Frost Patterns On Me Car!

This morning, Monday 31 December, 2007: I saw something wonderful on my car as I got out to go to work. The frost that had collected on the hood (or bonnet), windshield and well all over the car was in neat orderly "leaf" patterns.

The pattern was close to these images I found on the web, more so the neat orderly pattern of the second photo. Thin almost pine, palm or maybe even fern looking patterns swirled all over the car. It was so neat and organized that it was as if someone had used a tree as a template for the frost. Yet the closest tree to my car would either be across the street or on the other side of the next door neighbor's house, at least 100 feet away or more.

I had never before seen frost patterns that were so beautiful. Patterns that leave (I could have punned and said "leaf") no question about the existance of a greater natural presence or being such as God. Man I wish I had a working camera, but allas my digital camera died around last march or so, and an old polaroid I have somewhere around doesn't have film. Bummer. Need to get a new camera for 008.

Man with natural occuances like that, how can people question "Intellegent Design" for the creation of Life, The Universe and Everything?

H. Berry in my Car!

For Christmas my Cousins (or actually I think it was my aunt) got Halle Berry to ride in my car.

Doesn't she look great?

Oh wait I'm sorry it was H-O-L-L-Y-B-E-R-R-Y scented air freshner for the car.

Primary Politico Party Pooper.

I absolutely HATE the way our Primary system works. The primary elections which are the elections held to eliminate all the not-as-popular or not as fit candidates for the job before the general election. My big problem with it, however, is that the Iowa Caucous (spelled wrong yeah I know) and the New Hampshire Primary are usually the first two states to vote, and they usually eliminate everyone so by the time "Super Tuesday" comes there is nobody to vote for. SUPER TUESDAY is a good attempt at having most of the country vote at the same time, but comes up short because it is to late after the first few primaries have already decided who is going to race in November.

I think ALL the States should have their Primary Elections all on the same day, or at least in the same week and the media should hold off on making any announcements about whose ahead until the end of the week. That would make it more fair for the entire country to vote for who they really want to vote for. Back in the 1980s when John Glenn ran, he was eliminated and dropped out months before Super Tuesday so by the time the Maryland Primary came around, it was really pointless to vote for him but I did anyway just to protest the point. As with many other things concerning politics and the individual that kind of thing doesn't effect the over-all picture much.

The Jury is Out!

Today, Wednesday 19 December, 2007 I did my civic duty of "jury duty". Yippie Yahooie.
Now I am no stranger to jury duty as way back about 20 years ago I served on a jury on some sort of civil dispute that had something to do with someone wanting to get some money on some injury claims from an auto accident. With that case I forget all the details but I think the jury found in favor of the defendants I think (the people who were not claiming the injuries).
Anyway back to today.

I had to report to jury duty today at 08:30 AM I got to the court house just a little before and waited in the line at the front door to pass through the metal detector, something I don't recall having to do 20 years ago. Then after getting scanned by the "wand" since the clasp part of my key chain (I had unclasped the keys and most of the chain, but not the part around my belt) set off the red light in the metal detector. So then I go to the jury lounge to sign in and await the instructions. Ok that gets done, then there is a little waiting until about 1/4 to 9:00 when they give us the official welcome and some instruction on the procedures. Then they showed a video that was about 20 minutes that gave a brief history of juries and how they relate to the court system. The let us know that at around 9:30 they would start sending us to courtrooms and assigning trials. Well at 9:30 they said they hadn't heard from the courtrooms yet, but not to worry, it sometimes happens, they run a little slow and behind, the crimal trials negotiate and set up plea bargins etc...

They informed us that there were three trials on the docket today. A little after 9:30 there still wasn't much word so they gave us an official 15 minute break (meaning that if people wanted to they could leave the lounge area, which you are confined to, to go to the cafeteria or get stuff from their cars or whatever.) Oh they also have some computers in the back of the lounge so you can internet or I guess play solitare. I didn't diddle with the computers although I probably should have to see what could be accessed (probably not much). Anyway they leave us be for a while, and the time goes on and the time goes on. No updates on when we will be called to the courtrooms...

A long time we don't hear anything, then at around 10:45 they give us more info. One thing they didn't tell us until then was that all three trials were criminal trials. Mmmmm could be bad, could mean many days instead of just the one day. Mont. County (where I live) has a 1 trial/1 day system meaning you only have to report to jury duty on one day or for the length of one trial which could be a couple of days or maybe longer. If you don't get picked to serve on a trial during the day, you have still fulfilled your duty by showing up. OK so we are ready for the bad news. Then they also inform us that in all three trials the defendants took the bargain, thus avoiding the need for a jury. So that meant that they gave us our checks sent us home and we don't need to report back for 3-5 years.

yeah.

Torchwood Entry 2.0

TORCHWOOD 2.0

It has been a while since I mentioned Torchwood the BBC series made by the producers of the New version of Doctor Who. Anyway the BBC America cable station has been showing it here in the States on Saturday Nights. I got hooked on it. They have taken a break from it since they went through Season 1, Season 2 starts in the UK in early January and about a week or two later on BBC America. Pretty Cool stuff. It is hard to describe the show to the uninitiated, without also mentioning that the leader of the team was introduced in season 1 of Doctor Who 2.0. The show is sort of an X-files type show but with the feel of a CSI/NCIS type show. I'm not too keen on some of the blatant homosexual tendancies of the lead character Capt. Jack Harkness, which are more obvious in this show than they ever were on Doctor Who. But what can you do?

The DVD of season 1 is supposed to come out in late January around the time BBC America Starts showing Season 2. That is about how they have been doing things lately here in the states with Doctor Who. The season gets shown on Sci-Fi Channel or BBC America and then almost as soon as they have finished showing it, or most of the time a month or two later, the DVD gets released of that season. The downside is the new DVDs cost between $70-$100 USD with Doctor Who being closer to the higher price until it's been out for a few months then some places drop the price down closer to the lower price. Needless to say right now I only have season one of Doctor Who on DVD, but I have seasons 2-3 recorded on VHS and Torchwood season 1 recorded on VHS both off air and with comercials blah.

Money Whaaaooohs #1?

Money, money, money, money makes the world go round. At least that is what is sung in the movie of and the revival of the musical Cabaret Is it really true? MMMMMM could be. I certainly know that I've got more than my share of problems with it. Long story short I have signed up with a debt relief program to condense all my bills (well most of them at least the major PITA Credit Card ones) into one "easy-to-pay" monthly installment. We shall see how that goes. Anyway while I'm doing that I will not be able to use credit cards, so I wonder what sort of luxuries I now enjoy will dissappear because of any automatic credit card payments. I think I got rid of all those when one of my cards went BOOM! and my Netflix account screamed and died in a bloody mess. OK Whatever. NEXT!

Nats + Mets Trade = Uh Oh.

OMG!

The Washington Nationals and New York Mets made an off season trade today (Friday 30 November, 2007), that has upset me. If this sort of thing goes on again I might have to switch to being a Dang Mets fan. The Mets traded outfielder Lastings Milledge for outfielder Ryan Church (one of my faves) and one of my Favorite Nationals ever catcher Brian Schneider. I first heard about the trade on my way home from work, I almost had a heart attack and crashed. Here is the Yahoo News article about the trade http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AgwiFA4jlwbvGQz1ioxhnqgRvLYF?slug=ap-mets-nationalstrade&prov=ap&type=lgns Both now Ex-Nationals are among my top faves especially Schneider-Man. IMO he is one of the most Underrated Catchers in the entire League, and is the number 5 catcher in picking off base stealers. Oh man the Nationals are going to be aching in the catching department, sure they have Jesus Florez but he is still a little green in my opinion, I think he needs another couple of years before he is a high caliber catcher. Dang it. Now I'm mixed about Church because although he is a pretty good outfielder he isn't great.

The Nationals think they are getting a great deal in the young Lastings Milledge, they mostly want him for his power hitting and the hope that he will solve their centerfield problems.

Dang it, Dang it, Dang it. Two of my favorite Nationals that I hoped would never be traded away. I used to think the same thing about closer Chad Cordero but I never imagined they would trade away someone like Schneider. Oh Man, I hope the Nats never ever trade away my other fave players first baseman Nick Johnson and third baseman Ryan Zimmerman. Well at least Ryan and Brian were not traded away to the Damn Yankees.

http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=was

Late November Idiotic Babbling.

Have to get a November post in here sometime. Lately I've been up to my ears in doing other stuff. Some of it very productive and the rest of it like the rest of life, very unproductive but sometimes fun. I've been spending maybe too much time in some of my dabblings, especially the dabbling of my trading card collection. Trying to set up trades, or sell of some of the stuff I'm not that into anymore. The biggest problem with that though is that many of today's collectors go for the high end more expensive stuff, the game used memorabilia stuff, and autographs, how they can afford it I don't know, and most of my stuff is just old fashioned base. A lot of it Vintage (over 10 years old) or Old School (not quite as old as vintage). I also spent a few weeks running the lights for a theatre show a production of Little Shop of Horrors in Kensington, MD. Oh Speaking of musicals coming Christmas time the movie version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street opens in theatres directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. So it ain't going to be all cheery and happy.

The End of October!

It's the end the end of October it's the end the end of a so-so month. Man I can't believe that the Red Sox sweapt up the Rockies so easily. They did to them what the Patriots did to my Redskins and what high school teams could do to my belove-ed Rams this year. It's also hard to believe that October has come and gone so fast. Well I haven't gotten much sleep lately because I am in tech week for Little Shop of Horrors with KAT (http://katonline.org) well got to go now. See you sometime in November same Bat-Time same Bat-Channel, or at least same Bat-Blogsite!

A "Kling-On"

Just a short one. A nice little funny.

Yesterday Tuesday 23 October, 2007 as I was going though my after-work ritual of changing from my work-boots to my blue almost worn-out but compfy Converse Chuck Taylor Hi-Tops, I noticed something on the hem of my right pants leg. At first I thought it might be some sort of eww type thing like toilet paper sticking to my shoe, but fortunately it was something cleaner and not as oogie. It was one of those anti-static-cling laundry sheets, a bounce sheet to be exact. So that was why I had an extra spring in my step that day, and kept smelling something that was Aprily-Fresh!

Washington Nationals. 100 Losses? NO WAY!

63-77
Yes! My Nationals are in 4th place above the Florida Marlins and seem to be solidly there (Hopefully). Now there is NO WAY they will lose 100 (regular season) games this season, like the "quote" experts "unquote" were predicting. If they lose all of the remaining games 99 losses will be the worst they can do. Somehow I don't think they will lose 22 straight. They should get at least another 10 "Curly W's". They probably will still be under .500 but at least they aren't as bad as the doomsayers were saying (they would be) at the beginning of the season.

Number 32! Tied With Last Year! Yippie!

This is just to say that this is post number 32 for this year. I have now tied last year's number of posts to this blog. That means I will make at least four more posts this year (one for each of the remaining months for this year). OK so it isn't spectacular to anybody except me, and it is a pointless post. Well not really a pointless post since the point of this post is to point out the fact that this post ties the number of posts from last year. OK so maybe it is pointless. Whaaaa.

More Computer Whoes

ARGH!
For some unexplained reason, my laptop sometime around the end of July, gives me error messages for Mizilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. I can log into AOL, and read and send email but the welcome page also shows an error. With Internet Explorer I can get google.com to show up, and the first page of yahoo.com but I can't sign in to my.yahoo or most other pages. I can't even open most pages I think those two (my.yahoo mainpage and google main page) are the only ones I can get to on Internet Explorer, I can't get nothing with Firefox. I tried reloading the silly network thing for AOL, which just makes the computer think you are brand new to AOL ugh, at least you don't have to start a new account. I can't for the life of me figure out what went wrong. BTW I have to use other computers to access all my stuff that isn't email. It is a royal pain. My spyware and virus detector programs come up with nothing. To make matters worse my laptop for the last few months likes to overheat and shutdown sometimes, so it looks like I will need to get it fixed or get a new one but I can't afford to do either at this juncture in time.

Of Wedding Bouquets And Garters!

On Saturday (11 August, 2007) I attended a wedding. Yes I was invited, I'm not a wedding crasher (although that might be a good way to meet women...) The reception had all the normal events, the best man toasting, the couples first dance, and of course the tossing of the bouquet and the flinging of the garter. Now as per standard wedding etiquette during the bouquet toss all the single women (18 and older) scrambled and jumped and dove for the bouquet like a typical running play during a Super Bowl. The garter fling was also the standard of all the guys just standing around not making an effort to even acknowledge the thing. There was the typical "20 dollars to the guy who makes the sacrifice for the team" sort of comment. The "I'm not standing in the front row" and I think one or two other typical comments. Well wouldn't you know it, the thing lands three feet in front of me. The guy to my left started to make a move for it then stopped and said something like "you get it, it's all yours". Then some guy who I think was the grandfather of the 20something girl who had pried the bouquet from her adversaries hands, came up to me and asked me if that meant I was going to marry the girl who caught the bouquet. I said "No, now-a-days it just means that we are the next ones to get married". Then they took a photo or two of me and the girl who caught the bouquet on either side of the bride and groom.

So I went to a wedding and all I got was a lousy garter. LOL!

Nats Vs. Bonds Round 4

Nats vs. Giants Game 4

In the final game of this four game series the newly crowned Home Run King Barry Bonds sat out for most of it. Since this was a day game and I didn't set the old VCR I didn't actually see this final game of the historic series. I monitored the stats of the game for the first 4.5 innings via Yahoo Sports, then listened to about 3 innings on the radio, I did't find out the details of the last 2 innings until checking back in with Yahoo.

Anyway in a must win situation the Nats pulled through and ended up winning the game 3-1, dispite the 8th inning effort by the Giants to bring in Bonds to pinch hit with runners at the corners (at 1st and 3rd base that is). Mr. Eighth inning Jon Rauch managed to get him to hit a popup foul out to 3rd. Then for the Ninth Chad "The Chief" Cordero got his 25th save of the season to bring the series to a close with the Nats splitting the series with the Giants 2-2.

I am so glad all this is over now. Phew! Oh and now, for the time being, the Nats are tied with The Florida Marlins in 4th place of the NL East Division.

Nats Vs. Bonds Round 3

Wednesday 8 Aug 2007 Nats vs. Giants Game 3

Well the atmosphere of this game was more or less back to Earth. Last nights game was a circus up until the 5th inning break for history, tonight's game was more like a regular game and didn't stop just because somebody hit a ball out of the park. Guess what? On his first at bat on the second pitch Barry Bonds hit homer number 757 a ball that thought it was a crashing jet plane and plunged into "McCovey's Cove". The Giants fans acted more like regular baseball fans and not just a pack of vultures waiting for a victim to finally die. The end result was very disappointing the Nationals were skunked 5-0. They HAVE to win tomorrow's afternoon game to split the series. Why oh why did the Giants pick this 4 game series to start coming back?

Racing Presidents Bobbleheads!

I was going to make a post similar to this but since someone already did, "Why re-invent the wheel"?

One of the cool give aways for this Nats season is the "Racing Presidents: Bobbleheads". Yes they are real bobbleheads depicting the four characters of the U.S. Presidents that race around the warning track at RFK (Next Year they will do it at Nationals Park).

Here is a link that shows them:
http://nats320.blogspot.com/2007/06/racing-president-bobbleheads.html

Mike Bacsik, Barry Bonds & Hank Aaron Connection.

Well the Baseball history books now have Barry Bonds as the Home Run King with number 756 to break Hank Aaron's reign of 33 years as Home Run King with 755. Washington Nationals Pitcher Mike Bacsik was the (un)fortunate pitcher number 446 to get homered off of Bonds.

In a sort of destiny fulfilled odd-ball fact, Mike Bacsik's father (also named Mike) not only had pitched to a Bonds, Barry's father Bobby in 1979, but also to a home run king with 755 homers notched onto his bat (Hank Aaron). The senior Bacsik (Texas Rangers) had pitched to Aaron in Aug of 1976 but did not give up homer number 756.

Believe it or Not Robert R. Ripley.

Nats Vs. Bonds Round 2

Game 2 Nationals vs. Giants

In a very exciting game for the most part, the Washington Nationals beat the San Francisco Giants 8-6 in game 2 of 4. Felipe Lopez got things started for the Nats when he solo homered in the top of the 3rd putting the Nats on the scoreboard with 1 run to the Giants 2. Then a few batters later Austin Kearns hit a 2 run homer bringing in Ronnie Belliard putting the Nats on top 3-2. Brian Schneider Homered in the 4th to tie the game 4-4, The Nats would score 4 more in the 8th.

OK now for that Bonds fellow. In the bottom of the first, to the disappointment of the Giants fans Bonds only Doubled, he would then be brought home by Bengie Molina. Bond's second at bat came in the 3rd and again to the collected sighs of the Giants fans he only got a single. He would again score this time on the 2 run homer by the guy behind him in batting order, Bengie Molina. This brought the Giants in the lead 4-3. Oh yeah then in the 5th on a full count of 3 balls and 2 strikes with nobody on base, he knocked #756 over 400 feet deep center off of Mike Bacsik to put the Giants in the lead again 5-4. He then started to take the field at the top of the 6th but came out.

Finally the "Chasing Aaron's Record" is over, we can all get on with our lives, and enjoy baseball again. After the media circus stopped the game in it's tracks and Barry gave his heartfelt speach the game resumed and got back to business as usual. The question is will Bonds be in the lineup tomorrow night? Who knows? Will anybody be paying attention when he hits number 757?

Nats Vs. Bonds Round 1

The Washington Nationals are trapped in the Giant Bonds Home Run Circus.


The quote Experts unquote have predicted that Barry Bonds, in his effort to break Hank Aaron's Most Career Homers Record, will hit number 756 at home against the Washington Nationals. He tied the record on Saturday (04 August 2007) with number 755 in San Diego. Well Tonight Monday 06 August 2007 (very late for us on the East coast) he didn't do it, but the Nats lost to the San Francisco Giants in extra innings 3-2 in the bottom of the 11th. The Nats had their 6 game winning streak snapped, while the Giants snapped their 3 game losing streak.

The game went most of the game tied 1-1 seeing as both teams had scored in the 1st.

No homer for Barry but Dimitri Young Homered in the 10th to put the Nats ahead 2-1, unfortunately the Giants came back and tied it 2-2, taking it to the 11th, where the Giants loaded the bases and won with a single. UGH.

Mr. Bonds was held hitless in four at bats, he fouled out to third in the first inning, walked in the third, grounded into a double play in the fifth and struck out in the seventh, while each pitch was accompanied by a paparazzi of flash bulbs going off.

On the one hand I want Bonds to go ahead and break the record already so the media circus will move on to other fish to fry, but on the other hand I don't want him to do it while playing the Nats. One game down three more to go.

Voyagers on DVD Today!

Another WOOOOOOOHHWWWHHOOOOOOOO!
The early 1980s TV show The Voyagers about a bumbling time-traveler and a 12 year-old kid who joins him in his travels who fix problems in history for the better. It is the same premise as Quantum Leap (Time-Traveler "lost" in time trying to fix things for the better with no control over where or when he arrives). I am tempted to get it today, but I really should wait until at least after this friday which is payday.

Torchwood!

Hey guess what? I saw a teaser (Very teasing teaser, just the show title type teaser) for the Doctor Who Spin-off series Torchwood on the BBC America Cable station. the show is coming in September. D'oh! I don't remember the exact date it's supposed to start. Well I'm sure I'll see more promos for it and start to get sooooooooooooooo tired of the promos that the start date will be drilled into my head by the end of August.

Doctor Who 2.3 WooohWhooo

WooohhhWhhhooooo! Sci-Fi Channel has started showing Season 3 of Doctor Who starring David Tennant as The Doctor and Freema Agyeman as his companion Martha Jones. When I first saw the reimagined Doctor Who series (with Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor Number 9, Tennant is now number 10) I thought they were going to do some major screwing-up, but luckily they did some things that were OK in my book. I won't go into details here, I think I might have gone into some detail on one of my Kirk's Knook episodes. For details on them see my website, or find out about The DIN email newsletter/blog from my buddy TJ. Maybe I'll give more in-depth details on my thoughts on this series later.

Do you Squidoo?

I recently found a self-promoting website called squidoo.com and started my own page which they call a lens. My page can be found at http://squidoo.com/captkirk42. Basically I hawk this blog, my ebay store and my ecrater store. You should be able to find links to them over on my righthand side bar over there ->

I'll Title This Later... Maybe

I came up with a new term today. Wacky Potacky Don't ask me to explain it because if its Wacky Potacky it's totally weird, unusual or just plain strange.

Umm OK

For some weird but good reason, my computer (the laptop I thought had died) is now working. Surprise, I was searching on porblems people had had with their computers not getting power, and found one way to tell if the problem is with the power source the battery or a dead mother board (which is really expensive, I can't afford, and am glad that was not the case), and that way is to try powering up the machine without the battery, just on the AC power. I thought I had tried that at one point, but I guess I didn't. Well I took the battery out and tried turning on the power and viola the machine started to start up. It still takes about 5 minutes for the silly thing to boot up but at least it is working. Then to see if the battery was truely dead I tried putting the thing back in (with the machine still powered on) and instead of the machine dying which I thought would happen, it stayed on and started recharging the battery which said it was at something like 55% charge, well now after about an hour and a half it is up to 91 or so?

OK so now I need to figure out how to backup the stuff I don't have backedup, get a spare battery for backup (could be expensive), get some sort of backup hard drive or some kind of separate storage thing that can hold tons of information. Also eventually I will need to do something about my anchient mini-tower desktop that I barely use anymore, but is hooked up to my skanner. Oh and I need to do something about the other laptop I have that is semi-dead.

I need to really find some sort of devise to act as a palm pilot/ electronic date book/ info device. Oh and a new digital camera, my current one has issues.

Ah now I feel much better. If only I can keep my car from getting messed up, ugh I need to get yet another tire, but that is another story for some other time and some other place.

Over the Hump!

Hey I just noticed that the last entry for May was the mid-way point for being equal to the same number of posts from last year. Yeah Me!

Lately the only thing I've been doing with this blog is updating my CDs listened to. Check them out sometime, the links usually lead to the amazon.com entry for that release that I recently listened to. So sometimes amazon won't have any copies. Occasionally I also listen to cassettes and on the rare occasion (since I've re-hooked up a turntable) listen to vinyl albums.

So that is it for now.

Sometimes Technology SUCKS!

ARGH!
First my digital camera acts up a few months ago, and either needs repairs or replacing. Then my palm pilot up and dies. Now my laptop joins the land of the dead. [Sigh] I can't afford a new computer and I can't afford repairs on the laptop. Besides a few years worth of archived emails and various programs (some of which were downloaded for free like winzip and adobie reader) I have lost some digital photos that I never got around to backing up on a disc or anything. Plus tons of other stuff, that I may not have have used recently or often but are just glad they are available. It appears I may have to start from sratch yet again. This sort of thing always happens when I need to switch to a new computer. I need to refind applications I had gotten used to using that are not standard programs on factory fresh computers, not to mention all the various bookmarks I had. ARGH! I'm not sure but I think I am now locked out of my website access. I need to look into that to see if I can access my account from my mothers computer, I cant login from work, although I can check my bill balance there. UGH!

A Recent Read Number 8

"Judy wants me to read The Bible. Okay. That's what I'll do, and when I read it I'll be able to prove to her that she is absolutely wrong."

Betrayed! by Stan Telchin. A very simple book to read, and very touching. Betrayed is an autobiographical story of a Jewish father's initial reaction to and eventual acceptance of his daughter's life changing decision to become a believer in Jesus Christ. First the author and his wife as traditional Jews, are shocked and angry about their daughter's decision to accept Jesus as her personal lord and savior. Then he reads a bible with the intention of proving her beliefs to be wrong and to win her back. Along the way he discovers that the more he tries to disprove The Bible the more he learns to accept it as The Gospel Truth.

I got a kick out of the fact that the author lives in the DC area. His ministries website (telchin.com) mentions a second book (Abandoned) that I think is sort of an update to Betrayed or perhaps the story of his ministry work.

Betrayed! by Stan Telchin 1981 Chosen Books (Baker Book House Company) 139 Pages. - ***

A Recent Read Number 7

"Either The Massiah came almost two thousand years ago, or the biblical prophets were false prophets - in which case we can throw The Bible out and go join some other religion (or abandon religion completely)."



Answering Jewish Objections To Jesus - Volume One - (General and Historical Objections) Michael L. Brown. This book was intended by the author to be read primarily by a Jewish audience and then secondly by Christians to further understand somewhat were Jews are coming from historically. The book has a basic format of common questions (or objections) that Jews have about Jesus and Christianity, followed by an answer and then often lengthy endnotes as an explanation. It is interesting that many Jews haven't even bothered to find out anything about Jesus. They normally just dismiss anything about him and don't bother with reading any of the New Testament. The author of this book is a massianic Jew, that is someone whe was born into a Jewish family and has accepted Jesus as his savior and believes he is The Massiah. Often they call themselves True Christians, many traditional Jews consider them traitors and believers of a cult or of an enemy religion.

I found this book to be a difficult read, since I am unfamiliar with many of the references to Jewish Scriptures that many Jews wouldn't even bat an eye at since it (the original Hebrew scriptures often not found in the Christian Bible) was something they already know and are very comfortable with. I was dissappointed when I realized that this book was only the first of a three volume set, and many of the objections that I have heard about (and wanted to hear the answer to) are supposedly in either volume two or more likely in volume three. There is a 3-in-1 Volume available now I think, with updates, and I fear there is also a volume 4 now. I believe that many Jewish readers will still be asking the same questions and will not be satisfied with the answers the author gives.

Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus - Volume One by Michael L. Brown 2000 Baker Books 270 Pages - **.5

20 Posts To Match Last Year.

Kewl,
According to the post count on my sidebar there on the right, I had 32 posts in all of last year. Right now I have 12, make this one 13 posts, this year and it's mid-May. Whoops that means just 19 more to tie (match) 20 to beat.

Dead Palm Pilots

Ack! I'm pretty sure my 5? year old Palm Pilot is now officially dead. It was a M130 or some such, I'd have to double check the exact number on it. It doesn't turn on and it doesn't recharge in it's cradle. The worst part is I don't have the info on it backed up, but I think nothing of great importance was on it. A few birthdays remembered for each year, a brief description of a dream I had about 3 or 4 years ago, a few to-do lists, some old phone numbers and addresses, and my schedule/calendar that I hadn't updated since sometime in mid-April. Oh and a few date reminders, and a sort of history of appointments. Other than that no problem. Sigh that makes my second dead palm pilot sitting around collecting dust, my first palm pilot that I had bought used for something like $50 when they were selling for $300-$500 was a Palm III, I think. It's only problem that I know of, is the wire that connects the battery case to the circut board. Well anyway I should replace my ancient cell-phone with one that would double as a palm pilot, but I don't want to loose my number so I'd have to go with whatever deals Verizon (my cell phone carrier) has. It will be several months before I do anything like that though. My financial situation really sucks right now.

April Showers Bringing May Flowers

ACK! April is almost over, it feels like it just barely began. Baseball is in the air and the Washington Nationals are once again losing but are losing while going down swinging. They have got to pick up the pace, but then again the season is only what 3 weeks old. So there is going to be lots of flip-floping all around. OK Next!

I am in rehearsals for a show I am directing with the Sandy Spring Theatre Group (SSTG) to be performed at the Gaithersburg Arts Barn (GAB) in June. The show is Steve Martin's first play Picasso at The Lapin Agile. It is filled with laughs and is great fun. The basic premise is a fictional meeting between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein at the French Cabaret named Lapin Agile (The Nimble Rabbit - specifically a male rabbit) in 1904 Paris, France. They discuss how their respective works may effect the history of the 20th Century. So as a result my May entries will be somewhat limited, and I might only get the one post quota I try to keep as my standard minimum. Hopefully I'll be able to do more, but we shall see.

Weird Huh?

Huh?
Now it seems I can access cdcomplete.com at work, and can view the individual titles again. Weird. I wonder how long that will last. I still think the format of the site needs some work. Plus I wonder why they don't have some of the cover images, when they have all the track information. I guess some of those million selling records only have a handfull of cdcomplete members who have purchased them. That and I guess most of those members don't phyically own the albums in their collections but rather the mp3s, and the downloaded files of the songs. I suppose that is one of the things that even if I do breakdown and get an ipod, I won't do much downloading of songs, I'll just rip (is that the right word?) from the physical CD and copy it to the ipod.

April Showers Or Something

Hmm OK so this seems to be my first April Entry. Yay! I've got several things I need to do and should be doing and as usual no time to do it.

In the next few days/weeks I will be in rehearsals for a show I am directing for The Sandy Spring Theatre Group (www.sstg-home.org). The show is Steve Martin's Picasso At The Lapin Agile the preformances will be in the first three weekends of June in Gaithersburg. Right now I have most of the cast, there are two more male characters that I need to cast. The turn out for auditions a couple of weeks ago was dismal. I had to go searching for most of the actors I did get and have additional auditions a couple of times. Needless to say I will be pretty busy and might not have very many entries here in April and May, so what else is new.

A few days ago I discovered at work that another website I like to visit and use has been blocked by their silly security programs because the site promotes mp3 file posting, ugh. So now I can't update any of my stuff at CDcomplete.com while at work. I used to be able to at least look at my collection there, then I started noticing errors whenever I would try to look at a specific title (while at work). Then work blocked the site all together. Oh Well I still can get to rateyourmusic.com. I noticed they have updated that site since I had last used it. Now there are more cover images and they seem to have more titles. I was using that site only for my cassette and vinyl collections (with some of the special CD box sets) since the CDs were covered by the CDcomplete site. I only have a couple of tapes listed there and about 20 vinyl albums in my collection list, so I have to buckle down and get more entries there. For about a year and a half I only had about 24 titles listed there. I listed more of my CDs there on Thursday and Friday so there are about 100 of my CDs listed there now. I have a big task ahead of me there. I had the same sort of task when I had first set up my account over at DVDSpot.com it took me awhile (Like over a week) to enter my 200+ DVDs I had, now since I'm updated there whenever I get new DVDs I can add it to the list easily. I hope to be able to do that with CDs shortly, but it will probably not be completed until sometime in the summer. Also rateyourmusic has always been a little simpler to add to your list than over at cdcomplete. At cdcomplete you needed to know the UPC number to identify which version of a title you had. It isn't too user friendly when it comes to comparing different versions. Rateyourmusic is more user friendly and more community oriented sort of like over at DVDspot. All this reminds me that I am still only about a fifth or sixth of the way through with catalogueing my books over at bibliophil.org which I have a few issues with, but that is for another blog entry now isn't it?

Blogging Etiquette

You know I think that if someone is going to write a blog, they should make an effort to edit their posts to correct spelling and or grammar errors. There are many blogs around the internet, that constantly have spelling errors and dropped letters. Oh well I guess some people don't have the time to go over something they are done with.

March Madness!

Hmm Have I mentioned in this that I don't watch or care about the sport of Basketball, or the whole championship series called "March Madness"? I used to watch it some as a kid and liked the Washington Bullets (They began as the Baltimore Bullets), but then they moved from the "Capital Center" which was later renamed "USAir Arena" and in 2002 was demolished to make way for a shopping center, which now has one of those Magic Johnson's Movie Multiplex Theatres) in Laural, MD to the "DC Convention Center" (Then to another newer Convention Center I think) in Washington DC which was later renamed "The MCI Center" and then when Verizon bought MCI it was renamed "The Verizion Center". The Bullets changed their name to the Washington Wizards somewhere before the MCI Center name, to be more PC so as not to promote gun violence. So I stopped watching Basketball seriously sometime in the late 1970s around the time that Michael Jordan was making a name for himself, and the uniforms were becoming long baggy skirts with untucked shirts instead of shirts tucked into shorts. Maybe I shouldn't mention the uniform change because people might think I'm gay, but these modern "basketball shorts" that are baggy and look like gaucho skirts are the ugliest thing to come to sports uniforms since boxing sparing head gear. I got the biggest kick one time by seeing a video of some high school kid tripping on his "shorts" as they were falling down, served him right for trying to run around in a baggy skirt.

New On-Line Selling Venue!

I have sold stuff via Ebay for about 6 or 7 years now, off and on, mostly off, but lately very on. While surfing the Ebay Community Boards I found out about a totally free venue to sell stuff, you can also buy stuff from there which isn't free. Ecrater.com so far is Totally free to set up a store and start selling stuff. They don't charge a monthly fee to keep the store open, they don't charge final sale fees upon conclusion of the sale, they don't charge listing fees. The only fees they charge are premium fees for sellers who want to have their items featured at the very beginning of search pages. They have some sort of partnership with Google Check Out service which I need to check out the details about before doing it. Some in the Ebay forum have said that their sales are greater there than over at Ebay. Of course you have to promo the heck out of your store to generate traffic, many use their Ebay About Me page to do that (That seems to be one of the few places that Ebay allows outside links on).

So the next few days I will try to figure out how to work with that system, I've got a ton of collectible stuff that I want to unload, and the more I can get for it the better.

Stupid Bowl

Ah The Stupid Bowl : For the last few years, if one of my favorite teams (Washington Redskins, Los Angeles ney St. Louis Rams, Carolina Panthers, Seatle Seahawks or maybe even the Baltimore Ravens) didn't make it to the Super Bowl, I would be dissappointed and concentrate on what the silly $2,000,000,000 (Two Billion Dollars) or whatever the price commercials were shown (I do that anyway). Usually it just boils down to the Budwieser Commercials with the Clydesdales, the FedEx commercials and the occasional Coke commercials with the polar bears or maybe a cool Pepsi ad. Oh the game? Well sometimes they are exciting, like last years Steelers and who did they play? Oh yeah it was the Seahawks, bummer. That is one of the problems I usually am so disinterested in the game that I just barely remember who the current Stupid Bowl Champs are and totally forget who they creamed. This year (#41) The Sneaky Leave Baltimore in the middle of the night Colts beat Da Bears! What was it 29 to 17? The first half was pretty exciting but the second half was kind of boring. That is the way many of the last 10 games have been, could it be because the AFC has won something like the last 8 or 9 of the last 10? Or just because the whole thing has become a media circus and the game of Football has taken a back seat?Did I mention I was sick of hearing about Dungy, Payton Manning and the Colts even before the Stupid Bowl?

Selling on Ebay

Even though I've been selling on Ebay for quite a few years now, every once in a while I get a high point. Well yesterday I reached a high point. 3 auctions of items I was selling sold. One of them I thought would take a long time to sell, like the romance novel book I've had for sale for the last 5 years or so. Anyway I put it up on a 10day auction, someone was watching it for like six days and about 2 days before it was to end they bid on it, well then someone else bid on it. Long story short an item that started at a buck, I ended up selling for Ten. That is not my largest sale, but one of the big ones. I usually sell buttons and trading cards for a buck or two, once I sold some videos for $20 or $25 bucks so I think those were the biggest sale I've had. I can't quit my day job just yet because I'm lucky if I sell one item for a buck a month. Part is due to not having many items up for sale at one time. But recently I had my all-time high of 80 items on sale 1/2 of them were regular auction format, the other half are still in my Ebay store as in-store items sitting on the shelf as it were. Of course I would one day want to have enough regular sales every month to be able to quite my daytime job and sell on ebay full-time. That unfortunately is easier said than done. Buttons and penny-anti trading cards don't cut the mustard, so I sell an occassional CD or video, once a DVD. I've thought of trying to sell DVDs and CDs in bulk but again there are no guarantees.

All those late night "Make a fortune on Ebay" infomercials are bologna, they use what is called "Drop shipping" which is very risky and only makes money for the company that is doing the drop shipping. In a nutshell, you buy stuff from the drop shipping company, put the auctions up on ebay, they do all the order filling and shipping you pay them a fee and maybe get some money from the sale.

Family Frodo

Today (Saturday 27 Jan 2007) my mother and I had our picture took for the 50th anniversary directory of my families church. The photography studio was Olan Mills (olanmills.com). For at least the last 10 years (I'm guessing here) or so they have been using computers to process the proofs for the photos. Many years ago you would get your pictures taken, then wait several weeks for the proofs to be sent to you, then you picked which one(s) you wanted and waited a few weeks for your portraits to arrive. Now the proof process is done with computers so within a couple of minutes after your pictures are taken you view the proofs on the computer screen pick which ones you want and then wait for your portraits to arrive in about 4 weeks. Pretty cool eh?

Blogging More Often!

Ahhh it feels good to blog every now and then. My biggest problem is coming up with something to say. Not good for someone who has dreams of writing sci-fi novels and screenplays. I'm not much of a writer and don't do it too often so there goes the dream of making big bucks as a writer.

I am getting frustrated with my financial situation. Barely making enough money to "Afford" a rent, but still not quite able to afford to do it. Loads and loads of late fees and over-the-limit fees on credit card(s) that went BOOM! And sometimes not being able to make the minimum payments which are now almost impossible to pay. Definately without a huge loan and soon.

Photos in buckets and stuff

Blog it, blog it, blog it,
Write it up and blog it,
Whatever.

OK so I have officially joined the ranks of the photobucket society. Mostly for my Ebay selling endevers. I used to use Sparedollar, because the first month was free and then, at the time I signed up, it was only $4 per month. Then they raised the price to $5 a month and eventually $8, then they were bought out by InkFrog and now that costs $9 per month for 300MBs of image hosting. Photobucket right now is FREE with 1GB of image hosting. To save money I will drop the InkFrog soon. Heck I saved money this month anyway by letting my Netflix accout cancel out since my credit card went BOOM! and it will be sometime before I can get it back down, unless I can get a huge loan soon.

At work we are almost done with our archiving of documents so we will soon have to move on to other stuff. At least that is what our nice office manager says. That means when people ask me what I do at work, I won't know what to say. D'oh! I wasn't going to mention work here much if at all.

Wind it UP!