. In any case, our DVD is finally done and I get to view it on one of the TV's set up for that purpose behind the counter. I liked what I saw and asked to buy it. Out comes a form full of bar codes representing the various photo and video products. Circle what I am buying, scratch out everything else on the three-part form and point me to a register. This time I'm smart and find the credit card register without first standing in line at the wrong register (I noticed the three-register system; credit card register, US dollar register, peso register; used in many places while in Cozumel). I'm paying with a Visa, which I assume would be much simpler than cash because the sale would just be rung up in pesos and Visa handles the currency conversion. Silly me. More forms (three in all this time), more stapled register receipts, more piles. After more than 10 minutes at the register, I am handed the pink and blue copies of my forms stamped "Paid" and sent back the photo/video counter I started at. Another 20 minutes of rummaging around behind the counter and several people running (literally) back and forth before they find a copy of the DVD I just bought. The DVD is played to confirm that it is the correct one. The pink copy is stapled to a form that I have to sign and date confirming that I did in fact view said video and that it was indeed the video from my group. At long last, I finally had my DVD in my hand and could leave to catch my ride back to the ship. The entire operation took over an hour, and involved no fewer that 5 employees that I saw. (I assume there were others that actually produced and duplicated the DVD's in some dark, locked room.) All for a $35 DVD. No wonder the Mexican economy can't seem to get rolling. It's like trying to run a marathon with cement blocks tied to your feet.

In any case, I headed back on ship. While I was off swimming with dolphins, our ship had to move away from the pier to make room for another ship. The tender service was far superior to what was in Grand Cayman. The boats ran on a regular schedule. They were large, comfortable, and efficient. The retail people could learn something from the tender people. I found Debbie, and headed straight to a buffet as I had not eaten in several hours. We meet up with my niece and her friend and sat down for a relaxing meal. Now the real adventure begins.

I noticed a line of black clouds racing towards us and make some comment that it looked sort of nasty. Suddenly the wind slams us broad-side and the ship is tilted about 10 degrees to the port. Hmm. Crew members frantically stack and tie down deck chairs that start going airborne. Several people are trapped out on deck because four men, two pulling from the outside and two pushing from the inside, are unable to open the door into the wind. I look the other direction and notice that we are slowing being blown into another ship. The entire ship starts vibrating as the engines are panic started. Several maneuvers are tried and we continue to get closer to the other ship. Finally, the captain slams the throttle to full ahead (Did I mention that we were pointed directly at the shore at this point?), and does a tighter U-turn than I would have ever thought possible for a ship that size. We finally get back out into deep water, position the ship with the stern into the wind and drop anchor.

The storm passes, and around 6pm a slot opens up at the pier so we can tie up. We end up being there several hours later than our scheduled departure. The intercom says that we are missing two passengers. I know cruise lines make a big deal out of their customer focus, but I found it incredible that Carnival would hold a ship for three hours because two people don't make it back. The rumor mill starts up at this point: two crew members were missing, the captain was missing, the captain was drunk. The next day, one of our group talks to a crew member. Yes there were two people missing. No, normally they would not have held the ship that long for two people. The ship was held by the Mexican port authority because our little maneuver put us in very shallow water (those on the back of the ship reported seeing a lot of mud kicked up by the screws). They held us either to determine if there was damage to the ship, or to determine if the ship damaged the coral, or both. We never got a straight answer to that one. In any case, we had a little adventure on the high seas.

Dinner was excellent, once again. Tonight was supposed to be the guest talent show. There was exactly one person who participated. We thought maybe we just had a uncooperative group, but then we remembered that try-outs were scheduled for 2pm yesterday when half the guests on the ship were standing on shore with no way back to the ship. In any case, the comedian that followed was really lame. Part of the problem was that she came prepared with 15 or 20 minutes of material, then ended up doing an hour show because there was only one gig for the talent show. It was obvious she was really scraping the bottom of the barrel. This was easily the worst evening entertainment of the cruise. She also had a midnight adults-only show which we passed on.

We didn't pass on the midnight Mexican buffet, although rough seas from the storm certainly kept me from taking full advantage of it. There were a lot of... interesting dishes which I would have experimented with under normal circumstances, but not on a heaving ship. Vomiting up Mexican food once in my life was enough for me.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Our second full day at sea, and it is a rough one. The storm yesterday was really kicking up some wind and surf. All night we listened to the bow of the ship hitting the swells. Boom! Boom! Boom! Up, down, up, down, up, down. Debbie was looking noticeably green by morning. I was doing OK, but I could tell right away that there wouldn't be any heavy eating that day. I was up early and wandering around the ship. The whole thing was creaking. Loudly. I was trying to get on one of the upper forward decks to take pictures of the bow wave which, from our balcony, looked like it was hitting up around the fourth deck. The crew had roped off the stairs to all the upper decks due to the wind. I wandered around until I found one they had missed. As my head cleared the deck, I realized there was a good reason for the upper deck being closed; I was nearly blown backwards down the stairs. So, logically, I continued out onto the top deck. Standing was a major challenge. Moving was nearly impossible. Due to the shape of the front of the ship, the wind was blowing down onto the deck as hard as it was blowing across the deck. I was nearly driven to my knees several times. I made it to the front of the ship only to realize that I didn't dare let go long enough to take pictures. In any case, I couldn't see what I wanted to take pictures of. So I went staggering back to the stairs with the wind now slamming into my back. I had to think a second about how to approach the stairs so that I wouldn't go down them on my face. I figured out a method that at least worked once. I wandered around the ship some more until I finally found a decent place to take my pictures from, but I was frustrated by the lag time of our digital camera. I would press the shutter button when I wanted the picture taken, but of course the camera takes a full second to actually record the image. Normally, that doesn't matter much, but I was trying to catch the spray at its peak. I never really succeeded, but at least digital images don't cost much.

The seas calmed down in the afternoon, although we still had a noticeable bounce. We had our last meal in the dining room and the final show was pretty amazing. We hosted an "open house" in our room because we had the biggest room you could get on this ship as a sort of thank you gift from Carnival to Debbie for booking over 90 people on this cruise. That took up most of our time between dinner and the show. After the show, we had to pack, which occupied us up until the midnight buffet. We ate until we were tired, then went to bed.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

We woke up at the Tampa pier today. Vacation is over. I stuck my nose out our balcony door. It was cold. If Tampa felt cold, I was going to be in big trouble when we landed in Flint. We had our last meal on the ship, then wandered over to our gathering point for leaving the ship. Something was wrong with the intercom because we never got an announcement to leave. We finally just got up as a group and left. That was the only major bobble I observed in Carnival's crowd management, and wasn't anything major. We claimed our bags and headed for the door. You are supposed to have proof of citizenship to get out of the building. For cruises, they accept either a passport or a birth certificate and photo ID. The feds have been making a big deal that since 9/11 everyone needs to get a passport instead of relying on a birth certificate/photo ID. So I spent the $120 to get one. The idiot at the port didn't just not look at the thing, but actually refused to look at it, telling me to get moving when I stopped to open it up and show him my photo. I have to half-undress to get on a domestic flight due to "security concerns," but I can walk off a ship returning to the US after being at two foreign ports without even a glance at my passport. Tell me again how all this crap has anything to do with preventing terrorism?

More chaos with the ground transportation. Some people are going back to the hotel, some are going directly to the airport. Lots of yelling, most of it accomplishing little that was useful. I don't know if it was my look of pure hatred or what, but the porters gave us a wide berth and we took our own bags out to the vans unmolested. We got to the airport with nearly seven hours to kill before our flight left. So we slept, ate, and read. The difference was we had to keep paying money to get food. What conversation there was went something like this: "Hey, we're missing second breakfast. What are we going to do for early lunch? Where can I get soft-serve ice cream at midnight? Who is going to make my 2am pizza?" Reality bites.

The TSA at the Tampa airport are obviously under the spell of The Mouse. They were pleasant, efficient, and actually managed to smile on occasion, rather than glare at everyone who dared to make eye contact. The only person I saw having difficulty was a guy with a rather strange looking laptop. Given that laptop batteries do look a lot like explosives on x-ray (and, in fact can be easily made into a bomb if you know how), a little extra scrutiny is probably warranted. But even then, they were pleasant and everyone was smiling and joking while the procedure was going on. Based on what I have seen personally, and the horror stories I have heard about the TSA at other airports, the Tampa TSA could become a profit center by selling lessons on how to treat everyday air passengers like citizens of a republic instead of subjects of Empire.

In any case we landed safely back in Flint, gathered our bags and headed back out to Debbie's mom's place for the night.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

We attended Mass with Debbie's mom and aunt, then had breakfast at a place that claims to be the only 501(c)3 restaurant in the US. They hire individuals from a nearby group home to wash dishes, work in the kitchen, bus tables, etc. The food was good, plentiful, and cheap. I wish these people luck. What they are doing could be a model for others to follow. After lunch, we grabbed our luggage and headed home.

The drive was uneventful, and Nestina did a great job keeping the house running while we were gone. (Thanks, babe!) We crashed for a bit, then headed into church for evening service, then dinner at Big Boy, and home to get ready for work.

And another week sneaks by without any posts. Most of last week, we were fighting off diseases. I could barely get myself off the couch. Of course we got hammered with a foot and a half of snow in three days, so I spend ten hours on Wednesday plowing snow at the church, my parent's place, and here. At least I got a complete clean plow for once. I've been doing mostly piecemeal plowing this year just because of time constraints.

This weekend, we had a retreat with the Jr. and Sr. High at a place just outside of Kalkaska. I was afraid there wouldn't be enough to keep the kids busy, but they had plenty to do. We were only there for about 24 hours (noon Saturday to noon Sunday) due to some scheduling problems, but everything worked out. I had one of the guys from my college study group come over and give a talk Saturday evening. I think what he had to say made some people really think including myself. I need to follow up with a couple of the teens over the next week or so. Everyone liked the place we used, so we will definitely be using it again. It is close to town, cheap, decent facility, and it is owned and operated by a couple that used to attend our church many years ago.

Needless to say, there wasn't a lot of sleeping going on Saturday, so we did some extra sleeping once we got home Sunday afternoon. All three of us were in bed before 10pm and morning still came way too early.

My truck is in the garage because the engineers at GM are retarded. Silverado trucks are having the electronic modules on the transmissions replaced like crazy because every time you make a left turn, the front tire sprays water directly into the electronics that are sticking out, unprotected, on the side of the transmission. GM needs to change their ads from Like a Rock to Like a Head Full of Rocks. In any case, it should be fixed by tomorrow morning and will only cost me several hundred instead of several thousand dollars, like I was expecting. Bunch of morons. I wonder how long it will be before the Japs start importing heavy duty trucks into the US? I've seen their big stuff they sell other places and it looks nice. I will not be buying anything built in the US again. It is obvious that we now only build mechanical junk that is designed to fail after a short period of normal use. This is only the third year my truck has been on the road and it is already experiencing major failures. That is just not good enough.

Anyway. Some reading assignments:

Vox Day is tearing things up over at WorldNetDaily. First he takes on the feminists. Then he takes on the stock market and the housing market. All three of these are important. You really want to read and understand what he is (and as importantly is not) saying.

And that should be enough for today. I need to get some photos up one of these days. I will work on it. Promise.

Our house needs a quarantine sign. Debbie stayed home from church Sunday morning because the local crud finally got the best of her. I had a minor sore throat, but that's fairly common for me in the winter. Nestina had spent the night at a friend's house, so I picked her up on my way in. About half-way through church it hit me: chills, joint pain, muscle pain, sinus pressure; the whole ball of wax. I was on praise team, of course. Somehow I stumbled onto the platform for the last set of songs and made a beeline for the door. I made Nestina drive home because I tend to get somewhat delusional when I have a fever. I changed into sweats and curled up in a blanket on my favorite chair, and barely moved. Debbie was already camped on the couch. Nestina remains unaffected in spite of us and every one of her friends being sick. About 7pm she was bouncing off the walls with boredom. Debbie and I are not the most exciting people to be around when we are well; being sick makes it even worse. We should have brought one of Nestina's friends home for the night. In any case, we survived.

I came to work this morning. I'm not entirely sure why. I felt slightly better when I got up, but that didn't last. I will be scooting out of here soon and finish the day working from home.

Terry Shiavo is back in the news again. I am not sure what to think in this case, but there have certainly been a lot of interference from a judge in what is, after all, a medical matter. What qualifies a judge to determine if and what physical therapy is appropriate? Using a ban on her parents seeing their dying daughter to silence them? Did I miss a memo? Does the Constitution not apply in Florida? (Silly question; of course it doesn't. Just like it no longer applies anywhere else in the United States.) Would someone explain to me why killing someone by starvation and dehydration is less cruel than keeping them alive "artificially?" If I kill an animal by those means, I would (rightly) be charged with a crime. Yet killing a human this way is described as being merciful. I feel like I have slipped into a Twilight Zone episode. In any case, Jerry Pournelle has something to say on this here and here.

And Jerry also takes on Global Warming again. Data. It's all about data. Anecdotes may make better news stories, but data is what makes science. We hear a lot about "global average temperature," but does the term even make sense? Is that surface temperatures? Atmospheric? Ocean? Freshwater? All of the above? How do you combine temperatures of ocean and atmosphere, for example? Do you apply a weighting to the numbers? It's pretty clear that ocean temperatures have a greater effect on climate than atmospheric, but how much greater? Why? Like they always say in grade school: show your work. The manipulations of the data are also important. It has been well established that any set of random numbers run through the most popular climate model will create the now-infamous hockey-stick graph.

This is not science. This is politics. The politics of envy. America is the most economically successful nation in human history. Kyoto would destroy our economy in favor of places like China, who are exempt. This, of course, is short-sighted to say the least. We are the market for Chinese exports. If Kyoto is implemented, it will destroy our economy, which will devastate China's; as well as every other nation with an export-based economy. Not many of those exports go to Algeria.

Enough. I need to go home and sleep.

Vox Day nails it. The money quote:

History teaches that the government you control today is the government that those you fear most will control tomorrow. Every muscle that you enjoy flexing today is one that will eventually used to punch you in the face. Far too many elements of the right have forgotten this, even as many leftists conveniently forget that the abuses they decry are the same sort of things they were perpetrating and cheering not so very long ago.

Read the whole thing here.

Not much else going on at the ranch other than working on the house and trying to maintain things at the same time.

This has been a strange week so far. First, everyone we know is sick with some strange upper-respiratory/sinus bug. Some of the school districts have closed completely do to lack of staff. Others are reporting up to 50% of the students are absent. Nestina was supposed to have a couple friends over for the weekend, but they are all sick. Debbie has been fighting this bug for several days. So far Nestina and I have been spared, but how long that will continue is in question.

We had a small group for youth group Wednesday night (see above) and none of the leaders were feeling particularly ambitious, so we just sat around and talked. One of the other leaders brought in pictures from the last youth mission trip to Peru, so that kept everyone occupied. I got to talk to the Jr. High teens, which I rarely get to do, so it was a good thing.

Yesterday, we went to the last regular season volleyball game at the high school. Kalkaska lost the best-of-five 3-1. The scores were as close as they can be in volleyball: the final score for two of the games was 24-26. The other team was a one-trick pony, but it was one heck of a trick. The Kalkaska ladies just couldn't shut down Charlevoix's two big spikers. It was a lot of fun, and I had a chance to talk to several people I hadn't seen in some time.

Tonight will probably just end up being a veg party as all the plans fell apart. And I need to get going so I can pick up Nestina from school.

Too much wishful thinking on my part. It now seems the Space.com report on the evidence for life on Mars was a fraud. I wondered why NASA, or anyone working with or for NASA would go this far out on a limb when up to this point, NASA has done everything possible to not make any statements that suggest definitive evidence of life. One would suspect that a photo of a Martian wearing Nike shoes and holding a "We Love Michael Jordan" sign would be reported as "strong evidence supporting the possibility of some form of biological activity." I didn't see anything in the report that would suggest any evidence more definitive that what had been previously reported, but then again, popularized scientific articles generally lack detail. I had hoped that I would hear more on this from my back channel sources after the Nature article appeared. Unfortunately, that part of the story was an absolute lie: nothing has been submitted to Nature.

Ah well. NASA (or the Chinese, or somebody) will send a probe that can drill and examine some deep cores. That will answer a lot of questions. I just hope I can hang on long enough to see it.

Back to work.

An entire week snuck by somehow and I haven't posted anything. Part of the problem has been connection problems. Our service provider keeps coming out and swapping equipment and making other changes, but we continue to have unreliable to non-existent internet access. When it works, it is a beautiful thing. When it works. We seem to have a stable combination of equipment right now, so we will see how it goes.

I won't even try to remember everything that happened over the last week. Nothing spectacular, just a lot of little things. We are starting to get into a routine around here. We will see how things go for the next couple of weeks, but things seem to be somewhat normal.

A lot of reading assignments have built up while I was slacking. I know everyone's life has been incomplete.

First, some geek humor:

Two engineering students meet on campus one day. The first engineer calls out to the other, "Hey -- Nice bike! Where did you get it?"

"Well," replies the other, "I was walking to class the other day when this pretty, young lady rides up on this bike. She jumps off, takes off all of her clothes, and says 'You can have ANYTHING you want!!'"

"Good choice," says the first, "her clothes wouldn't have fit you anyway."

And I am not the only paranoid person. Someone else seems to think that hate-speech legislation is sending our civilization and our churches off the rails.

The money quote:

I also wonder about the future of the church growth movement. They are, for all practical purposes, a business. Do you close the doors of a multi-million dollar business in the name of Christ? I have trouble believing that. The cynic in me says that if hate-speech legislation come to our shores, then we will see a rapid liberalization of the non-denominational mega-churches. I have to say that I think name of Jesus will be buddied up with Brahman, Buddha, and Mohammed in the name of the almighty dollar.

This is already well under way in Europe. I see nothing to stop it from happening here as well.

The news media are all a-buzz with the latest press release stating that the oceans are getting warmer. Jerry Pournelle cuts to the heart of the matter. Real science is about data. Where is the data?

And more Jerry Pournelle; this time on Iraq and Vietnam. I can't decide if people that claim to know more than I do can really be that willfully ignorant, or if it is intentional deception, but once again, Jerry has set things straight without me having to do anything. Every slackers dream.

And speaking of Jerry Pournelle, he just returned from a trip. It seems he tangled with the retards that staff the TSA. I have flown exactly once since 9/11. I will fly once more in March for the cruise celebrating my parents 50th anniversary. The next time I board an airplane will be with a one-way ticket out of the United States. Jerry is right. The TSA is a test. If we bow and scrape to these idiots instead of treating them as mad dogs and putting them down, we deserve what comes next.

Last week, we rented a movie. About half way through, it started skipping and otherwise acting up. I tried cleaning the DVD, but it still wouldn't play past a certain point in the movie. Nestina took it out, completely and thoroughly licked the DVD, dried it, and put it back in. It played perfectly. I asked her if she had thought about how many other people had already done that. She replied that she tries not to think about it. Well, it seems spit really is a good, all-purpose cleaner. I also now know there is more than one reason why I only handle rented DVD's by the edges.

Fred Reed blasts Maureen Dowd. Many people accuse Fred of hating all women. No, he just hates feminists. I would tend to agree with him. I have no idea why any woman would think that being an obnoxious pain in the rear will somehow endear them to a man. Of course if that column doesn't generate some serious hate mail, Fred follows it up with his view of the Larry Summers tempest in a tampon holder. Good thing Fred is in Mexico: I don't think he would live long in the States.

It's official: NASA is now talking about biological processes on Mars. And more talk here. And I really want to know what this is. I know what it looks like it is, but I would like to see more analysis of what it is. Lichen on Mars would be huge.

And more on water in Mar's past.

I haven't had much to say recently about the whole evolution vs. creation debate. I guess in my mind, there really isn't much debate. I can see with my own eyes that the earth is vastly older than 6,000 years. All of modern medicine, including the very drugs that have allowed me to live to the present time, are proof of the interrelatedness of all living organisms. I wish all the Discovery Institute folks would read and take to heart this bit from St. Augustine:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

[ italics referred to 1 Timothy 1:7]

(translation is by J. H. Taylor in "Ancient Christian Writers," Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.)

That is just spot on. Humility folks. It's all about humility. "Dr." Kent Hovind; are you listening?

And it is very, very late. I hope to post again before next week.

Another weekend came and went. At least I got a few things done during this one. Debbie worked Saturday, so Nestina and I cleaned house, finished painting the floors, started on another closet organizer, and other assorted tasks. We spent the evening at my sister's place being recruited into the Team of Destiny (the latest incarnation of the Amway empire). All I hear about is how much money everyone makes at this, but when I divide the gross revenue of the corporation by the number of Independent Business Owners, I get about $2,000 per year. As a supplemental income, that isn't that great. It certainly won't pay off my house in 5 years and let me retire in 10. Working the same number of hours, I could make that much in a month in a variety of ways. Or maybe it is the greatest thing since sliced bread and I'm just going to miss out.

Sunday, we had a progressive dinner between services with the teens. It went pretty well. One of last year's high school grads was saved after the morning service. I was geeked. Anyway, a good day all around.

Monday was just work then home to spend the entire evening trying to find the top of my desk. I actually succeeded. I can finally get back to working on my college stuff. Today was a little goofy. Debbie was working late, so she sent Nestina home with her car. We drove in around 7pm to get her and pick some things up at Nestina's mom's place. We barely got in the door and one of Nestina's friends called and wanted to spend the night. So I drove Nestina back into town to pick up her friend. Lots of extra miles, but I promised Nestina's friends when she moved out here, that they could come out any time they wanted to.

That's pretty much it. There is some good stuff out there that I need to link into here and make some comments, but it's way past my bedtime.

Later.

Another exciting day at the Frost household. We went to work/school. We came home. We went to bed.

Wow.

The big news in the tech world is that Carly Fiorina was fired from HP. All I can say is "About time!" That woman was the worst possible person for that job. To make the whole thing even more surreal, I had to suffer through an entire chapter of breathless prose in one of my college text books bragging the worthless wench as one of the greatest managers in the world. HP used to have really cool hardware and an arrogant sales force (If you didn't know that you needed HP and what you needed from them, you weren't smart enough to use HP equipment). After Carly was done, the arrogant sales force was still there, only now they are peddling mostly junk. Lets hope with her out of the picture, someone with some brains will turn the whole mess around.

And that is all I have the energy for.

I've blogged my first photographs from Flickr. It's easy to do, but I don't like the results much. I need to do some more reading so I can make better-looking posts. In any case, Wednesday was work and youth group. Today was work, meet with Debbie and Nestina for dinner, plow the church, then home.

I need to get some sleep. More when I can keep my eyes open.

Nestina on display

Debbie got the wise idea of using Nestina in the window display of the travel agency that she works at. That is not a wig; the name of the hair dye is Napalm Orange.

Car Crash (front view)

I'm still trying to figure out how Nestina walked away from this with some bruises and a microscopic cut on one finger from all the broken glass.

Crash Photo (rear view)

Here is what is left of Nestina's car after it had a close encounter of the tree kind. I am certainly glad there was no one in the rear seat.

Sunday we had a Superbowl party for the Jr. High, Sr. High and college group. It was... well... I guess a complete flop. There was one Jr. High teen and one college kid and three adults. The flu seems to be taking people out two and three at a time. The Superbowl itself was a good game, and the half-time show will go down as the most bland and boring in a generation.

Today, I stayed home from work in the morning so the internet guys could come over and figure out why our internet access died. It turns out one of the wall warts was feeding bad power to the bridge router. The failure was intermittent (and thus undiagnosable) until Saturday when it finally went out completely. I will be watching it very carefully over the next few days, but so far, I have been able to keep a connection for several hours without interruption.

It turns out it was a good thing I was here. Nestina called from school for me to come and get her. She had a good fever going when I picked her up, so it looks like she is coming down with the crud like everyone else. She hasn't felt good since Saturday night and I think it is finally kicking in big time.

I made a point of being at work today for the announcement about who was going to be out of a job. The short version is "not me." Their were some changes to things like on-call pay. A couple people were whining about it. Unreal. People are losing their jobs and the rest of the group is pissing about losing $2/hour for on-call pay.

Fred Reed has a good post he put up a while back. I never linked to it from here. The point of the article is that objective journalism doesn't exist. All journalism is filtered if for no other reason than the average person finds everyday things boring. Would anyone watch the news if all it consisted of was camera shots of people going about their business with a voice over stating that "Today, in Kalkaska, we are at the scene where absolutely nothing happened"? Do you think a journalist is any different. His editor? Do you know the word for a photographer that only takes pictures of smiling children and puppies? Unemployed. None of that is to say that media bias doesn't exist. It most certainly does, and the bias becomes more obvious by the day. I'm not stupid enough to believe that the mainstream media are shilling for the Democrats or Republicans. But they most certainly are only telling the stories that benefit them or their interests in some way.

And here is someone else that agrees with me on the brilliance of the latest government research on losing weight. I love Danae; I would date her if she was a couple years older and I was about 25 years younger.

We survived another social gathering at our house. We had about 20 people here for Nestina's birthday. Everyone seemed to have fun. Only one of Nestina's friends ended up staying all night, so we didn't get to bed too late. I had to get up somewhat early this morning so I could back up the back up sound guy (long story). I did some work on the house, Debbie drove Nestina and her friend into Kalkaska so Nestina could get her new look (different color and cut of hair). I drove back into town this afternoon to scrape the slush off the church parking lot. It has been near 50 for the last couple of days, so I'm trying to work it back down to bare blacktop before it goes back to winter again.

Beautiful, sunny day. No rush to be anywhere or do anything. I just worked on odds and ends that we need to get finished up. Nothing dramatic, just a lot of odd bits that have been hanging over my head for a while. I do need to stop playing around on the computer and figure out what I'm going to talk about during the half-time show. We are having a Superbowl party with the youth group tomorrow, and I get to be the half-time show. Maybe I'll just have a wardrobe malfunction. Anyway.

I'm still working on getting set up to post photos. It isn't hard; I'm just lazy.

In other blogging news, I got my first spam comment. So far, it's just one, but I've heard tales of bloggers having their entire day eaten alive by deleting spam comments until they give up and restrict comments to just members of the blog. I don't want to do that, but it may come to that.

That's all I have for today.

Addendum to my last post: I realize that I neglected to mention that Nestina was not seriously hurt. She is very, very sore and bruised pretty much everywhere, but other wise intact.

And while we are talking about her:

Happy 18th Birthday, Nestina!!!

Tonight we are having somewhere around 20 people in our house (our largest crowd yet) and several of Nestina's friends will be spending the night. I have a feeling that we won't be getting much sleep....

Not much else to report. We are just going day to day at this point. After this week, we have to crack down and get on a schedule. It has been over two months since I even looked at any of my class work. I hope it is just the winter blah's. Debbie was sick this morning and Nestina has been complaining off and on of various flu symptoms. We are probably all on the verge of getting something nasty.

So it goes. At least the weather is giving us a bit of a break. No snow in a couple weeks and the temperature has been about freezing a couple of times. I certainly can't complain too much about that.

If you are ever on a jury, never pay the least bit of attention to "expert" witnesses. Here is a good demonstration of why I say that.

Nothing else has caught my eye yet. I will probably have more later.

Long weekend. The short version is that Nestina totaled her car Friday night. We are dealing with the aftermath of that. We have some good pictures which I will put up here when I get some time to set things up. She did a pretty good job.

Saturday, the youth group had rented the Kaliseum (ice rink and pool) and opened it up to the public. We had between 80-100 people, even though we didn't have a chance to do much advertising. Sunday was Sunday. The rest of the week has been mostly just work and catching up around here.

Some reading:

The lowly inkjet printer is getting some serious hi-tech assignments. 3-D printing for under $1,000 will make some serious changes in the way some things get marketed.

The amateurs are having fun with the Huygens photos. I'd love to get a hard-copy of the poster.

Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you? I'm a Liger. I'm not sure what that means even though I've watched the movie twice.

And it's bed time.