Monthly Archives: August 2006

Emmys??? I’m OUTRAGED!

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Didn’t watch the Emmy’s last night, and I didn’t even know about the crash in Kentucky yesterday morning.

Some people are outraged at the opening parody for the Emmy’s. Well color me outraged too… Not so much at the poor timing of the Left-Coast-swingers not scrambling to change the feature, or at the lack of blue-state empathy for the plight of a tragedy at a small redstate tradgedy.

I’m more outraged at the lack of LOST in any of the major categories at the Emmy’s. As well as the ‘so-last-year’ of the lame parody, since not one part of this years string of Lost epis had anything to do with the plane crash that stunningly opened the series. I mean if you want to be timely, you toss in some Widmore Lab and/or Dharma ads into the stream, or talk about the numbers, or something…

But a plane crash.. c’mon emmy peeps… have some sense of timing.

Here comes the rain, again…

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Seething Sky Or FINALLY…

We had a good dousing last night, it started while I had the kids at the Texas Pool, and then came and went throughout the night. We lost power a couple of three times during the night, and that is always exciting. But Angie always has the candles ready for the possibility of a power loss, so our house was soon festive in the dark.

The loss of power always brings back memories of running Engineering drills on the ship, and the loss of power, and the total quiet that comes with it, no air-conditioning, no fans, no TV. Usually on the ship, that total blackness would prompt me to jump up and head to the main switchboards to make sure that power was restored as quickly as possible. In our house, there is nothing you can really do, but light a candle and shushh the kids, letting them know that it will be Oh-Kay.

I got a new breathing mask on Friday, the new insurance covered it 100%, so I now have a full face mask, and a new humidifier. The full face mask, (it isn’t FULL, just covers my nose and mouth) is much quieter than the previous one, and since my mouth flaps open no matter how many chin-straps I wear, it helps me breath through the night without having Angie elbow me to shut my mouth. I do need to call the place again, since they didn’t give me the right hose for my Bi-pap (it is missing the pressure feedback that the two-pressure Bi-pap needs to gauge when I exhale and dial back the pressure a bit).

We had a fun weekend. A full on blitz of the house, first thing Saturday. Then I took the kids to the pool while Angie hosted some floopy-doop home decor party thing. While I roasted and slow-boiled in the pool, Angie entertained about 8 of her friends. Then we came home, and later in the evening hosted a game-night with the Speers (of Blogospeer fame) and the Clarks (Mike and Natalie). We ate pizza and played Contract/Shanghai Rummy for a few hours, while the kids … er… I dunno… they did something though, and boy was it fun!

Sunday was another full day, after church (I helped in Children’s Church, which was fun to help with, and see the kids respond to worship much differently than just wriggling in the pew…) I again ventured to the pool to help chaperone the middle-school youth (I am the parent of a ‘youth’?!?? when did this happen?!?) I took the non-youthers and some of their friends along as well. About 20 minutes before we were going to leave, the thunder BOOMED, and emptied the pool (rule if thunder is heard the pool is vacated for 15 minutes, or until 15 minutes after the last sound of thunder). So I packed all the soggy bodies in van and treked home.

If I did this right, we’re back the beginning of the post. 🙂

Unplugged

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The nosepeice of my CPAP busted, and so my mask is unusable. So I’m no longer connected to my breathing helper, so I’m subject to obsturctive sleep-apnea during the night. So, I’m not sleeping well and need to get it fixed. What I really need is a new mask, but to do that I need to see the doctor and get a new perscription for a better mask/headgear.

*sigh* Not gonna happen overnight, unfortunately.

Dead…

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to the world… I’m sooo tired… fighting this alergy, and then not getting more than 3 hours of sleep last night has left me feeling a little punch drunk.

The training is going well, I’m very much a convert of Participant Centered Training.    The things we shared and discovered today, has re-inspired me to think about how I teach Sunday School.  Trying to be more participant challenged is more work in the preparation, but I think it yields better results on Sunday morning, because the process imediately involves people, and builds the sense of partnership in learning.  Which will pay dividends with guests visiting, I think.

Tradional SS is so lecture centric, and then discussions are easily mis-directed or dominated by the few that are willing to talk to the larger group.  We tried small discussion groups before, but they weren’t focused on the participant, but more on a facilitator asking questions, which is no different really than the lecture mode.

So I’m going to try something different come week from Sunday, try to build a framework of participant-centered chunks of content that re-inforces the biblical principle we are learning.  Still working off the Lifeway materials, but really focusing on a pattern that is more VBS-like than traditional SS.

Or maybe I’m ust hopped up on the Claratin.

My nose is going to fall right off…

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Either that or blast across the room with an enormous ACHooOOOWEEEE.

I sure hope it is alergies, rather than some spooky biological warefare agent (aka the common cold). Regardless, I’ll be the one down here snippy and blowing my nose all day.

This is day one of Bob Pike Certification Training for the group I work with, this will be the third or fourth time I’ve done a workshop, and they are always fun and thought provoking. I fear after a while it will become old hat.

For the unitiatied, I’ll leave you with Bob Pike’s Laws of Adult Learning.

  • Adults are babies with big bodies.
  • People don’t argue with their own data.
  • Learning is directly proportional to the amount of fun you have.
  • Learning has not taken place until behavior has changed.
  • Fu Wu, Wu Yu, Wzu Tu Yu *

* Roughly translated this means: Momma’s having it or Papa’s having it ain’t like baby having it. (or, the best way of knowing you’ve learned something is when you can teach it to others.)

UPDATE: Clartin-D seems to have an effect. and.. CROSSWORD PUZZLE … *ergahd not a simple NYTimes one…but a training jargon one… designed as a learning aid, which is just silly… brilliant.

UPDATE 2: No sneezing since ~9am, so the allergy scenario seems most likey, so call off the Homeland Secuirty dogs…

Ramblin…

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Installed some more bling, the Flickr! sidebar is courtesy of the Flickr Photo Gallery for WordPress plugin, that also includes a little gadget to include photos from flickr! in your post.

Like this:

Oh yea..

Mmm… hot diggity dog.

spam, spamPretty slick and snazzy. Also installed Spam Karma 2.2 because, Spammers, suck.

youtube And Lastly… (which was really firstly) Viper’s Video Quicktags, to help publish YouTube yumminess.

Now, I’m off for mandatory fun with my co-workers… They are dragging me to Kobe’s Steak House. I sure hope they have good food there.

Perspective

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Eric ws kind enough to link to a video I posted this morning.

Then I was rude enough to trash the whole blog-zine-mess, and start-over. So, after seeing his link, I’ve decided to repost this (and see if WP can handle the code without crashing down like a cheap chandelier).

*sigh*

[youtube]WjPrL3n63yg[/youtube]

Bippypalooza

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There is a storm of new blogs being created in the homisphere (made up of people I’m close too…)

First Sweet Bippy! graciously administered by my bride, as she documents her laugh-a-minute-cry-the-next life… She is my favorite person in the world, and seriously funny. I know you’ll all enjoy her blawg.

Second, I finally converted a real-life-person, Matt, into the blogosphere, and he took it by the horns, capturing the coveted name Blogospeer. Help him out as he learns to operate the controls behind his monster-blog assisted in his mania by MisplacedKeys regular Deboobily Debbi.

At the very least I have two more blogs to waste my time read daily.

Who else wants a blog?

Reloaded

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Sometimes it is best to wipe the slate clean and start over. So if you were looking for the joomla site, be sad.. for joomla is no more… (might look at it again when 1.5 is alive and well)

I’ve helped two friends my best friend and my wife get hooked up on spanking new WordPress blogs, and after helping them, I’ve decided to make myself a tricked out WordPress blog instead of struggling with Joomla. I spent way too much time fiddling, and not enough time blogging with Joomla, and it never quite bent to my will.

WordPress 2.0 seems very easy to both setup and customize. Fully tricked out themes are available and widgets are supercool. So I think I’ve been converted. Follow along.