Monthly Archives: September 2007

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iGot the Precious

September 30, 2007 6:28 am / Leave a Comment /

I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it!

Ok, enough of that. I got my iPhone last night.

Oh…

My…

Frickin’…

Goodness.

Is this thing awesome or what. I will be posting to my blog soon from it, because… well, because I can. Because Safari likes my blog, and I like Safari for iPhone. I am still on an iHigh at the moment. But when it wears down a little I will be sure to talk some intelligible stuff about it.

Until then, I am off to LaLa land. See you when I get back.

Posted in: Geek Stuff, Personal Messages

Nature’s fury

September 29, 2007 11:08 am / Leave a Comment /

This one comes to you from the Gonzalez kids. Today they asked me if I had seen the “something cool” by the driveway. I hadn’t, so they showed me.

WARNING: If you are squeamish when it comes to spiders you may want to skip this post.

WARNING: These images are very large (about 250K each of the two images) so they may take a while to download on dialup/slow connections.

A spider preparing its dinner

Another shot of a spider preparing its dinner

You know, it is not everyday that you can see something like this happen. What is even cooler is that later on in the day this spider had caught and wrapped four bees. Two of them he had already started to eat.

I’d show you the pictures, but I don’t want to ruin your appetite.

PS Thanks kids. This was indeed something cool.

Posted in: Cool Finds

Career Day

September 28, 2007 10:34 pm / Leave a Comment /

A few weeks ago I attended a planning meeting for our Homeschool group LINKS. One of the activities that was brought up at the meeting was Career Night, an evening where kids from the network and several local private schools are invited to listen to working parents talk about their careers. I volunteered and was accepted as a speaker and tonight I got to speak about web development.

I had a fairly large group of kids and a few parents. Many seemed to be somewhat interested in some aspect of web development. A few of the kids seemed totally bored out of their minds. I had one parent that was so enthused by what she kept me after my presentation for about half an hour to talk to me about getting started in developing web sites, web apps and web pages.

Overall it was a fairly useful 20 minutes for the members of my group. I had fun recalling my early days of learning HTML from a magazine my father-in-law gave me back in 1998. And how I progressed through static stuff to a little more progressive stuff like CGI scripts and Perl. I then talked about how I learned PHP and SQL, then how I decided it would be nice to “speak” multiple languages so I picked up ColdFusion, ASP, C#.NET, JavaScript and the like. I also made to mention that I was able to learn on my own without having to go to school, and to this day I do not have a college degree.

It is my belief that anyone can learn anything if they want to enough. And it is my belief that if you really want to learn how to write web pages, web apps or web sites, you can. All it takes is a desire to learn and enough stubborn to not give up after the 50th time you get the same error message even though you know you must have fixed it 100 times already.

So if going into web work is your thing, let me encourage you to give it some serious consideration. It is very rewarding, very fun and well worth the effort it requires to learn.

Posted in: General, Personal Messages

Psalm 23

September 27, 2007 11:50 am / Leave a Comment /

My kids were tasked last night with memorizing Psalm 23. This was an assignment given them in church and one that I wholeheartedly support. In fact, I had asked them about two years ago to do the same thing. Remarkably, it only took a few moments for them to pick up on it again, and this morning my daughter Rebekah was able to recite the entire 23rd Psalm before I left the house.

Think you can do it?

  1. The LORD is my shepherd;
    I shall not want.
  2. He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
    He leads me beside the still waters.
  3. He restores my soul;
    He leads me in the paths of righteousness
    For His name’s sake.
  4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
    I will fear no evil;
    For You are with me;
    Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
  5. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
    You anoint my head with oil;
    My cup runs over.
  6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    All the days of my life;
    And I will dwell in the house of the LORD
    Forever.
Posted in: On Faith, On Parenting, Personal Messages

Happy Birthday Adriannah

September 26, 2007 11:41 am / Leave a Comment /

Today you are seven years old. It still seems like yesterday that you were born and we were having your one day old pictures taken at the hospital on the way home.

I still shudder at the thought of bringing you home and putting you in a room with your two sisters in our two bedroom apartment. And I think back sometimes to what you have enduredin our larger than life family.

But I am truly amazed at what you have become. I love you my kid. Of all the Adri-oh-no’s in the world, you are my favoritest.

Happy Birthday.

Posted in: General, On Family, On Parenting, Personal Messages

Without a car for a whole day

September 25, 2007 6:16 pm / Leave a Comment /

So my wife and I have recently noticed that our Suburban has been making a weird sound from the front end. It sounds like the bearings are a little messed up.

So my wife took it in today to have that serviced as well as several other warranty issues. She also wanted to have running boards put on, so that was requested as well. One good thing about this is that the dealership handles our warranty requests very well. In fact Central Chevrolet in Fremont has yet to disappoint me when it comes to service. The one bad thing, however, is that the truck needs to stay in the shop until tomorrow because the work could not all be done in a day.

Oh well, I guess that means mom will be a stuck-at-home mom today and tomorrow instead of a stay-at-home mom.

Posted in: General, Rants

Another weekend without football

September 24, 2007 8:18 pm / Leave a Comment /

This is getting old. I need some football. I managed to scrap out a few minutes of the USC game on Saturday since my wife bought us an antenna to use. But this really sucks. I am going through football withdrawals badly. I feel like less of a man without it. Can you spare a few minutes of cable to help a brother out?

We had actually been invited to my sister-in-law Katie’s house this evening to watch the Monday night game, but I said no to that since my children had PE today for school and my wife is usually tuckered out pretty bad on Monday nights. It just makes me want to relax and watch football that much more.

Although I suppose I shouldn’t complain. My wife did go out and buy the movie “Facing the Giants” so I was able to catch a little football, albeit high school football portrayed through the embodiment of actors. Still, it is a good movie. It is 100% Christian in nature, but it is still good nevertheless.

Anyway, enough ranting. I gotta go now and figure me out a way to get some football.

Posted in: Rants

Holy cannoli that thing is huge.

September 23, 2007 9:56 pm / Leave a Comment /

Today was Adriannah’s 7th birthday party. One of the things she wanted for her “Water” themed party was an inflatable waterslide.

So we ordered the waterslide a few weeks ago. We checked to make sure we had room in our yard since the dimensions on the internet made this thing out to be pretty large. Well, the dimensions lied. It is way bigger than it is. It was so big, in fact, that it took up the entire length of my backyard lawn AND abotu four feet of my patio. It stood about 20 feet high and was an eyesore for the entire time we had it. But it was fun.

The kids had a blast on it. Our biggest worry, as parents, was the weather. My wife and I had both been watching the weather forecast closely seeing as for the longest time we were told it would be beautiful and sunny today. Except, for the last two days it has rained, been cold and overcast and has otherwise been carptastic weather to have a water party in. But we took the chance because she really wanted a water party ad we really wanted to give it to her.

So the weather today complied to our wishes… to an extent. It was not cold. It was muggy. It was slightly warmer than sticky, but not as warm as most parents would like to have their kids in water. Still, kids know what temperature they are comfortable catching the flu in, and today’s temperature was well within that range. The kids played, got wet, got dry, ate, got wet again, got wetter, got tired, got wet, get dry, got wet. And so on througout the day. And at the end of the day, after the water and the cake and the presents and the pizza, as kids were leaving and parents were left scratching their heads, I noticed something unusual.

Almost by some miracle, at about 6:00 PM or so, the clouds broke almost immediately and the temperature spiked. It got warm and sunny. It was a little late for our party, but it was still nice to have it. And Adriannah had a great time. As did I.

Posted in: Funnies

Another birthday, another party to plan

September 22, 2007 9:11 pm / Leave a Comment /

So today was spent in preparation for the last birthday party of the year that my family celebrates (outside of Christmas of course). And I gotta tell you, I am poopered out something awful.

I went into today knowing that this would be a rather long day. My wife had some shopping to do for our soon to be seven year old daughter Adriannah. So did the other kids. Since this party was mine to plant his year, there were still a few things left for me to pick up as well, so we decided that I would take Adriannah out to get the rest of the party things while my wife went out with the rest of the kids to finish birthday shopping.

So after getting up and reading the paper I made breakfast for everyone and cleaned up a little. We spent less time cleaning that we needed to, but we had other things to do today and we knew that the party was not until tomorrow anyway so we knew we had more time than just today to get things handled. It was with that knowledge that Adriannah and I embarked on our day of Daughter/Daddy dating and discovery.

We started by going to Lowes so I could get some supplies to fix our bathroom tile that decided to part ways with the wall a few weeks ago. After trying to leave the store three times (once after paying, once after Adriannah had to go back in to use the restroom and once when Adriannah had to go back in to get her purse she had left behind) we managed to head over Party America to get some favor bags, a birthday sign and a table cover. Of course, as luck would have it, Pacific Commons was having a power outage and the one store affected the worst by this power outage was Party America. Needless to say, they did not get our business today.

Because I still needed to be out of the house for a time, I decided that I would head over to Stoneridge mall to have one of my Montblanc pens repaired. The drive was nice, parking was not. But the store was soooo nice. I love the Montblanc store at Stoneridge. It is so elegant and beautiful. And Amanda, the sales associate that helped, was utterly professional in every way. I almost walked out with the new Skywalker Cool Blue. That is one nice pen. But I didn’t, as I had only intended to have my Meisterstuck repaired. But I can tell you this much… Amanda was everything a sales associate should be and if I ever buy another Montblanc at retail, she is definitely getting my business. Way to go Amanda, you impressed me.

After the mall Adriannah and I went over to Chili’s for lunch because that is what she wanted to do for lunch. We ate, we talked, we had fun. Then we left to come back to Fremont. We hit up Target and got almost all of the shopping that we needed to get done, done right there. We looked at Walmart for a few things before heading to Safeway to pick up the rest. When we finally got home I realized that we hade been out of the house for almost five hours. I was dead tired and ready to relax. But alas, that was not to be.

You see, we have an enormous party tomorrow complete with a waterslide bounce house things and 10 pizzas, so there is much to do still at this time. But it is all for good. A birthday only comes around once a year you know.

Posted in: On Parenting, Personal Messages, Rants

God is Italian

September 21, 2007 9:46 pm / Leave a Comment /

And as an Italian would not know how to understand your prayers if they were in English. But before you accuse me of blasphemy, please understand where I am coming from, and going, with this. Tonight my wife and I watched a movie called God’s Outlaw. It is the story of William Tyndale and the persecution he endured by the Roman Catholic Church.

During the time that Tyndale was alive (roughly the late 1400′s to the early 1500′s) the Roman Catholic Church was the ultimate rule in the world. It seems odd now to think that a religious organization had power on the scale that the Catholic Church had up until a few hundred years ago, but it was a known fact that the Catholic Church, in many ways, outpowered the King when it came to laying down and carrying out the law.

One of the things that stands out to me the most is that the Catholic Church, for a time, did not allow the Holy Scriptures to be read in English. In fact, according to the Catholic Church, the scriptures were only to read in Latin at the church. People that were not Catholic Priests were not allowed to teach the scriptures because according to the church, only priests had the annointing of God to be able to understand the mysteries of God in the scriptures. Tyndale disagreed with this.

Tyndale was a protestant priest. He was also a learned man that was well skilled in language. He had learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German and several other languages and was working on a translation of the holy scriptures from Latin to English when his nightmare began. You see, not only was it heresy to pray in English and to speak the word of God in English, it was way more heretic to actually teach the word of God in English and even moreso to translate the word into a language other than Latin. But that is what Tyndale did. Tyndale had a heart for people and wanted everyone to be able to read from the scriptures and to be able to receive the word of God. And the Catholic Church took notice.

Now there is a lot more to Tyndale’s story that this little snippet I put down here. Do a little research and you will find that Tyndale left and indellible mark on culture (Christian and otherwise). And he did it at a time when doing so would invariably cost a man his life. But Tyndale was faithful. Even to this own death in which he was hanged then burned at the stake. The crux of this, and what ultimately led to the attention the Cathilic Church paid to him can be traced to a statement he made:

I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, I will cause the boy that drives the plow in England to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope himself!

Now that is a brave man. And a faithful man. A man that did right in the face of wrong even though that wrong was the law of the land. We can learn much from William Tyndale. And if you have ever read an English bible or spoke words deried from it, you probably already have.

Posted in: On Faith, Personal Messages