Can you help me find one?
I desparately need a flashdark.
You know, one of those small handheld wands that you point at something, and it creates a beam of darkness?
If you see one for sale, please let me know.
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January 31, 2006
January 30, 2006
Steelers vs. Seahawks
I grew up in Washington state, but it seems like every friend or acquaintance I have made over the years has been a huge Steelers fan.
Out of convenience, (the Hawks usually stink) I have been sucked along on the bandwagon more times than not.
This year, I don't really have the luxury of rooting for the Steelers, but still, this is pretty darn cool:
Learning to fly.
I got a nice little present in the mail today from Sporty's. they sent out the first DVD of from their private pilot's course. It is pretty much a teaser for the entire course, but I learned a ton from the 170 minutes worth of instruction. It is pretty impressive how thorough they are. Nathan enjoyed watching with me, and Andee showed some interest as well.
January 27, 2006
Adventures in Sleep.
When you work off shifts, It is only a matter of time before you get obsessed with Sleep. An obsessed Reighley man is pretty dangerous.
Last night I saw this Alarm clock that is coming to market. I also noticed a simular wristwatch. The idea is that these monitor your sleep cycles, and wake you at a time that you are ready to wake up. Typically, you go through several sleep cycles during a nights sleep. If you wake up at the end of one of these cycles, you feel well rested an rejuvinated. If you are woken up in the middle of the cycle, you feel groggy and tired. If you need to get up by 6, these alarm clocks will wake you up early to prevent you from having to be woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle.
That got me thinking. I wonder how hard it would be to build a computer to monitor my sleep? When I am asleep during the day, my wife is always stressed when she has to wake me up. Running a small business, it is not uncommon for me to have to provide tech support to my customers in the middle of the day. When they call, if I was being monitored, she could know if I was in a state of sleep that it was approprate to wake me from. She could also see how productive my sleep has been, so she could make better descisions about whether she could wake me up.
I see home model EEG (Brainwave monitoring) machines for 1K or so. Sleep labs also use EOG (Eye movement sensors) and EMG (Muscle sensors). I wonder what these alarm clocks are using? I would guess they are using a simpler measurment (Movement? Heartrate? Tempurature?)
I have also considered getting a sensory deprivation tank to rest in. I have used one before and it is definately an interesting experience. Basically you float in 93.5 degree water that has been saturated with epsom salts. The water is exactly skin tempurature, and there is no light, no sound, and no smell. After a few minutes, it is kinda like your brain is floating out in the middle of nothing. Using a float tank is relaxing like nothing else that I have encountered. With my budget, and floorspace, I don't think this is a real option. I also don't know of anyplace to float in Spokane. I had to go to Seattle (a four hour drive) to try it, and it wasn't cheap.
Writely Test
My spelling is terrible! I read a lot of my blog posts, and it is pretty embarrassing. Sometimes I have noticed that I get a lot of traffic from people who don't know how to spell. Part of the problem is that I am lazy. The other part of the problem is that my blogging software is relatively bare bones, and doesn't have a spellchecker or fancy formatting options.
When I want to be tidy, I often type my entries out, copy and paste them into my word processor or email client, spell check them, then copy and paste them back. This is not a great solution, but it works when I do it.
The point of this post is to test out Writely, a free online word processor. It has a spellchecker installed, and will publish directly to any blog that accepts Blogger, metaWeblog or MovableType APIs.
We will see how it works. I am not too impressed with the spellchecker yet. It doesn't have good enough suggestions for poor spellers like myself! It also doesn't spank me for capitalizing words improperly like Word does. Hopefully it will get better with time.
January 25, 2006
Josh the Inventor.
For the last couple of years I have been fantasizing about a super bowl delicacy that I have never seen before.
A sweet cornbread waffle topped with Chili, Sour Cream and Cheese.
I have been afraid to try it.
Today I was feeling fearless, so I poured the cornbread batter into the waffle iron and ....
It worked!
The waffles where a little bit limper than regular waffles, but I think they are going to be okay, Nathan (almost 3) gave them the big thumbs up. He ate my waffle plain, but he refused to eat his own waffle that was smothered in syrup. (Mommy cut it wrong)
Hmmm.. How am I going to make this work with my diet??? Glad I get a free day every week!
Unprofitable and useless
One of those interesting things that God does... I was browsing through the bible trying to find some biblical answers for my friend when I stumbled across this scripture, which was an answer to a question of my own:
BibleGateway.com - Passage Lookup: Titus 3:9-11;But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.
I am often irritated about the venomous Christians that tend to troll blogsphere searching for people to condemn. Sometimes it makes me ashamed to be associated with Christian blogs at all.
I think I will walk away from such controversies from here on out. I will call the venom what it is, and if people still want to bite, I don't need to be involved. Nothing good ever comes from argueing with somebody who has a hardened heart.
Blinklist
I have played a bit with some social bookmarking websites, but have never been terribly impressed. I just signed up for Blinklist however, and I think it may be worthwhile. What impresses me is that you can query for any tag, and your query will have an RSS feed. I notice that if you click on the rss feed, it gives you javascript code so that you can append your links right into any webpage. I am sure this will be very useful. I am not positive why.
January 24, 2006
Who owns God's communications?
It may be the Open Source movement's inflence on me, but I have always had difficulty with the idea of copyrights on religous teaching.
Vatican 'cashes in' by putting price on the Pope's copyright - World - Times Online
For the first time all papal documents, including encyclicals, will be governed by copyright invested in the official Vatican publishing house, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.The edict covers Pope Benedict XVI�s first encyclical, which is to be issued this week amid huge international interest. The edict is retroactive, covering not only the writings of the present pontiff � as Pope and as cardinal � but also those of his predecessors over the past 50 years. It therefore includes anything written by John Paul II, John Paul I, Paul VI and John XXIII.
Many religous teachings are copywrited. Pastors often purchase their sermons from companies like sermons.com or creativepastors.com and use them in their churches. In general, I think this practice is good, as it allows them to present a more carefully crafted message than they could if they started fresh each time.
Some Bible translations (notably the NIV) have fairly restrictive copyrights on them. It is difficult to give away a computer program that has the NIV translation in it.
In general, I don't think that God's Word, or the related discussions should be unavailable to anyone. We should want this message copied and spread to as many people as possible.
Does God want people to have to pay to learn about him? I certainly would be interested in people's opinions on this.
January 23, 2006
Suduku puzzles
I have been playing a lot with the Suduku puzzles lately. In the last few days, I have been considering writing a program to solve the puzzles for me. I feel like I am getting pretty good at them, but I am sure that there are methods that I have not thought of yet.
If I proceduralized the process of solving them into a computer program I think I could experiment to figure out which methods tend to be most effective.
I am thinking I will use bitwise flags to store the possibilities. For a nine by nine suduku, I would use the binary number 0000 0001 1111 1111 to represent a cell that has no possibilities eliminated. Each digit represents a possibility 0000 0000 0000 0001 would mean 1 is the only remaining possiblity, 0000 0000 0000 0010 would be 2, 0000 0001 0000 0000 would be 9. 0000 0001 0001 0000 would represent a cell where 9 and 5 are the only possiblities.
The process would work something like this: I would scan through the grid, and for each known value I found I would turn off the appropriate bit for each of the cells in the same row, column and square.
After all of the eliminations where processed I would scan through the grid again, looking for cells that only have one bit left standing. In each of these I would insert the proper number, then I would run the elimination routine again. This process would repeat until the puzzle is solved.
Once I get this running, I could run different procedures to see which methods work best. I can record the number of steps it takes to solve the puzzles, so I can test the algorithms to see which are most efficient.
Binary is really useful. It is kind of fun to make your brain work that way every once in a while just too feel the millions and millions of synapses that you usually don't use flick on and off.
Sorry to be such a nerd. I tried to talk to my wife about this, but she kinda rolled her eyes at me. I had to explain It is like there are 9 light switches in each cell, and you turn them off when you know that their number is eliminated. I think she might have started to get it. (I am not sure she started to care) ;-)
January 19, 2006
WikiMedia
I have been playing quite a bit with WikiMedia lately. This is the software that runs the Wikipedia.
The fraternity house that I lived in when I went to college closed it's doors a couple of years ago due to low recruitment, and financial issues. The house was sold, and the chapter no longer has a presence on campus. As a result, there is a certain amount of loss for alumni. We no longer have a home when we visit campus. We don't get a newsletter each year keeping us connected.
The fraternity does plan to recolonize in a few years, and it would be nice if the chapter's history had a human feel to it. Enter WikiMedia. This is software that can be installed on a PHP/MySQL capable webserver that allows a community to maintain webpages. Now members can post all of their nostalgic stories and experiences on the Wiki, so that their fellow alumni can read it, and so that the future colony will have our experiences to learn from.
WikiMedia does have a bit of a learning curve. I have been encouraging people to post what they have, and not stress too much about the appearance. I frequenty go through all of the newly edited pages and tidy up.
So far after a week we have 4 contributors, and several more who are saying that they plan to. I think we already have some worthwhile content. I am hoping that it will pick up steam as the content gets better.
Becoming less fat.
Andee and I are starting our weight loss regimen. We lost about 25 lbs each last year on the Body for Life program. Unfortunately we have kinda strayed over the last 6 months, and have stopped losing weight. Andee is motivated to lose more wieght before we go to Hawaii in June.
I really like the Body for Life program. It makes a lot of sense. Basically you eat 6 times a day, eating small portions of carbohydrates and protiens with each meal. They encourage you to eat lowfat foods, mostly because fat has a lot of calories. I like that you have to focus on eating. On other programs I have felt like the focus was on not eating. I eat all of the time, and the foods that I eat are useful to my body, so my body doesn't really crave much.
The Body for Life program also encourages you to excercise vigorously, doing both wieght training and cardio.
I would like to lose another 40 - 50 lbs.. We will see what happens. I don't care about the numbers so much as I care about looking and feeling a bit better.
January 17, 2006
Hard lesson
Studied Genesis 16 at BSF yesterday... At first glance, the application seems pretty easy.
Even if my wife says it is okay to have babies with her maidservant, it is likely not a good idea.
I don't think I will have much trouble behaving myself there...
Then I think about other places where my wife can be nicer than she should be. Buying cars, watching sports etc...
Lets re-write the application: Even if my wife says it is okay to... (put your own selfish desire here).... It may not be a good idea..
Not so easy is it???
More incentive to remain drug free
I like Shaun Alexander a lot. He seems to have his head on right.
Seahawks expect Alexander to practice Wednesday, play in NFC title game Sunday - NFL - Yahoo! SportsHis entire weekend was bad. He had a bad cold all week but refused medication until just before the game. He said he then took "tons" of medicines, and felt somewhat strange when he started the game.
On Seattle's first drive, Alexander lost a fumble without getting hit -- his second lost fumble in two games after none in 350 carries in 15 games this season.
"Medicine's good for some people," he said. "Not for me."
It is so hard for anyone to stand up against the drug culture today. Every little ailment must be treated with a pill, our you are considered a Sado-masachist by those around you.
I think most people take so many drugs today, that they wouldn't know if they where truely feeling good or bad.. They have no baseline to measure from.
January 16, 2006
Don't neglect you legacy brands!
I have been gradually becoming more and more annoyed by Dreamhost's Dreambook product. Back in 1998 or so, I was looking for a Guestbook application for my Bat House webpage. Dreambook fit the bill exactly, and so I installed it.
Later I decided I wanted to get my own domain name, and I saw that the folks who hosted my dreambook where offering hosting. I signed up for Dreamhost and have never been disappointed. I have been their happy customer for 7 years now.
I am no longer a happy dreambook customer though.. My dreambook gets about 20-1 spam messages, and there is no out of box solution to cut down on the spam. I have submitted a suggestion, but I can imagine that dreambook constitutes .0000000095 % of Dreamhost's revenue stream, so I can't imagine that it is high on their priority list.
But if you have a product that creates the most annoyance to your customers, I think it warrents attention whether it is cost effective or not..
In the mean time, I added a mandatory feild. Are you a Spammer?? It has a dropdown, and requires them to select yes or no. Hopefully that will stop most of the robots..
Currently reading.
Well I had to call all of the bookstores in town to track down a copy, but I am reading The Heavenly Man. Seems like I have seen several Blogs quoting the book over the last few weeks, and Junglepop highly recommended it.
January 13, 2006
To Spank or not to Spank??
Nothing seems to spark a debate on the web like a discussion of spanking.
I believe most people's problems are rooted in the fact that they do things that they know they shouldn't do, and fail to do things that they should do. Basically, they are disobedient. Most of my problems are rooted in my disobedience to my beliefs. I spend money frivolously, then I am broke. I procrastinate, then I am stressed. I neglect my wife, and then she is upset with me.
As such, I think that the most important lesson we need to teach our children is the value of obedience. If we have to use spanking to teach them that, I am not opposed to the concept. This concept of sticking to their principles is important enough that we need to use any available method to get through to our children.
Modeling obedience is much more important than enforcing it. If we discipline in anger, we are disobedient. If we fail to disciple, when discipline is necessary, we are disobedient. If we are disobedient to our beliefs, our children will likely follow our example. We may be able to bully them into compliance, but their heart will still be angry with us. We are hypocrites, telling them to be obedient, while we follow our own passion of the moment.
We need to do the right thing because it is the right thing. If we are doing the right thing in order to avoid the consequences, then we only do the right thing when the consequences exceed our tolerance for risk. Parents will not always be there to increase the consequences.
Introducing spanking into our relationship with the children raises the stakes. It deepens their understanding of obedience, but it also amplifies their understanding of our hypocrisy. If they see us lose our self control, they are not going to believe it is normal to control themselves.
I think we need to have a discipline plan, and stick with it in order to be truly effective.
The best way to have disciplined kids is to have disciplined adults. If you are undisciplined, then there are probably issues within yourself that need to be addressed in order to be the most effective parent you can be.
Does it have to be true to be effective?
Oprah is defending James Frey, the author of her book club book: A million little pieces
My Way News"He's said he's had many conversations with my producers who do fully support him and obviously we support the book because we recognize that there have been thousands and hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been changed by this book."
My wife finished the book yesterday, and wants me to read it. I read through the Smoking Gun's extensive audit of the book, and it looks quite apparent that this book is pretty well rooted in fiction.
The question is, Does it matter? The author apparently did go through a rehab program, so he likely has experienced life as an addict. He maintains that the Memior is "emotionally true".
I suspect that it does matter. The ends don't justify the means. If you change lives with lies, those lives are not really changed, just fooled. Sad, but true.
James probably made a fortune off of this book, and Oprah's endorement. All of this controversy will probably make his book even more noticed. There is no such thing as bad publicity when you have a product to move.
January 12, 2006
Bones trump memories
Scientists: Donner Family Not Cannibals - Yahoo! News
I think it is funny how people trust fossil evidence (or lack there of) More than eyewitness accounts.
January 10, 2006
Sales pitch
I think it is time that more people start getting their own web hosting plans. I have hosted my websites on Dreamhost for almost 7 years now, and I think that it has been one of the best investments of my life.
Having your own internet presence is not very expensive. Dreamhost offers very full featured plans for under 10 bucks per month. You can get your own domain name for about 10 dollars per year. Dreamhost is gracious enough to allow you to host unlimited domains on your one web hosting account.
Dreamhost now offers quite a few applications as one click installs. This means that if you want to create a common web app, it is often as easy as asking them to install it from a web form, and following a few instructions that they send you in the follow up email. These are the applications that Dreamhost will install for you:
WordPress Weblog
phpBB Forum
Advanced Poll
osCommerce Store
MediaWiki Wiki
Joomla (Content Management System)
Gallery Image Album
WebCalendar Calendar
I have installed tons of other Open Source PHP/MySQL based software on my hosting account. Usually you can install them in well under an hour.
It is nice to have control over your own email accounts as well. I can create an email address whenever I want, and point it towards a super secret email box that I never give out to anyone. If I start getting too much spam, I can simply disconnect it and set up a different one. If I get fed up with my ISP, I can switch. My email address stays the same, so my friends can stay in contact without constantly having to update my address.
Today, I was thinking it would be nice to have a place for my college friends to save their stories of living in the TKE house at University of Idaho. Dreamhost has MediaWiki is a one click install. Within five minutes, I had set up a powerful repository for storing all kinds of information. It may or may not take off... I am encouraging my fellow alumni to contribute. But I know that there is no technical impediment to it working. How many good ideas never come to fruition because the guy with the idea didn't know how to implement it?
The internet is a very powerful tool. The bang for the buck is tremendous, especially with all of the Open Source software that is freely available. Unless you are going to garner a tremendous amount of traffic, most website can be implemented with no additional cost above your monthly hosting fee.
Once you have a hosting account, the learning curve is not that steep. Next time you have an idea, you may be able to implement it in 5 minutes, rather than leaving it as just a dream.
January 9, 2006
Exponent CMS
I have spent a lot of time playing with Open Source Content Management systems, and have found them all sorely lacking.
This week I tried Exponent, and It looks really good.
Exponent :: An Open Source Content Management System
I have been wanting to install a CMS for my church. Right now we use static pages, and one of their staff folks knows the 2 or 3 places where they can paste in text to make the updates. As a result, 2 or 3 places on the website are up to date, and most of the rest is a year or two dated.
I believe, and the pastors seem to agree, that the church website should be someplace that people are drawn back to frequently to check out the new content.
Most of the Content Management software I have seen so far has been too mechanical looking on the end user's view, or too complicated on the administrative side.
I am pretty impressed with exponent so far. It appears totally intuitive for the staff person who is updating the site. They can just click on the content that they want to change, and it opens up in a wordprocessor in the browser window. It is also just as easy to add new sections of content to the navigation bars or the sidebars on the page.
The downside is that it seems to run a little bit slow on my server. All of the pages are generated by PHP/MySQL each time the page is loaded. It also doesn't offer search engine friendly URLs yet, although it looks like that feature is in the works.
I will be keeping an eye on Exponent. I suspect that their project may become a big player in the Content Management market.
January 8, 2006
Christian in Policy only?
II name this the thought provoking post of the week:
Random Thoughts and Associations...: Christians, Gay Marriage and Poverty
How much different would the world be if those who professed to be Christians actually left their selfishness behind made sacrifices to help those in need?
Are out unnegotiable political stands actually and a way of appearing religious without having to make any sacrifice?
January 6, 2006
Firefox Searchbar
I always want to use the Samspade.org website, but I always forget is it samspade.net, samspade.com? No, it is samspade.org... Seems like every time I try to use that website my brain freezes and I can't remember.
So today I hacked together a plugin for my firefox searchbox. Now I can just click on the search bar, Select SamSpade and put in the URL, IP address or the like, and it will return the results of SamSpade.org's Do Stuff query.
Pretty slick!
January 5, 2006
The trinity as a parenting model
I had a brainstorm yesterday regarding the Trinity as a parenting model.
The Heavenly Father provided the world that we live in, and all that we need for life. He set out the law, guiding us in how we should live. His integrity is unwavering. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He disciplines us when we rebel.
The Son, was willing to sacrifice everything in order to bring us into a right relationship with God. He loves us even when where are unworthy.
The Holy Spirit Lives within each of us , guiding and strengthening us.
In a traditional family the role of the father corresponds with the example laid out by the Heavenly Father. He sets the standards for the family. He enforces the rules, he provides. (See Hebrews 12:7-11)
The mother should follow the model of the Jesus. (See Romans 5:8-11) Affirming the authority of the father, but loving the children even as they are. She is the source of abundant Grace. She is the healer. Her job is to encourage the children to strive for righteousness, believing in them and supporting them each day as if they where a new creation. As Christ Reconciles us with God, A mother should reconcile her children with their father.
The child will accept or reject the teachings and the examples that the parents have given him. The legacy of our interaction with our children corresponds with the role of the Holy Spirit. (See John 16:7-11) They have to choose to accept our influence in order to benefit long term. If they do, they will have our counsel to guide them on their journey even after we have departed.
Without all three parts, the system doesn't work all that well. If the parents provide a model of righteousness, but do not show grace, the child will be discouraged based on their failures. The will feel rejected by their parents, and will seek approval elsewhere.
On the other hand if you accept your children as they are, and do not challenge them to become more righteous, they will be undriven, and unguided. They must understand their shortcomings in order to recognize the true value of your love.
In the end, the child has to do their part as well. All of the best teaching in the world is useless if it is ignored, just as God's gift of salvation only helps those who choose to believe.
I suspect this parenting model would work very well, and I intend to implement it to the best of my ability within my family. It is quite a challenge though. I am not unwavering in my integrity. I cannot provide like God provides. We do keep a record of wrongs. I may not be able to love in quite the same way as God loves, but I still believe that my attempt will make my children have a better understanding of who He is.
January 4, 2006
Side benefits of helpdesk experience
Today my wife visited the pharmacy for the first time after our insurance switched over to a new company. She had called in her prescription ahead, so she went through the drive through. When she got there, she was asked for her insurance card. She waited, and waited, and waited.... The lady finally asked is she could come in to the building, because she couldn't pull her insurance up on the computer. Andee was frustrated after waiting for 20 minutes, so she said she would come back later.
Later this evening, I called the pharmacy and asked if they had resolved their billing issue. They said that they had been really busy, and hadn't had a chance to call the insurance company yet. I asked what the problem was, and she said that when she entered the account number, it didn't return our account, it just came up "record not found"
I said "Try leaving off the three letters in front of the account number". She followed my advice, and the records came right up.
I was a little proud of myself when I realized I had called a complete stranger up, and told her how to do her job. While I have never played with the pharmacy's computer system had noticed similar confusion on the insurance companies website. When you work a helpdesk job like I do, there is a certain confidence that you learn to project that makes people willing to follow your instructions. She apologized and thanked me, and I was able to pick up the prescription and ease my wife's stress a bit.
Tic Tock
Counting down the minutes until I hear from the liberals why the mine accident is President Bush's fault.
Also counting down the minutes until Pat Robertson or somebody in his camp explains why God is angry at the West Virginia folks.
Should we open a office poll on when these events happen?
January 2, 2006
Movable type upgrade
Upgraded my weblogging software to Moveable type 3.2 last week. It was pretty darn painless. I had been getting a whole bunch of trackback spam that was getting through the filters. The newest version of MT has pretty good Spam Filtering built in. It has been working like a champ, and has blocked about 300 Spam trackbacks in the last week alone.
Also added a plugin that pulls favicons from commenter's websites and post them next to their names.. Pretty nice touch, but there are some issues that I would like to see ironed out with the implementation.
Other than that, I have been pretty sick. Had a sinus infection and tonsilitis... Antibiotics seem to be taming the bug pretty well.
I lost the final match in my fantasy football league... It was tough to figure out what to do, because most all of my best players are on teams that had nothing to gain or lose this week, and most of my players didn't get much playing time. I could have won if I had pulled one of my starting running backs and put in a backup, but that was a risky move..
Second place is nothing to be too upset about. I have been playing with the same group of guys for about 8 years now. It is a pretty competitive league.