Child's Play

Every year Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade run the Child's Play charity to give games and toys to children's hospitals around the globe. You can give a cash donation or choose the hospital near you and gift a specific item. They have already hit over one million dollars this year, which is pretty impressive for something two guys started in 2003.

Danny Robinson

There is a fascinating interview of Danny Robinson, a poker player, where he tells his life story and his coming to Christ. I can't seem to get just an mp3 link, but you can subscribe to the two plus two podcast and download episode 51 or go to their website and listen. Either way the interview starts at 41:17 and runs to 1:30:03. This story has quite a bit of why Vegas in the 70's was sin city. He is quite the raconteur and this interview is part of his ministry to tell poker players about Christ. One analogy he relates from Hayseed Stephens, New York Titans Quarterback, is that when you go fishing you don't jump in the water swim down and clean the fish, but you catch the fish and then clean it. Stephens said that he was catching him and then God would clean him.

Divorce Rate Myth

This appears to be old news, but it corrects even older news. Awhile ago the information that 50% of marriages end in divorce made headlines all over the place, but apparently that is wrong. In fact marriage stability is increasing since the late 70's during which only 53% lasted 25 years. Less people are marrying, but those that are seem to be more stable.

Auditorium

Auditorium is a game that you have to try. Part game, part sensory experience.

Diabolical Scam

I saw an advertisement for Swoopo and was a little curious why the deals seemed too good to be true. Turns out that to place a bid you need to spend $1.oo. Each bid increases the price of the item by $0.15 or $0.01 (and incidentally increases the time of the "auction"). They are just raking in the cash on these items. I can't believe that people are willing to gamble on winning the ability to pay for these items. The real winner here is swoopo, the expected return for the bidders has got to be so low.

Little Jokes

In the Economist this week they show how to write two paragraphs of story and four paragraphs of tongue in cheek jokes. This is but one small reason why it is the best news magazine around.

Halloween

I ended up just manning the door for Halloween, but I did get dressed up as Donnie Darko. I may have to get more use out of this costume next year.

DDR

It had been a long time since I had hooked up my Dance Dance Revolution pads. This last week they came out of storage at the suggestion of some friends. I remembered why I love this game. It is some of the best exercise I can get indoors, and it is so fun. Like riding a bike, the steps come back. However, the game still just ratchets up the difficulty to the most impossible levels as it gets to the hardest levels. I am at a point where I can either combo most of the song, or not even be able to finish. The suggestion I read was to just keep practicing, and making attempts at the harder songs, and I think some of that is paying off, but some of these seven and eight footers are just taking me apart.

I think the endorphins will keep me coming back. It takes a little while before I have to get off the pads, because my legs feel like lead.

Almost Over

The World Series, Halloween, and the election. Even without the market we have a busy few weeks ahead here. This election feels like it has been going on for two years, wait it has. The political phone calls are ramping up to a fever pitch, caller-id sure is nice.

Rays and Phillies, how did that happen?

Hmm, I can never come up with a good costume idea, I don't even have any plans this year.

Internet Comments

I need to stop reading comments on the internet, they are so painful. I heard someone claim that there actually are some useful youtube comments, but I don't believe them.

The Jon Arbuckle Story

The humor derived from reading Garfield without the titular character knows no bounds.

Chambana

This last weekend I headed up to Champaign-Urbana to return to my alma mater. I enjoyed visiting the church there, and it was good to reconnect with everyone. The Mangers were hosting their annual cookout and hay rack ride, which is always a favorite. I didn't cook my marshmallows quite right for the s'mores, but it was still delicious.

I think that the twin cities is one of my favorite places to be, and I miss it. And I was born there, so it must be good :)

Looking for a new hobby?

This is pretty impressive, I am pretty sure I will never do this.

Current Events

These last few months have reminded me that the saying, "May you live in interesting times" is a curse.

And a post over at the Beat of Hawaii reflects my opinion of American Airlines, which I just flew out to Los Angeles. Airline on time rates feel better to me then they did a few years ago, as long as your flight is not canceled.

Like a Pirate

I got a chuckle out of Google Searrrch, but other then that today, September 19 aka. Talk Like a Pirate Day, was not full of piratey goodness. For those who are not sure, yes, you are a pirate:

Hurricane Ike

We here in St. Louis have been dealing with the effects of Ike over the weekend. With the astounding amount of rain the last few days our walk in basement has been flooding a bit, and that has been causing some consternation. Now we have a water pump that we can start up when it is raining more then and inch an hour.

It was a good weekend, we had some visitors from Champaign down for Saturday evening and then today during church.

After church I packed up and headed out to a flooded Creve Coeur Lake. The website says it is 320 acres, but I can tell you that it is much larger right now. The rain had stopped, and the sun was out for some excellent windsurfing. The wind was still blowing quite a bit from Ike, but not too much. There was one other windsurfer out, and many people walking along the closed down road. After a session windsurfing my skin and hair is all weird, I used to think it was caused by the saltwater, but now I know that it is not. Even spending time swimming in the ocean or a lake does not leave my skin like this, so I am not sure what happens.

Hope everyone had a safe and not too wet weekend.

End of Summer

The weather here in St. Louis is cooling down, it is getting fall here. I have been busy the last few weeks. I visited Rittman, OH over memorial day for an invite there, which was a blessed time. My friend, Mark, leads a tutoring program through his church, and I plan to volunteer there this semester.

I found some unrelated information that is very pressing, which of course shows that St. Louis is a beacon of sanity regarding language.

Home Decorating Ideas

I know that I want one.

Pictures, Finally

Today I was feeling under the weather, and finished up the last few hours of work from home.

This afternoon I finally got around to uploading some pictures from my trip to Asia. They are sort of in order, but I not tagged or titled.

I need to get back to sleep.

It's not a glitch. He's just that good.

I got a good laugh out of this.

Losing Face

The Olympics in China, a great achievement? The PRC held an impressive event, with thousands of athletes, and pulled it off without a hitch. That takes quite a bit of effort, like detaining or imprisoning any who seek to protest. It seems to me that there is a greater loss of face regarding accusations of cheating and crackdowns on any who don't toe the party line.

Because the continued affirmation that the passports say the gymnasts were eligible to participate in the Olympics is not holding up to scrutiny, the IOC may strip some gold medals from the Chinese team. Then what will people remember from this? The 51 gold medals won by China, or that they cheated to get them? If they are willing to cheat in such a apparently blatant way, did they cheat elsewhere?

This is all minor to the continued persecution of Christians by the government. With lists of stories directly related to the Olympics. Most major media outlets don't seem to focus on this persecution very often.

It would be much easier to save face if the actions of the government weren't always so apparently oppressive and underhanded.

The Birds

On my walk to work this morning, I encountered a flock of ducks grazing in the grass by the golf course. This is not an unusual occurrence. As the season has continued the little ducklings have grown up into adolescents. One of this chirped at me as I passed and then started following me. This got the attention of the flock and they too started to follow. It was a little surreal to have this team of ducks following me along, as most wild animals are so wont of fleeing from humans. As I got farther ahead the little guy finally broke off at a tree stump, and my morning was a bit cheerier.

While I Was Gone

I have taken several trips this year, mostly with family. Earlier in the spring, most of the clan headed out for a cruise around Hawaii. It had been a long time since I had been to any of the islands other then Maui. I really enjoyed seeing what the different islands had to offer, and it was a lot of fun spending time with the family. I have the collected family pictures up on my gallery, which is quite extensive. Usually I only put select pictures up, but I wanted them all for a while, and may need to remove some of the 947 pictures, to make it more manageable.

About a month before the Olympics I traveled with my parents to Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Beijing. I have yet to get the pictures up online because my main computer is dead right now, and I am a little frustrated about that. Hopefully I will get those up at some point in the next two weeks.

I also recently traveled up to Minneapolis for a wedding of some friends, and will be heading out to LA for Jim and Krissa's wedding.

Whew, it has been a busy year.

So Very Clever

Recently I decided that I needed a better way to deal with passwords and accounts on computers and various websites. Yesterday I took the plunge and started using PasswordMaker to generate secure passwords in a systematic way. It is pretty cool because the passwords are never stored by me, and are different for each site. It took me a while to really wrap my head around the idea and implementation, but I think I have it now. The documentation could be better, and sometimes the interface is confusing, but I like having secure passwords. The biggest problem so far are sites that demand useless properties for the password, like one I have which needs two letters and two numbers, and has a length restriction.

The (not so) clever thing I did was email myself the settings file I made and then went to another computer to import the settings. I didn't think about it until I tried to log onto my email which now had a hashed secure password. Fortunatly I was able to regenrate the password, which made me a like this system better.

Leo Sale

I had a good and full Saturday at the Gateway Woods annual sale in Leo, Indiana. I saw a great many people and enjoyed catching up on current events. I am not quite sure how I have never made it out to the sale before, but I plan to return many times.

This is the first time I have been really paying attention to the Olympics, and they are really exciting. I have actually not been sleeping enough because they keep on going into the night.

Men's 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay

These Olympics are fantastic. It doesn't get much better then the US gold win in the Men's 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay. I am hyped up, and looking forward to more events.

Speedo LZR

Look for the swimmers at the Olympics to be wearing the Speedo LZR RACER Suit. It apparently costs $600 and takes 20 minutes to put on. We will see who is winning the Golds for swimming.

Search for "Olympics" on google to get an up to date medal count, currently China has 2 golds to the 1 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze the US has.

Cidade de Deus

I just finished watching City of God and was blown away by the picture. I had in passing heard some good things about it, and had it in my Netflix queue for a while. It is a very stark look at violence and drugs in Brazil during the 70's. The characters and the sense of time and place are astounding. It makes me wonder just how close to the real story it comes to portraying.

At The Game

I just got back from the Cardinals v. Dodgers game. It was Cardinals up 4-0 at the top of the ninth when we left, but looking online now it is in the 10th at 4-4. Looks like Yogi Berra was right, "It ain't over 'til it's over."

It was my first time at the new Busch Stadium, and I have to say that it is nice. There was an impressive thunderstorm going on, and the game was delayed twice. The upside was a nice wind, and a very pleasant evening for those under the awning.

The InBev sky hasn't fallen yet, things seem fine in Budweiser land.

Back Online

Ahh, I hate it when people just stop blogging. Their site just sits there with no updates. How rude!

I am hopefully back to blogging, and will try to get back to my old posting pace. Once I had not posted for a while, it was harder to go and post because of the guilt. It has been so long now that I don't even feel the need to post everything I missed. Clean slate, new beginning.

Not So Weird Science

I stumbled to an interesting wired video about chemistry sets today. Even when I was young I had a home chemistry set with some perhaps not so safe experiments. How sad that kids now cannot experience the same chemistry that kids have for decades before.