Pandas Can Talk!

Y’know… I understand the spammers misspelling words or using “1337″-like spelling to bypass spam filters… but when they go and change things SO MUCH that they become ACTUAL other words…

(Emphasis mine)
Email Subject: Big your piano, be a real man
“…I took {productname} for 6 months and now my disk is much bigger than NATION average piano size.”

So I look out into the family room…. see my little “spinnet” … and I begin to think. Apparently these little Canadian miracles will get me a Baby Grand in half a year! Hey, who wouldn’t want a bigger piano?

Well… I suppose it depends on the size of your family room…

And I’m not sure what the “disk” has to do with anything, maybe it’s a player-piano…

Yikes!

Looks like in a few days it would’ve been a full year since I wrote anything last.

Not that there hasn’t been stuff to blab about–it’s been a fully-packed near-year! Just a little pressed for time and a little discouraged at the flood of responses to my previous posts… by spammers.

Driving to my chiro appointment today (There’s even a story behind that–last Thurs I was rear-ended by a HS girl experiencing the joy of her first automobile collision!) I saw a bumper sticker that blew my mind. It said:

I ♥ The Traditional
Latin Mass!

And all I could think was “WHY?”

Bothered me for several blocks until I stumbled upon the fact that if you can’t understand what the gospel is saying to you, you don’t have to worry about it affecting your life.

Well, naturally. All you have to do is sit and listen to the pretty words. You never have to think about what they mean, or how it might apply to your modern-day, modern-language-speaking world. It’s CHURCH, in the most medieval sense. It’s an institution, an organization you are a member of–but not actually a part of in any practical way. Gee, it’s so much easier to believe you’ll go to heaven just for letting the pretty words and hymns wash over you for a couple hours a week. Kinda relaxing anyway (in a sleep-inducing way) so why wouldn’t you prefer it?

Does God speak latin? No doubt. He knows languages that haven’t been invented yet.

If God wanted to tell you something, would he use Latin? Nullo modo

(Oh, in case you don’t understand that… it translates to “No way.”)

Headline in the local newspaper caught my eye the other day: “Illegal Immigrants Live In Fear of Federal Raids”

And I wondered why this was news.

The article went on, groping for heartstrings, and quoted one such illegal to say “It’s a culture of fear, but you’re all right as long as you don’t draw attention to yourself.”

Then, the next bit was about the “National Day Without Immigrants” (which apparently is today, BTW–did you notice?)  Across the country, Illegals are drawing attention to themselves by skipping work, school, etc.  I have no idea if this will prove anything or not, but I know if I worked for INS I’d definately be taking notes today.

In line at the WalMart today, the lady in front of me asked “Have you seen less customers today?” (apparently the one-day boycott extends to shopping as well.)  The cashier responded “Yeah… it was crazy in here yesterday, though.”  Illegals stocking up for staying in today?  So… the weekly totals won’t really show any difference then, will they?

All of this to prove exactly what Immigrants contribute to the economy.  And it does too.  It demonstates exactly which jobs were taken from others who are also looking for a better life (who just happened to be born here.)  It demonstrates which schools are overcrowded with children whose parents do not pay taxes to support the schools.

Can we have one of these days every week?

It’s been a busy day… several projects slowly inch forward, all hampered by the others. But it would not be right to simply call it a day at the end of just another busy day without stopping to note that among everything else I did today, I did not sing ‘Happy Birthday’.

Today would have been my brother’s 33rd birthday. He passed on almost two years ago after a long fight with Leukemia. Even now… I can barely see the screen through the tears as I write the words.

Darin was always the more popular, the social one. In a small town of 3600, I think he must’ve known them all. Or at least of them. And quite a few from nearby towns as well. I always wanted him (and my parents) to leave that little burg that a job my Dad no longer has brought us to when I was in gradeschool. But Darin saw something in that place that I didn’t. He didn’t see the run-down shops and the lack of just about everything, to him it was a town full of interesting people. Some he liked, some he quite vocally did not like. And the reverse was also true.

As social as he was, he never had great luck with women. He had his share of girlfriends, but wore his heart on his sleeve for the one that got away. Two failed marriages left no kids behind… and I’m sure that he really wanted the kids more than the wives.

Last weekend we visited my parents’ house–just as we would have done for the birthday party we didn’t have. We had the cookout he would’ve enjoyed, relatives came over that he would’ve loved to get stories and secrets out of, even ate homemade ice cream… all that was missing was the red velvet cake that marked a party as Darin’s Birthday.

Instead, this year Jason was the center of attention. Now, he is the social one, and at age two he already has a gift for remembering the names of most of the kids and adults at the day care. No, I’m not suggesting he takes Darin’s place, or that anyone could, but in a way his presence been good for all of us.

We first found out about him–just a possibility of a placement–the week after Darin passed away. He’s given us all something to focus on… and his happy laughter over the weekend covered what might otherwise have been pained silences. God blessed us in a very special way with Jason, in so many ways in fact… and while we’d been trying for so long to have children, He withheld the timing till it was right, and needed as much as wanted.

Of course, knowing Darin, it could be that he put in a good word with the Big Guy once he got up there. I wouldn’t put it past him to try.

Just a normal day or errands this morning… with a few abnormalities thrown in for good measure. On the way out, I heard John Mellenkamp’s “I Need A Lover” on the radio, and remembered to turn it off just before he started singing. One of rock’s great instrumentals, spoiled. :/

My chiropractor running ahead of schedule rather than behind was a mild shock, though a pleasant one. During my long-overdue haircut the hairdressers’ conversation was also a bit surprising: one of her clients had asked her, if ‘things didn’t go well’, if she’d mine doing her hair when she was ‘in the box’ Which turned into a full discussion of doing hairdos for the dead (hard to do if they’re already in the coffin, but at least they don’t mind if you burn them with the curling iron.)

As BestBuy was right next door, I decided to drop in and see if any of the anime series I’m currently following had new episodes out. Was quite surprised to see ‘Kekko Kamen’ on the shelf - no idea if BB knows what they’ve got there. Read the rest of this entry »

I had four things on my to-do list today:

1. Wash Dishes
2. Do Laundry
3. Work on DI website
4. Play w/ Jason

Read the rest of this entry »

Ok… I’ve had this http://www.dansisland.com domain for well over a year (”why” is not an interesting story… move along) … I FINALLY decided to do something with it after setting up this blog.

So over the next month or so I’ll be moving selected parts of http://www.blueknot.com over to the island and creating a gallery, and eventually a place for freebie poser content.

I found a nice little three-column layout at http://www.tjkdesign.com/ –which I proceeded to hack to little bits. It was very nice and had lots of extra muck for playing nice with older browsers. Read the rest of this entry »

Jason has recently taken more of an interest in the TV.  He especially likes the Wiggles: he can sing and dance along and sort of interact with them (“Wake up Jeff!”)
We own a few videos for him.   Some Wiggles, some Jojo’s Circus, etc.  He really seems to like being able to choose what is on (can’t blame him there!)  And often he can tell us which one he wants.  (Sometimes he requests three or four at the same time… we’re working on this concept.)  The simpler titles he knows by name.  If he wants to see “Wiggles: Yummy Yummy”, he tells us he wants to “watch yummy yummy”.  Some titles require experience to decipher.  To “watch Wally” means to watch “Magical Adventure: A Wiggly Movie”, in which a magician named Wally features prominently.

And like most kids, his pronunciation is sometimes short-cutted on the longer, multi-syllabic words.  But he took us by surprise the other day.  Both Chele and I would’ve sworn he wanted to “watch Beyonce”.   Well, can’t fault his taste, but the only thing we have with her in it is one of the Austin Powers movies, and that didn’t seem entirely appropriate for a two-year old.
Eventually (and by process of showing him video boxes) did we determine that the “bay” was “baby” and “on-say” was “Einstein” … he wanted to watch Baby Einstien (Baby Wordsworth, to be specific.)  And that, I think, worked out better for all of us.

So… a man walks into a blog…

Seems like a nice place to be. Everyone else makes it look soooooo easy.

Little does he know, he’s just crossed the threshold and entered the door that leads to… *cue music*

…and anyway it turns out the issue was something my host company had done–or not done. Some glitch in the MySQL. So I’m mildy happy it wasn’t my fault.

And it looks like I’m finally going to get to do some work on a certain company website… I’ve been supposed to have been their “web guy” for ages now but I didn’t have all the tools to do more than a few pages. Tonight I got more of what I needed and a couple of small assignments to get started. And so the revolution begins.

But not tonight. The foundation was laid, but I’m too sleepy now to put two bricks together in any convincingly straight line.

Still… it’s good to know you’ve got the right tools to do the job before you start.

And it’s good to know this blog is here for when I hit my thumb with a hammer.

This morning, I check this site. It’s up. Later in the morning, the first person besides me who visits the site tells me there’s an error. Something about not being able to write temp files. I don’t know why. I can’t do much at the time, so I wait till I get home for the evening. I check in, ready to hunt down the issue… and it seems to be working now.

Or is it? I just hit save and the preview shows no message. Or is it that that feature doesn’t work? I didn’t look at it last night when I made my first and only post to this thing. Grr. Hiss. Growl.