The Fantasy Draft

We'll I didn't get the guy I wanted, but I must not have picked 1st, I did get Albert Pujols. On the front page of Yahoo fantasy sports though, there is an article saying 'Take a chance on Pujols elbow or give somebody from K.C. a shot.' So that is basically it, you can pretty much track who is on my team because they will either get hurt or suspended. I dropped Melky Cabrera who was set to serve a 3-game suspension at the beginning of the season, but since I dropped him that will probably get appealed. Then the other guy I wanted- B.J. Upton - gets beaned with a baseball in his arm on draft night and can't hold a bat. That's encouraging. I figure he got hit about 5 milliseconds after I drafted him. Anyway Stevie was already trying to make a deal with me to get Carlos Pena for Todd Helton and some catcher on the D-Backs. I looked up the stats on MLB '08 the show and there projected spots in the line-up and then shot him down. So basically Pena will probably get hurt and Helton and that catcher will have all-star years. Right now I figure if my catcher doesn't do very good I could just pick up another one, since he is pretty far down on the list. I don't know much about fantasy sports, but I figure I'm in for it.

A Week of Drafts

Well we're pirates now. Sampson got drafted by the Pirates on Sunday, so that is who we will be playing T-ball for. It was pretty simple, you just go and set there, they read the names of the 6 year-olds already on a team and then you go and sign up for a team. Sampson's little friend from down the street was there and his mom said he was going to play on the pirates since she knew the coach, so that is where Sampson wanted to play too. We start practice in April, but it is just an instructional league so they don't really keep score, they must just let the kids play and then after everyone gets a turn they switch places. I guess we'll find out.

MLB 08 - The Show

I got 'MLB 08 The Show' this week and so far the addictive factor is about an 8 out of 10. I got the game because it had more favorable reviews versus the other baseball game for PS3 (I can't remember the other game). Anyway the things I like are the jukebox feature where you can take songs that are on the PS3 hard drive and incorporate them into the game. So if you don't like the music on the game you can change it. The graphics are great and the pitching is good. The rookie mode is useless in my opinion, it is completely different from the veteran mode. In veteran mode you can try and guess the pitch and location and if you do the screen lights up and you can load up and try a heavy swing. The only thing I don't like is the field and base running controls. The game has a habit of not switching to nearest fielder and you have to make a split decision and recognize who you are controlling and whether you need to switch and then whether you need to dive or jump for the ball. Running the bases is no easier. For some reason the controls seem really unintuitive for me, although I played Sampson a game and he hit four home runs. He didn't win though, I couldn't let that happen. But when you run the bases you have to point to the base where the base runner is starting from and then you have to tell them which base to go to. There is an advance all runners and send all runners back control with one button, but when you want to send the guy from third home and leave the other guy at second you have to really think about it. I would have been simpler if you could just point at the runner and either advance or return, I mean come one we had the controls with the old Nintendo remember, all we had then was the 'A' and 'B' buttons and those controls were fine. Anyway the ballparks are awesome and they seem to have done a good job on scouting pitchers for the capabilities, it just seems like no matter what I throw the computer will foul it off. The computer gives you a pitch to throw, but you are better off knowing what your pitches strengths are, throwing that 1-2 fastball with Paul Byrd is not his strength. Overall I give it a 7 out of 10. Once I figure it out it will probably be one of those forgettable games. Oh well. Maybe 'Resistance fall of man' will come down in price since it has been out for over 14 MONTHS. I have never seen a game hold that kind of price since its original release.

A truely Blessed Week

Usually people here about the bad things that happen and rarely the good things. Well we had a really good week and I hope it continues. I have chronicled the recent downturn we experienced with deaths, but when the Lord taketh away he often giveth back, which is what we were on the receiving end of this week. The old triple C came through for a very good week, then Sophie was on the phone with Discover and when she paid the bill last month it was one day late (because of you know everything that was going on) and we got hit with a finance charge, but since Sophie had never had a late payment in 12 years and our extenuating circumstances the lady took the charge off, so there was an extra 40 bucks back. Then I won the monthly safety drawing, the first time I had won in 22 months. We got our state income tax back, and yesterday when we were at WAL*MART the guy who was going to rotate our tire said that the tires looked good and the ones that were on the front were actually a little bit better so we didn't need to rotate them and he saved us $6 bucks. Also Sophie and I actually got to go out just the two of us and have a meal together sans children. Oh and I got a new game for the PlayStation (I will blog about this separately). Anyway, thanks God!!

Milestone - 1,000 views

Well the old blog has reached a milestone of 1,000 page views. Thanks everybody, hope you've enjoyed it. And in just a shade under a year too. Also the old AdSense has come in for a tidy little profit of $5.44, and since I have re-upped with AdSense hopefully the ads will be back for your clicking pleasure.

New Element

I am going to start updating the old blog description at the top of the page a little more frequently, but if you miss one I will keep an archive of the old descriptions over there at the left... near the bottom... keep on going ... way way down there.

Beowulf: the Movie - A Review

This movie wasn't bad, but it caught me off gaurd that it was all digital animation or as they say 'digitally enhaced'. It had the same stuff as Polar Express, but I don't think the technology is quite there for a feature film that doesn't appeal to kids, at least not to be profitable. My brother in-law Hans went to the theater to see it in 3-D and there are definetly some parts that would have been cool in the theater in 3-D, but when you are watching at home it kind of loses some of the effect. Not all, but some. You still sit there like, 'Whoa, that was cool,' but a couple of cool shots don't make a movie. The digital stuff loses too much effect up close, but it does allow for some great actors AKA Anthony Hopkins to step into a role easierly (check that word out), but what you pick up in having his facial features and overall ability you lose, by not having the full body interaction. The story wasn't bad, but after watching it was no more out of the range to do in a traditional manner than say Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. It is pretty much your old stand by story of Boy kills monster, boy hooks up with evil monster mom, then boy has to kill his own demon offspring who turns into a dragon, pretty standard really. If you have the capability to see this movie for free I would recomend it, otherwise view at your own discretion. I say 3 out of 5, Sophie says 2.5 out of 5.

WWVA Question

I was listening to WWVA the other morning and they were doing a call in thing for listeners to call in with the answer to a question. The question was 'How many times a day does a normal man fart?' The correct answer was 13. I said the normal amount for a 5 year-old male is about 40 times and the normal amount for a two year old female is about 75 times, these figures are based on independent research. For a 30 year old female the average is 0, women don't fart they only fart in the bathroom where you are supposed to fart you disgusting pigs. That is also based on independent research.

Ice Truckers and Diamonds

So Sophie and the kids and I are pretty much snowed in today, and we are watching Ice Road Truckers on the history channel. The premise of the show is that the truckers drive across frozen lakes during the cold weather in Northern Canada to deliver supplies to the diamond mines up there. It looks like it would be crazy to do and also very cold. Sophie said she wondered if the people that work in the mine take a little bit for the themselves. She said she thought the best way would be to shove the diamonds up your nose to make it out of the security checks. She said the kids would be good at getting it out since they act like they are digging gold out most of the time, diamonds wouldn't be that big of a change. I said if you developed a little capsule that wouldn't dissolve in your digestive system you could fill it with diamonds and then just dig it out when you know... you go to the bathroom. Just make sure you don't go at work!!!

Forgetting What Bush Did

Lots of people have bad mouthed President Bush during his tenure and sometimes rightfully so. But the criticism he gets for NAFTA and the local manufacturing industry isn't so well deserved. People seem to forget that he signed the steel tariffs in 2001 or so and that is one of the reasons that Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel is still around. Sure it took a lot of other things to happen to keep that company around, but I guarantee that if the steel tariffs had not been put in place those facilities would have been shut down over 5 years ago. I remember being in some of the salary meetings with then CEO James Bradley and he was telling us just how close the Company had been to idling the plants. You know that is the other thing I don't understand about people's criticism of companies. They say the large corporations need to be taxed more, but these companies employ people and create a lot of jobs. So what if they can make a decent profit, at least then there is a chance that money can be shared with the employees that made it or used to improve the facilities to keep them running for a longer period. If the government takes the money it will go to people that don't work or are illegal or something, but it definitely won't come back to the workers.

Nippert gets Nipped

So much for the blog bump. Hillary won Ohio and Texas on Tuesday. But the real winner was the republican party. Now the democratic race will likely continue until the convention. In the mean time they may have a redo in Michigan and Florida where Hill won the first time, but because the DNC dissallowed their delegates, they don't actually count towards her total. It will be interesting to see what happens now, because the Clintons have really been in attack mode, and that is always kind of off-putting the longer an election lasts. If McCain can pick a conservative V.P. it may bring some more people to his cause and really may swing the general election in his favor regardless of what the democrates settle on.

Visit from the Tooth Fairy

Apparently the tooth fairy visited last night and left Sampson $2, again. But this time Sampson had open up the plastic bag that the tooth was in and when the tooth fairy went to grab the bag the tooth fell out on the floor. Then the tooth fairy had to spend a half an hour looking for the tooth in the dark with the tooth fairy's book light.

Note: I thought this story was hilarious, but the tooth fairy didn't seem to think it was very funny since it happened at about 1 in the A.M.

Rendition: a Review

This movie was terrible. It had one thing going for it and that was at the end of the movie you found out you weren't watching what you thought you were. There were basically two different time lines and you don't find out till the end. I don't want to ruin it, but oh what the hey if you really want to see it don't read the next part. The boy and girl that hook up at the beginning are actually the explosion, but you don't realize that until the end when they show that they were the ones getting blown up. It is kind of like deja vu when you watch the scene and your like 'hey this already happened' and then your like 'what the hell just happened'. Anyway I didn't like it because the main character is a Chemical Engineer that gets kidnapped by the federal government because they think he is a terrorist and it is all done under the law of rendition. Thus the name of the movie. The other thing I didn't like was the guy was making $200,000 a year. And he went to NYU. It was like they didn't even try to do any research on salaries that make sense for as vague of a job as he did. They might as well of said he made a gillion dollars. Also Reece Witherspoon is in it and she is "pregnant" except it looks like she is pregnant with a half deflated soccer ball. It looked like this whole movie cost about $200,000 to make. There was one big explosion and they milked it for more than it was worth. You saw the same explosion 3 separate times in the movie. So the final tally is : One crappy explosion (shown 3 times), a ton of subtitles, one ChemE that makes a gillion dollars, and Reece Witherspoon giving birth to a soccer ball. That equals one out of 5.

T-Balling

Sampson is signed up for the old T-ball, wanna know how I know, there is $40 worth of chocolate sitting on the counter to sell. You know I was a bit of ball player back in the day. I once pitched a 1/3 of an inning in reserve ball, so that basically qualifies me to coach and stuff. Or at least I could go around and pick up the bats after the kids get done and make sure there aren't any big rocks in the base path. Yeah, that's probably what I'll be doing.

Another one bites the dust

Sampson lost his second tooth today. That means another visit from the tooth fairy. Yeah (sarcasm). Last time she left $2. I think I used to get 50 cents. And no not the rapper.

The Fantasy Starts Here

Well Stevie talked me into playing fantasy baseball this year. I have held out as long as I could before playing any fantasy games, because I don't want to become addicted. I will chronicle my progress throughout the season. I have a funny feeling they could probably just go ahead and divide up my money now. Of course if they want to come and check out the old blog they could always click on one of the adds to give me a little cash, then we could all win. Wait that is starting to sound like a fantasy, oh well let the games begin!

Random Thought #1

I hate that show 'Everbody loves Raymond'.

The Webkinz addiction

I can't quit playing that stupid Webkinz. It is addicting with all the gem hunting and going to the academy, working and playing at the arcade. I am stuck on Goober's Lab and Goober's Atomicolicious. That's right it's chemtastic. Oh and Sampson plays too. But so does Sophie. She says she is about to kick the habit though, we'll see. All she does is talk about getting a new one.

Two More go Belly up

Well we lost our replacement fish this week. The two fish we bought to replace Goldie died this week. Little Princess (Peach's fish) and Goldie II (Sampson's fish). Something about when we buy fish we can't seem to keep them alive. I remember when I bought Sophie a Beta fish that could live in a vase with a plant and you didn't have to feed it or anything, it lived off the plant and the plant lived off the fish waste. Seemed pretty simple. That fish lasted a week. Then we got another one, since it died in less than a week. The next one lasted 10 days or so, and I think it committed fish-icide. That is when a fish commits suicide by getting stuck in the root of the plant. I don't know maybe it's us, maybe we drive the fish to it. Oh well, maybe we need to try a land animal, then again....

The Cecil Blog Bump

After my endorsement of Donnie Nippert for Sheriff in Belmont county, I heard one of the local radio hosts also throw his endorsement Donnie's way. I can only figure that after my blog some of the other local talent wanted to hop on the bandwagon after the enormous boost given to the campaign after my endorsement. This is called the Cecil Blog Bump. David Bloomquist will probably get more of the credit if Donnie goes on to win, but I'm OK with that. It is kind of like the guy who stepped on the moon first and said, 'yeah, it looks safe Neil come on out.' Actually that may not be a good analogy.

Game Night

We have been playing different games for people's birthdays, and one of the crowd favorites is Balderdash. So far the best answer I have come up with combined several answers. I think the category was Movies and the name of the movie was "the Pickle". You have to come up with an idea of what was covered in the movie and my answer was as follows: Two hikers get stuck under a foumart covered in furuncle.
This was funny because foumart was a word we had to make up definitions for and I said it was a rock that was so heavy it required two or more people to move. Then I said Furuncle was another name for the moss that grows on the north side of trees. I don't remember what either of the real definitions were, but from now on this blog will refer to words by my given definition.

Continued downward spiral

Well it looks like the downward spiral of the Steel-towners is picking up steam. This past week one of their former annoucers, Myron Cope, died. In the last six months two of the biggest Steel-er fan I know passed away and then Myron Cope, the guy who invented the terrible towel passed away. The let Alan Faneca leave via free agency, meanwhile not signing anyone themselves and they really aren't in a postion to get a high impact player in the draft. They are one terrible draft away from falling apart. I will continue to monitor the situaiton from a distance.

In a side conversation I had with someone at work, he said the 'terrible towel' was actually invented by Myron Cope's mentally handicapped son. Which means the train is just rocketing down.

Tony Wrecks :-(

Tony Wrecked on Saturday and then wrecked again on Sunday. Needless to say it was not a good weekend in Las Vegas. He looked pretty shook up when the talked to him. He didn't even bash Goodyear for the crappy hard tire they made for that track. Then Jeffy wrecked later, and it was Junior's fault. Well Hendrick, how do you feel about letting Kyle Busch go now, since he is setting third in points and you don't even have a driver sniffing the top ten. And it seems like every week you have at least one of your drivers wreck one of your other drivers.

The Littlest Milk Maid

Peach had a cup of milk yesterday and some how she decided to dip her hands in the cup and cover her hair with milk. Needless to say it will be a while before she is allowed to use a regular open cup again.

Mc B.L.T.

Sophie and I were just reminissing about the old McB.L.T. I never really ate it, but Sophie said she would eat one everyday, and then she said it was probably a good thing they got rid of it or else she would weigh 500 pounds. Yeah, that probably was good then.

The Barn Painter

Check out some pics and video from my old high school buddy the Barn Painter. A.K.A. Scott Hagan.

http://www.barnartist.com/

Voting Dilemma

Well I have decided not to vote in the republican side of the Ohio Primary on March 4th. It looks like McCain is going to get the nomination or at least it is mathematically impossible for Huck to win. So I will vote on the Democratic side. You see Ohio has a modified open primary where you can vote for whatever side you want to, but afterwards you are automatically registered to that party. So if you are a republican you can vote in the democratic primary, but after that you become a registered democrat. Like the label really matters anyway. I think you just get calls and fliers from whichever party you are registered to. Anyway all of the other local fun stuff is going to be on the democrat side too, what with the county commissioners and the county sheriff. I gotta give my endorsement for Sheriff to Donnie Nippert, he sprayed me with mace once. Trust me, he is serious about being police chief. Back to the dilemma though, I will either vote for Hill (oh I can't believe I just typed that) or Obama (double yuck). So which one is the lesser of two evils, let's see. Sophie and I kind of agree that the only option here is Hill. Obama seems to have the youth vote and that would carry over into the general election, but if he doesn't make it then that voting block may sit out the general election, also African Americans may feel disenfranchised if their candidate doesn't make it. But seriously what has he done? Other than having a rock star appeal I don't know that he has accomplished anything. Sure he is a good orator, but just because you can give speeches that doesn't entitle you to be president any more than someone who blogs a lot. By the way I am declaring for the 2012 election, regardless of who wins. Also Hillary is the most polarizing of any candidate in the last century or so. She may get 49% of the vote but she will drive away as many people as she draws. So for now it is Hill, but that could change.

Tony Wins, Again !!!

Tony Stewart is still the only person to win in the Nationwide Series, as he wins the second race of the year this time at California. Kyle Busch finished second, which keeps him second in points. I was kind of rooting for Rowdy because he would be leading in points in all three of the top series. Instead he is 1st in points in the Craftsman Truck, Sprint Cup, and second in Nationwide. No one has ever lead all the of the series at the same time. You know in real life, I've done it multiple times on the video games. Also I've won all of the cha

The Montoyaed List

Today during the race Sophie and I said at about the same time someone was going to get "Montoyaed" by Juan Pablo when he got near the front, and sure enough Clint Boyer was the first victim of 2008. I am going to start a list of people who get Montoyaed and I will update every week as debts are repaid.

1. Clint Boyer - Daytona 500
2. Dave Blaney - Daytona 500 - Also took out Mark Martin and some other people.

Tony Wins!!!

Tony Stewart Won the first ever Nationwide Series race at Daytona. Toyotas finish 1 2 with Tony's teammate Kyle Busch finishing second. Now if they can only do it during the big race.

Death

It seems like we have been losing a lot of people close to us lately and it is pretty tough. The toughest period of losing people for me was a 10 month period around my 20th birthday. My grandmother on my Mom's side died in June, fairly suddenly. She fell at her house, went to the hospital, they found cancer and within a month she was gone. My Dad died the next January, after battling colon cancer for two years with two surgeries (one that left a gapping hole in his stomach because they couldn't close it all the way up due to an infection) and chemo and everything. And my other grandmother died in March. During the same period other people close to me also lost people. My roommate in college lost his father at Thanksgiving, he had been fighting bone marrow cancer and was up and down. At the beginning of fall quarter he had actually been up getting around pretty decent, but by the end of the quarter his state had really deteriorated, which is what can happen with bone marrow cancer. Sophie's grandfather also died, around Christmas due to complications from diabetes which caused some other problems and things in his kidneys, which is what I think he actually died from. And two of my friends from high school lost their grandfather.

They say it takes two years to really get past grieving over someone that you lost, and I think that is due to the emotion you feel during the first anniversary of the passing. You get hit with the same emotions you had when you lost the person the first time only now there are no ceremonies and people don't know why your acting the way you are. When someone first dies there is all kind of outpouring of sympathy from family and friends and it kind of distracts you some what, but on the first anniversary there are only the people who were the closest that are left to deal with things. The second year you kind of expect not to be comforted and the emotions aren't quite as strong. When my dad died it was just me and Mom and every January 17th we would call and talk and just see how each other was. Until this year. 10 years later the day is able to pass without any fanfare or acknowledgement, I mean you never forget that day, but eventually you get far enough away from it that it doesn't have the same impact. Eventually there are enough new days that mean something, weddings, birthdays, graduation days that you don't concentrate on the death days. But only if you keep living yourself. Just because someone else stops living that doesn't mean you can stop.

It is hard at first, I cut back my class schedule to 12 hours for the rest of winter quarter, but I was doing undergrad research in chemistry and the summer before my senior year I got an internship with Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel. That is where I met Bud Smith and he really helped me make sense of what had happened. He talked to me about Job from the bible about how he had always been a good and faithful servant. One day the devil and God were talking and God said look at my servant Job he is very faithful. And the devil was like of course he will be faithful if you keep blessing him, take some of those blessings away and we'll see how faithful he is. So God let the devil take away his things, and his family and even his good health, but Job wouldn't say anything bad about God. Eventually his friends came and told him that he should be cursing God and he held out for a long time until finally he asked God 'Why'. Then God asked him if he had been there when he created the heavens and the Earth and of course the answer was 'no' so God asked him why he would ever question what God did and he didn't have an answer. Job said he was sorry for ever questioning God and he understood that he didn't have the understanding or knowledge of God and he asked for forgiveness. When he prayed to God, God saw he was sincere and he blessed Job with more than what he had before.

I don't know if that is going to make a whole lot of sense, but the basics are that God takes people for reason we don't understand at the time and only when we look back can we see what the plan was. Eventually we will all meet the same end and there are going to be a lot of people taken from our lives. We can't really blame God, because we are all born with a terminal illness called mortality. All you can do is be prepared, and it may seem a little morbid, but I always remember my Dad saying that I eventually he would be gone and now it makes a little more sense I guess. It is always hard to lose someone, but God won't give you more than you can handle. I don't remember exactly what verse it is, but it is there. If you keep that in mind you can make it through anything.

R.i.P. - Goldie

Sampson's fish 'goldie' also died this week. We actually got him from Sophie's aunt and uncle who got him from a fair. I don't know how long they had him, but we have had him for about 2 years or so. I don't know it seems like two years. Sampson is dealing with it pretty well, he wants to get a new one. He said he wants to bury him so we'll do that today and then maybe get another one. Farewell fish.

R.I.P. - R.S.J.

On February 12th, Sophie's uncle Rick St. John passed away from a heart attack. He was 61 years old and was a former employee of Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel. We actually worked there at the same time for a period and whenever I would see him he would always say 'Hey Cec' because that is what they called me at the plant up there. He was a very good man and was always willing to help somebody else. I remember when I asked him to help me patch some holes in the ceiling and he said sure. When I got home he said 'let's get started' he walked in the kitchen grab his stuff and said,' Ok, were done', here he didn't wait for me to get started he had already done everything before I got home. There are probably 100's of stories like that for Rick because he was always doing something usually for someone else it seemed like. He also really loved his family and I will miss Uncle Rick.

The Dukes of Hazzard

I vowed that I wouldn't spend any of my money on this movie, and I wouldn't watch it until it was on TV. Well on Sunday I finally saw it, and it was surprisingly better than I thought. They completely ruined the characters though, Before Boss Hogg and the cops were always the bufoons, but this time around it was the Duke boys, and Jessica. That's the other thing Jessica Simpson was terrible as Daisy Duke. Daisy was always intelligent and hot, not just eye candy, Simpson would have better off not opening her mouth. They did do some cool stuff with the car and some of the driving scenes with the way they were shot, and as awesome as the General Lee was, it kind of loses some of the luster with today's cars. Overall maybe 2 out of 5. Acting was a 1, Car was a 3.

The Disney Trend

Sophie and I have noticed that Disney movies have a disturbing trend. The Mom is always dead. Well about 90% of the time. I guess it is really only disturbing if your a mom, but for instance here are some of the Disney movies that fit this trend:

Finding Nemo
Bambi - well at least at the end
Cinderella (implied, but also maybe the Dad)
Mulan
Angles in the Outfield
Dumbo
Lilo and Stitch (both parents)
Chicken Little
Snow White
Pocahontas
A Goofy movie
The Little Mermaid
The Lion King (Mom never mentioned, Dad gets killed though)
The Game Plan

Also Sophie says there are a lot of wicked step mothers and she says that sets a bad example like women can't be nice.

For some interesting reading check out this link.
http://www.cwluherstory.com/Salon/kristin.html

Good Night Story

(taken from the game plan)

The big bad wolf
blew down the grammie's house
and then ate the Goldie Locks
and something about the porridge.

Good Night

I hate sick kids

Don't get me wrong I don't hate kids I just hate when they are sick. Sampson threw up in the car on the way home yesterday. I feel so bad when they are sick, but he is feeling better and we are going watch "the Game Plan".

Cadbury Battle

This year I start battling for my cadbury eggs. Peach grab one of mine (yes, MINE) and shoved the whole thing in her mouth. Allegedly she said, "Umm that's good" but how good could a two year old talk with a cadbury egg shoved in her mouth. Well, I will try and make sure that doesn't happen again.

Moment of Truth

So Fox has a new show called 'Moment of Truth' were someone has to answer 21 questions, TRUTHFULLY. Basically they ask someone 50 questions while they are hooked up to a polygraph machine and they pick 21 of the questions to ask them on TV. The person's family and friends gets to join them on stage and they can hit a plunger if they don't like the question that is asked and the person can get asked a different question. From what I gathered in the first episode I saw, it is basically selling yourself and your family out on national TV for the shot at $500,000.

The guy I saw was a former Marine who had joined the Marines apparently not to impress his father, but while he was in the service he did something he was ashamed of. But not drunk driving, he's done that in the last 6 months. Now he has a 'boring' half Japanese girl friend (he makes racial jokes about her parents) that he doesn't want to propose to and he uses his lack of money as an excuse. Which is ironic because he works as a food server and has taken tip money off of other people's tables and also changed people's credit card receipts to increase his tip amount. Even with all that extra income he still did some time as a male underwear model, but he stuffed up front if you know what I mean. Only problem is he lied about it and went home with out any cash. Guess that girlfriend is going to have to wait for a ring, oh well at least he didn't embarrass himself.

Survivor Picks - Micronesia

What we're gonna do this year is pick one of the 10 fans and one of the 10 favorites.

Kirk's Picks - Fan - Erik
Favorite - Amanda (winner)

Sophie's picks - fan - Girl in blue - Will sort out next week (winner)
Favorite - James

Peach makes herself Pretty

Peach's uncle was watching her today while Sophie went to the doctor's with a couple of girls. Anyway he said he took his eyes of her for a minute and the next thing he knew she was up in the bedroom putting on Mommy's make-up. When he caught up to her she said, "Ain't I cute?" If I would have been here I would have said, "yeah, your really cute, how bought I had some natural redness to your butt." Just kidding. When Sophie told me about it I just laughed. Until tomorrow when I get her myself.

I Make My Own Rules

That is the title of LL Cool J's (James Todd Smith), book and in case you were wondering I finished it last Friday. It was written in the late 90's, and chronicles LL's rise through the 80's and his personnel life all the way though. It was pretty good, it was real graphic though and I would caution young eyes if you know what I mean. He is set to release his 13th album this year and he will finally be able to leave Def Jam. Apparently his dad had him sign some insane agreement before he knew what he was doing. He did have alot of forgiveness for his dad though, at least before that. See his dad shot his mom and grandfather when he was four. Then his mom hooked up with her rehab therapist and the guy would beat LL for any reason and just made life really tough on him. Unfortunately he couldn't tell his mom because she wouldn't believe him. So he turned violent himself before turning to a life of rap and hip hop. Then he got rich and blew a bunch of his money, got into drugs a little and quickly gave them up, but was addicted to physical activity with the females. That is where the book gets a little graphic. Anyway where the book ended he had 3 kids and a wife and was working on his show on UPN, with his clothing line FUBU and shoes Najee (named after his son). He did get pretty deep into religion (when LL was young he was actually Catholic and sang for the Pope in a choir in the 70's). I know the show is no longer on, but I'm not sure where his life is now. Anyway it was a pretty interesting book and just couldn't put it down.

Not so Super Tuesday

Well "Super Tuesday" has come and gone, without really settling much. Except now the only real conservative candidate has dropped out even though he was still second in the delegate count. The real question that comes out of super tuesday is, "What the hell is wrong with West Virginia?" Sorry for the language, but seriously, only 1,100 people voted!! 567 for Huck and 521 for Romney and McCain got 12 votes. Huck ended up with all 18 delegates from the state, but what the heck happened. I think the primary system really needs revised in this country. It is up to local government to fund to equipment and different things concerning elections yet there are only two parties and sometimes the parties don't want to have their primaries on the same day, how stupid. It should be up to the states and there should be one day for both parties and that is it. I know that WV is mostly Democratic but, out of 2 million people you're telling me only 1,100 wanted to vote in the republican primary. Come on. And the sad thing is in all of the coverage on Tuesday and even up 'til today no one has mentioned it. It just seems very odd to me that something like that could even happen. Very Odd. Conspiracy odd, if you know what I mean. I think there was some type of electronic voting or caucasing over the internet or something and some people didn't realize it was voting day because both of the parties weren't voting. What they need to do is have one day and forget about this winner-take-all B.S. I mean when you have three real candidates it isn't fair to give all the delegates to one person when they don't win a clear majority of the votes. If they get more than 50% then fine, give the all the delegates. But when someone gets only 38% he doesn't deserve all of the delegates because 62% of the people voted against him!!! That is why McCain is going to get beat. He may get more delegates than anyone else, but he doesn't even have the majority of the support of his own party. And all of the pimping the media is doing for him will go away in the fall. It's funny, I was listening to the radio and they said "does John McCain really think the New York Times and these other news papers are going to support him in the fall?" And you know what it will be true. For me this race is still going to come down to the V.P. candidates. If McCain comes back with a real conservative V.P. that can mobilize the base of the republican party he may have a chance to win the general election. And if the Democrats go for a mirror image of the presidential candidate (Somebody real far left) they can lose. Right now, though, even if the democrats are running neck and neck they are still ahead of the republicans, which is unfortnate, because it will mean higher taxes for everyone who already pays taxes, and possibly even higher taxes if they pass some form of health care coverage.

Oh, I guess I was wrong about Tuesday being Huck's last stand. It turned out to be Mitt's last stand, but either way after Tuesday the race couldn't support two "conservative" candidates. I am still going to write-in Romney when the primary comes to Ohio.

a lighter note

On a lighter note, I started reading the LL Cool J book yesterday and I just can't put it down. He really went through some stuff when he was growing up.

R.i.P. Harold "Mutt" Milhoan

Mom just told me tonight that Mutt passed away this morning. He had been battling health problems for a while and finally succumbed at the age of 92. He was an elder in the church I grew up in and whenever I think of an elder he will definetly be the first one who come to mind. I remember when I was just starting in adult church and every Sunday when he would have the communion pray he would say, "I was watching Bob Hope last night and when he was on stage everyone would give him a standing ovation, and think it is only right that we should give Jesus a standing ovation as we gather around this table." Every Sunday I think back to that because now everyone who prays just asks people to 'please stand for communion pray' but I bet there are a lot of people who are there that don't remember or never new what it was like before he changed how we worshipped during communion time. He was also a neighbor and I will attend the funeral on Saturday. He and Mildred had the same anniversery as me and Sophie. My deepest heart felt sympathies go out to the Milhoan family, sorry for your loss.

Farewell Aunt Emmy

It has been a rough week for our family, on Saturday we lost our Aunt Emmy. She was Sophie's great aunt and she was actually more like a grandmother to her. It was a small funeral on Wednesday and I was a paul bearer, which I was proud to do as I loved Aunt Emmy as well. She was a 20 year survivor of breast cancer, but in the last two months she had slid from remission in to a cancerous state again. She went into the hospital in December, and she never really came back. It is horrible to watch someone go through what she went through. The last time I saw her was right after Christmas and Sophie and gone to see her at least ever week while she was being moved around from the hospital to a nursing facility. They started to give her chemo again, but after they started she experienced a fairly swift decline. Her memory was slipping a little bit at the end of the year, but she still had that spunky aunt Emmy side that would come out and tell you how it was. Sophie said towards the end she was a lot less talkative and that final Saturday Sophie and her mom spent most of the day with her before we had to go to a birthday party. Needless to say we didn't feel much like a party, buy it was relatives from the other side of her family, so they really weren't experiencing the same thing. After the party we got 'the call' that she had passed. We were very sad, because aunt Emmy was always full of life and the kids really loved her. Sophie has pictures of her and Sampson putting puzzles together, that is what they did when she came to stay, they worked on puzzles. The kids didn't go to the funeral and it was a good idea because there weren't many people there and it was during the week and they didn't really understand. I feel bad that they never really got to see her, to kind of give her a good-bye, but when we broke the news to Sampson he really didn't understand. I think he kind of understands death, but how do you really explain that type of stuff to a 5 year old. My mom came to stay with them during Tuesday visitation and the service on Wednesday and someday when they want to say good-bye I will take them to the cemetary so they can say farewell. Farewell Aunt Emmy may you rest in peace, you will be missed.

Thompson Out

Fred Thompson dropped out today, and I say right now that Mitt is the leader. The Media seems to be pushing McCain, but the battle will start in Florida when Rudy enters the race. I still think he waited too long, but as long as people keep dropping out he has a shot. What it depends on now is where people go after their candidate is out. I think Huck's about done, he is pulling out of Florida, which is a good idea. When the state is divided 3-ways it is hard to fight up from fourth and is probably better to let those 3 fight it out for the win while he gets an early start on Super Tuesday states. That will probably be Huck's last stand, but I still feel the general election will fall on the V.P.'s and not so much the nominees. Fred get ready to hit the road again, President your not, but maybe V.P. We shall see. I heard Hillary might select Even Biegh (sp?). Which could really hurt if she gets the nomination, but because of the rift between her and Obama now, I really don't think she could possibly pick him. Stranger things have happened though....

Fed Steps in Again

Well the Fed stepped in (it) again and lowered interest rates by 3 quarters of point, and at the meeting at the end of the month they are expecting them to lower the rate by another half. There is some debate on whether it is good or not, but I read an article that said what they are doing is reminiscent of what happened in the late 70's. High oil, continuously lowering the rate and then everything finally caught up in the early 80's and caused double digit inflation. And then a recession. Basically right now all they are trying to do is avoid a recession, but lowering the rate might not be the best answer. I think we are still suffering from what they did in 2001 right after 9/11 and they lowered the rate by a half point the next day. We are just prolonging the inevitable and eventually someone is going to have to man up and take the hit like Reagan did. Hey maybe Hillary will. . . (man up that is). Doubtful, she doesn't seem to do to well with confrontation. Hey if you can hang on until the market fully bottoms out, and you have a little cash left, you could pull some sweet financing deals. You know provided there are still jobs and what not.

Sampson the computer Guru

Sampson has really taken to the computer lately. He is addicted to Mahjong, just like his Maw and last night he made his first board. I made one called 'Whatchamacallit' and it is dang near impossible. Sampson's was pretty easy he named it "Sampson" because that's all he can type. We finally got his Webkinz on the internet too. It is a real stuffed animal and it has its own virtual identity with a room and you can buy it stuff like food or furniture. It is pure genius and it will probably cost me a lot of money in the end, but it is pretty neat. The web features come free with the toy, and you earn Webkinz money by playing games and basically spending all your time on the internet. But then you gotta feed it and stuff and take care of it and if you don't it will die and you get kicked out of Webkinz World. Or something to the that effect. Well I better hurry he wants to show what all he got today and I want to play too. Did I mention Sampson is 5 and a half. I remember reading an article when Sampson was little about a woman teaching her two year old how to get on the internet, but the kid would only connect to the internet and go to one place and play one game. I have tried to limit Sampson's early exposure to the computer so it didn't seem like some parlor trick when he wanted to use it and he would actually be able to do something once he got on there. Of course doing something can sometimes mean wiping out the memory on the Mahjong game, but he does pretty good. He also has computer lab at school. Which seems crazy because I don't think I saw a computer at school until I was in 5th grade or so and even then it was mostly just for games. It is definitely something you need to be able to do now though, even in pre-school I guess.

Sophie's Dr. Visit

Well we went to the doctor yesterday morning for Sophie's neck and everything was OK. He told her he didn't need to see her for another year, so the thing on her neck must not worry him to much. He said he could go in and take it out, but it would be a real bloody mess and then he would have to fuse vertebrates in her neck afterwards and it really wasn't worth the risk and we agreed. So to help her back he suggested she do some McKenzie exercises. He said they look kind of "lude" like you were trying out for an adult film, but would help with the flexibility in her back. So I already reserved two books at the library for her, you know to help her back. Also doing stuff online with the library is awesome. I can sit in my PJ's and reserve everything from books about backs and LL Cool J, to CD's and even new release movies. And the best part is it is all free!! I have to say public libraries are probably one of the most underutilized services out there, which is unfortunate because of their awesomeness. At least Drew Carey understands.

Happy Birthday

Happy 40th Birthday LL Cool J.

Today is his birthday 1/14.

COLTS LOSE COLTS LOSE!

Well that outa teach 'em to not throw the game in the last week of the season. See if they would have beat the Titans, then Cleveland would have played San Diego. Cleveland would have won and then played the Cheatriots and the Colts would have played the Jags which they had beaten already and Cleveland would have rooted for the Colts, and they would have won and Cleveland would have avenged an earlier defeat and played the colts in the AFC Championship. Indy would have won and Manning Bowl I would have taken place, but now it is going to be Favre vs. Brady and in an ultimate farewell act Favre and the Packers win the Super Bowl and Bret wins the MVP. Well at least the Colts.

Power outage of aught eight

It was terrible, no computer, no t.v., no playstation, no books. Oh wait we had books and it was before noon so there was still light. So we played, wrestled around, threw the football, played cards. But let me tell you two more hours and we would have been tearing the legs off of chairs and using them to build a fire in the middle of the living room. Or at least we would of packed up for the night and headed towards Mom's.

Republican Debates

Well the focus group in South Carolina afterwards thought that Fred Thompson was the winner and then they had a text vote and Ron Paul was winning by like 12%. I have some reservations about that vote though, as it was probably a bunch of liberals or something just voting for who they thought was the worst candidate. Anyway, I only caught a little bit of it an then the last 1/2 hour. I thought Mitt didn't look too bad, and my only concern with Thompson is the lack of a serious record - long term record. He was only a senator for 8 years and I am not voting for a senator, who hasn't even completed 2 terms, for President. Which leaves Ron Paul completely out because he was only a Rep. in Texas. I think you have to at least manage a state or be a senator for a while before you can be president. Which basically rules out all of the Democrats for me, Barrack, Hillary and John Edwards have only achieved Junior Senator status. The only trump card is that Hillary has spent 8 years 'around' the White House, but I question how much impact she had in the decision making process. I think we all know Bill was quite capable of going out on his own ;-). Then you look at Rudy and he was the Mayor of New York which has a larger population than most states, but my problems with Rudy are that he is Pro-choice and that his private life has kind of been in turmoil since he was elected mayor. He hasn't kept in touch with his son and he got divorced and stuff and it just seems like if you want to be president and run the country you have to first be able to run your own life (during this point in the blog there was a power outage so I kind of lost my train of thought). Well tomorrow is Michigan and the Media says that 'Romney has to win or else', but he did already win one state... 5 points to anyone with the correct answer. . . it was Wyoming. Not many delegates, but he is in the point lead now. I think Michigan will be between Mitt and John and South Carolina will go about the same way with maybe Thompson getting a little more recognition in the South. Rudi will come in towards the back of the pack in both states, but the way things are shaping up if Rudi doesn't win Florida he could be out by Super Tuesday. And I think Romney would stand to pick up more of the support than McCain. Once Huck goes out maybe after Florida, Mitt has a better shot. I kind of think that is how it is going to end up, sort of like the last two elections where you just vote for the person you hate the least. My real feeling though is that the general election will come down to the choice of V.P.'s for both of the primary winners. Well that is enough about this already it is only January!!!

why the fair tax won't work in America

This will become a pretty big topic as the election nears and I was kind of on the fence about it before, but now I don't think there is any real benefit. There are some benefits to the fair tax in that it would eliminate the problems with getting paid under the table or taking cash for services. Taking cash at work or an illegal alien it does not matter how you get the money it will only matter that you spend it. It could also eliminate the death tax by having people "work" for you and paying them their inheritance over a 1 week period. Say you have a $4 million dollar estate and you want to give to someone, just have them "work" for you for 2 days at the rate of $2 million per day. Plus it would get rid of the IRS.
The problems are that the infrastructure of the United States is supported by the current tax system and no matter how cumbersome it seems, with automation the process is getting simpler. Also if there is a wholesale change the actual revenue that is going to generated won't actually be known until the system is in place. I think you'll see people start buying things under the table, at local farms for food or some smaller stores that will sell you stuff with a wink and smile for a little cash. Hey, why pay the government 30% when you can just pay the vendor 10% extra and just walk out. The problems arise in that who is going to audit these vendors. People follow the rules now, for the most part, because they don't want to be audited and they fear the current system. By switching tax structures without any infrastructure to support it is like tearing down a steel bridge and replacing in with Popsicle sticks. Sure it sounds like it will work and it looks like it will work, but when it has to actually support something it will fall apart because the inner workings are too weak. Plus if the government is thinking that just upping the price of things 30% won't cause people to think twice about doing stuff, they are wrong. An extra dollar for a gallon of milk, we'll be drinking water thank you very much. Also you have to figure that the government has plugged all the variables into some little formula to spit out 30% as the number needed to replace all of the current income generated under the current system, which in all likelihood means they would need 70%. See if someone is making $10 million a year currently they would be paying in $3 million, but if you go to the fair tax they would have to spend all $10 million to get the same money. If they can "survive" by spending only a million dollars (plus 30%) then they get an extra 2.7 million that would have gone to the government. Sure eventually the money would get spent, but what if they buy their yacht from a foreign entity and have their car imported then what happens. Do you lower the tax on luxury item to keep people from buying them abroad? Then we are right back to the "unfair" tax system we have now. I think the only way you could implement the tax system is in stages. The first year is 2/3 income tax 1/3 federal sales tax, then 1/3 income tax then 2/3 sales tax, and then in the third year you go 100% sales tax. Provided that the first year shows you can actually pay for all of the programs you have if you increase the sales tax to 30%. If the first year shows that you would need a 40% sales tax then forget it and revert back to the old system. Also think of the people that would be out of work - All the IRS folks (although you are going to need someone to keep the new system in check), the people at H&R block, and all those people who work on the tax codes and developing software and stuff. I think the first step is to eliminate all of the state income taxes, some states already have eliminated it or never had income tax in the first place, and replace it with a state sales tax. Then you could work an overall tax and the state would get a certain percent and the federal government would get the rest.

Anyway I don't think the tax would work now, but maybe in a few years, but like I said it is going to have to be a real gradual change. Anyone who thinks they can just come in and have the system up and running in a year is making a huge mistake. The first thing we need to do is get the federal interest rate back up, then we can talk about changing the infrastructure. Right now the fed can't handle a huge upset, it is still struggling from 9/11 and the latest subprime bail out. Right now the low fed rate is falsely floating the economy but it isn't encouraging any real growth. The paybacks are low, and money is changing hands, but not in a real fruitful way, That is why the dollar is suffering so much and oil is over $100 a barrel. That's enough for tonight time to go watch the game and see who loses.

The Big Game

Well tonight is the big championship game #1 OSU vs. #2 LSU. I just wanted to say before the game who I though was going to win and barring some miracle four turnover game I think the tigers are going to win. I just don't think that Ohio played a strong enough schedule to be number one and I really don't see the scenario where they win other than LSU just giving the game away. Ohio is like Hawaii East, their strength of schedule was in the 60's, LSU in the 30's plus a extra conference game against a top 15 team. The toughest team Ohio played was #13 Illinois and they lost at home, LSU played Virginia Tech (which was #3 or #4 before being dismantled by Kansas) and beat them by what 30 or something. LSU also beat Florida and Tennessee and Auburn. Also this is like a home game for LSU and anyone who knows these schools know they are the center of their respective state, this would be like Ohio playing in Cleveland for the Championship. The other thing is that LSU lost 2 games, but in took 6 overtimes and 1 missed 2 point conversions. They're essential a touch down and a 2-point conversions from being 13-0. I think Tressel is good at game planning, but if he is off he is usually way off and they get beat bad. They gotta blitz, run the ball, keep the time of possession and go for it on 4th and short a couple of times. Don't be reckless, but if you are in LSU territory go for it, and keep the ball away from Holliday. I think that Perrilloux will take 20%-50% of the snaps and the game will be determined by how well OSU can contain him. Unless LSU turns the ball over a bunch I think they'll win. Sorry Ohio fans. But if Ohio wins then I'll delete all of this tomorrow.

2007 Bowl Season

Well this bowl season is about over and the best game so far has been the WVU game. Congrats to a team that was in turmoil without a coach, facing a team that didn't want to play them because they weren't good enough and they still whooped Oklahoma by 20. Both the Big 12 and ACC champs lost, and the Big East won. I think the Big East is the second best conference behind the SEC and the PAC 10 or Big 12 third, then the ACC then the BIG 10. Anyway I'm convinced that there will never be a playoff because of the Rose Bowl and the pigheaded Big Ten and Pac Ten. The only hope for any type of settling the championship on the field is the plus 1 game where the bowl games get played and then they either take another poll or seed the teams before you start, but as long as 1 doesn't play 2 in the first round then it really shouldn't matter. They argue that their can't be a playoff because of finals and stuff, which is totally bogus because the lower divisions have a playoff and they still attend class. Then they argue that it would take away from the regular season, because now Ohio State fans watched a WVU game or a Kansas game or something and before they would have never cared. I agree, but the last game of the season is usually a rivalry and anyone can win, unless Lou Holtz gives them a pep talk (that is the kiss of death for any team, ask Kansas), and people are interested because of the history and if teams have a good record and are playing for perfection then more people are gonna watch then normal anyway. If they just adopt the 'every conference gets a conference championship game' then that will solve most of the controversy.

President Sophie

Well Sophie doesn't think any of these candidates are any good. 'they're all liars'

President Huckabee - Crazy blogger say 'what'

Well the first part is in reference to Huckabee winning Iowa in the caucuses, or cauci whatever the plural form is, last night, and the second part is a Hanna Montana reference. Obama won on the democratic side, and why wouldn't he. They got all them corn stalks out there and you know they got a little reefer hiding amongst all that corn somewhere. Now I'm not saying that Iowa has a bunch of pot heads or anything, but there are at least 22% of people on the democratic side that are racist women haters. I mean how else do you explain John Edwards getting 22% of the vote. Anyway, I don't think this primary is the telling tale of what will happen, and Huck should enjoy this one for 4 more days until New Hampshire where the Republican primary is going to turn course. I think it was easier for him to get around the state, press the flesh and kind of do the anti-Rudy thing and focus on the early states, but I think he is going to run out of time during the next set of primaries. I think the other candidates have done more in other states that will wipe out the early advantage and come super Tuesday it is likely to see him slide back into that second tier. Iowa is like a marathon, there is lots of time leading up to it and you can hit all the big spots and really get your message out, but the rest of the primaries are like a sprint and it is one here one there until super Tuesday in February. I don't think Huck will win, but I don't think Rudy's strategy of waiting until the big states is going to pay off either. He wasn't even in the top 5 at Iowa and Huck and Mitt are gonna ride the wave of free press until they get to super Tuesday. By that point Rudy may be an after thought and even if he does win the nomination, he could lose a lot of states in the general election because he didn't want anything to do with them in the primary. I could be wrong, but I think you have to at least show up to the state where the primary is being held when they are this spread out time wise. By not showing up at Iowa and probably not New Hampshire he is going to lose a lot of steam and some people are going to start questioning whether he really wants the nomination or not. I think this strategy is going to backfire big time, but if it doesn't then no one will campaign in Iowa again. You know unless they like reefer and stuff.

Hey somebody check one of those corn fields for Tom Tancredo, whatever happened to that guy.

Out with the New, Back in with the Old

Back to the old color scheme. Hope y'all had a Merry Christmas. Also I'll take down the poll on Christmas, I think I'll put one up about whether or not the NFL playoffs should be expanded. Remember it is just a matter of time before your team gets screwed out of the playoffs because of some old antiquated way of doing things.

Disappointing Ending

Well 2007 gets to end on a sour note for Browns fans. Not only was I wrong about the Browns winning 9 games (they actually won 10), but they didn't make the playoffs. That's right 10 wins and they get left out of the playoffs, but in the NFC 9 wins gets you in. Maybe it is just me, but I think it is time for Roger Goodell to make his first mark on the league and expand the playoffs to 16 teams. They can still keep their re-seeding after the first round to help out the teams that did really well in the regular season, but it is time to get rid of the bye week for two teams in each conference and let two more teams in and let everyone play the first weekend. They expanded the playoffs to 12 teams when their were only like what 28 teams or so, but since then the league has expanded multiple times (the new Browns, Texans, and Jags and Panthers). But does expansion really mean they should expand the playoffs. Yes. Baseball finally caught up a little bit when they added another round, but their season is too limited and the World Series in November really works against them. They would have to shorten their season in order to accommodate longer playoffs, but that would cost revenue due to the lack of teams playing, even though the games would mean more. Football though only goes for 17 weeks and could easily add more teams, because it wouldn't lengthen the playoffs anymore. They could play Friday night Saturday and Sunday. It is a no lose situation for the league because it adds four more money games on the biggest weekend of the playoffs. Anyway I will no longer root for the Indianap0lis C0lts and I hope they get beat the first game they play in. I am tired of this "we need to rest players" crap, they're getting an extra week off anyway. And then your gonna go out and give a half an effort anyway, what kind of message does that send to your team and your fans. Well we can throw this game away cause we did so good in the other ones. That's garbage I want my team to beat all comers, they are giving their "A" game you should at least give yours. If not you know what don't even play, just forfeit the game, don't travel or have the other team travel, then you really don't have to worry about "injuries". I was proud of the Browns for playing everyone even though the game was essentially "meaningless" and even though Derek Anderson got hurt he came back. Although I would have liked to seen Brady Quinn stay in the game (his very first drive ever he took them down and scored a field goal with less than two minutes left in the half, no wonder Derek wanted back in the game). Anyway will look forward to the off season and a probable first round exit by the Steel-towners, since they took this week off the assured themselves of another game against a Jacksonville team that just beat them in Pittsburgh. Good thinking Mike Tomlin, then if you do win you get to play at New England, in all likelihood. Plus they don't have Willy, it is like I said I think the honeymoon with Mike will end pretty shortly, this was his first really big strategical error, and I could be wrong, but ending the season losing 3 out of 4 games is not the way to enter the playoffs. You know what if Cleveland would have got the call at the end of the Arizona game when Kellen Winslow made an incredible catch and got shoved out of bounds but the ref didn't call it, then Cleveland would be in and Pittsburgh wouldn't. Oh Well. That is another change they need to make, if the defender can push the guy out of bounds before he comes down that should just be incomplete, as long as he doesn't pick the guy up an carry him out of bounds, that way only the catch is reviewable and the Judgement part of the call is taken out. It is a completely miss used call anyway. Come on 2008 I can't wait.

Only 364 Shopping Days Left

Well another Christmas has come and gone. This one was special because it was Peach's first Christmas where she really tore right into the presents. Christmas eve at Mimi's we were eating and we were going to wait to do gifts, but she walked right over and ripped the paper of her littlest pet shop play set. We got her stopped though and she managed to hold off opening the rest until we were ready. Then yesterday morning I told her that Santa had come to visit and left her presents, and she got right up and walked down stairs, went right to the gifts wrapped with strawberry shortcake and started opening them. It was funny she would carry the present to an open area on the floor open the gift and then stack it in a neat little pile and carry the next gift to another open area. Meanwhile Sampson just ripped through all of his stuff, it was a mess of wrapping paper and toys. By the end of the morning we were swamped in Transformers, Marvels, littlest pet shop, my little pony, and barbie dolls. I don't know how long it took for the elves to make all that stuff and wrap it up, but it took about 45 minutes to get everything open and about 4 more hours to get everything out of boxes and setup. Apparently the new craze in toys is these little clear rubber bands, I guess the twisty ties weren't annoying enough, and the really bad thing is the stupid little rubber bands just won't break if you try to tear 'em apart. I pulled as hard as I could until I thought it was gone to just slice through my hand. We had fun though, and I think the kids had a really good Christmas. Now Sampson is bugging to go to the mall and spend his gift card and Toys R Us, so that is what is on the agenda for today. That and basketball. As for me I got a new Browns controller for my PS3 and new browns hat, and Sophie got a new Bobby Labonte rug and a couple of CD's. Well that's all for now, I'll start putting a list together for Christmas for next year only 364 shopping days left.

The Browns Win, and then lose

Well the Browns won again and then lost to the Bungels in Cincy. They beat Buffalo in the snow and then lost to Cincinnati by West Virginiaing themselves again like they did to Arizona. I am not sure what we did wrong other than maybe trying to watch the game on two different televisions, I really don't know we had the Jerseys, Sophie didn't have any orange. The bad new or good news is that the playoff picture will be decided before they play Sunday night. If Tennessee wins they are in, if they lose the Browns are in. That's it, it really won't matter what we do next week... unless we find a way to jinx the titans. Hey, maybe Sophie will get a Vince Young jersey for Christmas.

The Christmas Letter 2007

Hello everyone, it certainly has been a quick year. We had a wedding in Florida, Sampson started his second year of school (4 year old pre-school) which he is really enjoying and Peach managed to not severely impale herself so far this year. I also helped install a new Siemens DCS at work at got my Six Sigma Green belt right before break for a project that could save over $100,000 next year. Work was good for me, other than the turn around when we actually installed the DCS (19 straight days), but I am making up for that now with my first actual vacation around Christmas since I was in school. I can't wait until tomorrow to watch the kids open their stuff, and then I er... we get 3 days to play with everything. Sophie gave me a great surprise for my birthday, an actual surprise party and we celebrated our 7th year of marriage in June. (See that makes it real easy to remember for me it is just the year minus 2000.) Our Florida trip was definitely the best part of the year. We got to swim with dolphins (I didn't do a very good job of capturing it though), see the gulf of Mexico, visit the zoo, go in our first human size maze and see Ripley's believe it or not. We also drove for what seemed like 200 hours to get there and back, no I am just kidding the kids did really well and they got to go through 8 different states on their first official vacation. We also went to the Barnsville Pumpkin festival where we saw a giant pumpkin and I had my first deep fried twinkie, those things should have a surgeon general warning because there is no way they can be good for you, but it really didn't taste that bad. I also got to go to Atlanta for training and saw the Olympic park and ate at the Hard Rock in downtown with a couple of other engineers. Well here is wishing you a Merry Christmas and a great 2008.

Love,
The Helfensfelder's

Tank Job

The tank is finished. Actually not as bad as I thought. I took the screw out and water started to shoot all over the place, but that was the worst part. Everything else went OK.

Global Warming History

Found some good links for global warming history and a take on the "rising" sea levels.

this is a report on the different climate reportings of the last 110 years. Very interesting.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice.asp

this is a link to an interview with one of the leading sea level folks in the world.
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-25/pdf/33-37_725.pdf

More wintery fun

Well the old hot water baseboard heat has sprung another leak. This time in the pressure control tank. I noticed the leak yesterday morning and stuck a dishpan under the tank and when I came back from work the pan was over flowing. So I took a screw and part of a rubber glove and put the glove over the whole and drilled the screw into it. And surprise it didn't leak. Sophie went and picked up another tank today, I got all of the info off of the web last night (ain't the Internet great!) including the price information. So she went to Johnson Boiler (or as she called it Johnsonville Boiler) and she said they were extremely helpful. So good job Johnson Boiler and good job Sophie. Now I just hope that screw holds one more day because I gotta drain the furnace again and I didn't want to start tonight. Basically I got another fun filled day of working on the old heater. Yeah! Actually the installation didn't look that bad. We'll see, if I am able to blog tomorrow you'll know it went OK.

Responding to Another blog

The following is entry is a response to the following blog and its subsequent comments concerning global warming skeptics.

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/they-predicted-cooling-in-1970s.html

THE RESPONSE:

I first read this entry and comments a few days ago and have been waiting to respond so here goes.
I agree a lot with what Barry wrote and linked to, good job Barry. The idea of being "skeptic" is different from denial. As a chemical engineer, like one of the other commenters, I feel that some of the information being portrayed is overstated. There are several reasons to be "skeptical" of the data. One reason is people don't see the effects where they are. I live in the Ohio River valley and last winter was the first that I actually remember the river developing ice on it. I have only lived along the River for 7 years, but it was one of the coldest January's I remember, after living in the general area for 30 years, but not necessarily record cold. The second reason for being a "skeptic" is the lack of the scientific method. These people have come up with conclusions then gone back and cherry picked data to fit the conclusion and then developed the theory of GHG causing global warming. Sorry but that is completely bass ackward. That is why I agree with the other comment that says let's check back in 20 years and see what the REAL scenario is. Let's have some honest to goodness science. Let's design the testing, use a control like the space station or the Mars rovers for some inter-solar system control, and then make conclusions based on the data. If there is a rise in temperature in the controls and the Earth then guess what, the Sun is getting hotter. And the general scientific consensus is that our Sun will become a Red Giant someday and eventually the Earth will crash into the surface of the Sun. When that happens it is going to get pretty warm here, and it won't matter how times you rode your bike to the grocery store because GHG will be the least of the concerns. Actually there won't be any concerns because there won't be anybody. At least not on Earth.
The only way we can truly tell if temperatures are rising is by looking at independent research. Not data derived from people who are getting paid to find facts confirming global warming, because guess what if someone is paid to do a job more than likely they will do that job or else the person writing the checks will find someone to do the job. That said here is some independent data from my area over the last 27 years using the data available from www.weather.com. Over the last 5 years 18 (4.9% of days of the year)different days have had their highest temperatures set and 14 days (3.8%) have had record cold temperatures set. In the last 15 years the numbers go to 161 (44%) record highs and 144 (39.4%) record lows. Over last 20 years, the numbers are 253 (69%) highs and 238 (65%) lows. The most remarkable thing though is that there haven't been any highs or lows set in the last 2 years. If there was global warming wouldn't we be setting record highs every year?

New Lists

I decided to go ahead and add a couple of lists on the left side. Just general quasi-interesting things. Check 'em out.

The SubPrime Bail Out of Aught 7

Recently the federal government of the USA got with the banks and decided to extend the subprime mortgages for thousands of Americans. Great right? Not so fast my friends. This really a terrible case of negative reinforcement in my mind, but do to the mass amount of people involved the federal gov't had no choice but to step in. Right? Well this is a bit tricky, but due to some of the federal programs, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the like, and the depressed interest rate that the federal gov't has held for the past 7 years it kind of draws marginal people into the housing market. These people wouldn't normally be in the position to buy a house but because of the incredibly good market people just have to get in. Then they go for the best deal at the time, which is of course the adjustable rate mortgage, but when you think about a 30 years and considering that mortgages were in the high teens as a percentage little more than 20 years ago, it really shouldn't be that big of a deal whether you have an adjustable rate of 4% or a fixed rate of 5%. Since both of them are so much better you should bet on the fixed rate being better in the long run, but some people don't see it that way and end up having the gov't bail them out. Sweet for them, but what about the people that got the fixed rate and paid all of the bills on time. Oh, I know, they get nothing! In Japan, they take on no credit and will spend money only on things they know they can afford. Pretty novel idea, "if you can't pay for it, don't buy it". That was one of the pieces of advice from one of my teachers in school and it really is good advice. He kind of took it to an extreme that if he couldn't pay cash he didn't buy it, but I look at it as long as you can pay it off before it accumulates any interest you are still ahead of the game. Back to the subprime bail out though, the program is completely voluntary for one, so you have to know if you are eligible or not, 2) you can't be behind at all on your payments, which knocks out about 22% of adjustable rate housing owners, and the gov't isn't offering any money it just extends the low entry rate. I don't really know how many people will actually benefit from this, and it probably won't change the number of foreclosures significantly, but it just upsets me that people can do everything wrong, buy a house out of their price range, get a finance rate lower than they deserve and then fall bass ackward into a loan guarantee from the gov't. There really is something wrong with this picture, but I am going to teach my kids to take care of themselves when it comes to money, don't overextend for things you really can't afford (champagne taste on a beer budget), pay your credit cards off every month, and buy big stuff when it is same as cash (18 months if you can). I'll put a list together for ways to be good at money and stuff, and number one on the list will be to have good friends click on the old ads to help out the retirement plan. Thanks.

Sophie saves the Day!

Browns win, AGAIN! Thanks to Sophie, the kids had their jersey's on during the game. I thought we were going to have a close call, when Peach spilled something on the shirt, but I told Sophie even if the stain sets in and she is soaking wet we can't let her take the Jersey off. Fortunately Sophie agreed, no no, it wasn't that bad she just spilled some food on it, she was fine. I don't subject Peach to those kinds of things, other than you know that time I put her in time out. Oh well, back to the good stuff the Browns are now 8-5 and beat one of the teams that the Steel-towners lost to, so the people at work are in for the old J-E-T-S chant tomorrow. Relax Steel fans, I did root for the P-towners today against the Cheatriots and their coach Bill Billicheat. Bill Billicheat, man that is great. Hey you know he used to coach the Browns and never did any good here, why oh why didn't he cheat when he was coaching them? Probably because he hadn't honed his cheating ways yet. Anyway Pitt-city folks can go ahead and blame Sophie for this loss because this is the first time I think she ever rooted for them. Of course she blames me because it was a first time for me, but maybe not the last. I'm torn whether I should root for them or Jacksonville next week because of the playoff implications. If the Jags lose and Browns win the Browns would be tied for the first wild card spot, but if the Jags and Browns both win then the Brownies pull into essentially a tie for the division, but then would need at least another steely loss and 1 or 2 more victories for Cleveland. Well I could just let fate decide, but if I rooted for the old steel-town rivals today and they lost I could always root for them every week and maybe they would lose, bwah hah ha (evil laugh)....

Hey if you don't want me rooting for your team you could always give the ads a little click, that would be a good deterrent for me, trust me.

Sophie learns a lesson

Saturday Sophie and I ventured to the store and experienced some of the perils mentioned in my check-out blog entry. Basically we got in the shortest line possible and by the time the person in front of us had the manager come over and take something off the register and then decided to write a check we could have gotten out faster if we had broke our order out into 2 separate orders and gone through the express lane. We had to laugh about it though. Oh well, later that day she went to Kroger, by herself, and spent 25 minutes in the checkout because the lady in front of her used a small sandwich bag full of coupons, but most of them didn't scan because they were photocopied or something. Then whatever didn't scan she wanted taken back. I told her to avoid the coupon ladies. Funny thing is Sophie had coupons herself and by the time the other lady was done returning 3 out of 5 uncle Ben's rice boxes and half of the rest of her order, Sophie forgot to use her coupons and had to go to the service desk. What was she gonna do with all that rice anyway, I guess we'll never know.

RaCeCaR

Sophie just saw a commercial that had a guy who said it took him a while to spell 'race car' backwards. But 'race car' spelled backwards is 'RACE CAR'. Check it out. Funny stuff.

Sophie Takes the Blame

I won't say the Browns' loss on Sunday was totally her fault, but... You see the kids didn't have their Jersey's on, so the Browns really didn't have a chance. Even though the Ref blew the call at the end of the game. Clearly Kellen Winslow would have come down in bounds, but he was pushed out by the safety. They then would have had the opportunity to kick the extra point for the win, but you can't West Virginia (turn the ball) over four times and expect to win.

Also Sophie cost the Mountaineers a chance at the title, by watching the game on Saturday. I think it was the first full game she watched.

Note: As much as I hate to admit it I will be rooting for the Steelers to beat the Patricheats on Sunday. One game only. It took me a while to come up with that name too, it was either that or the Cheatriots. Actually I might like Cheatriots better.

fun wintery stuff

Had to change the pump for our hot water heat. It was leaking. Merry Christmas to us. It is my fault though, I never did any up keep on it since we moved in. I really don't know what I was thinking, i don't think the pump suffered any major damage, I am going to get a repair kit for it and fix it up just in case we have another problem later. Then I won't be out $300, hopefully. Hey, I was surprised I was able to get it in without any real problems.

Winter 2007 is Here

Winter is Here! Today we had our first real snow fall. It was quit a treat to wake up and realize I was going to get to shovel snow, I had almost forgot what that was like. Well I got my fix, ha ha ha (sarcasm). It is supposed to warm up a little next week. Which is good, but I do hope that we have snow for Christmas. I like the first snow at the house, because the pine trees on the hill make it kind of look like a scene from a snow globe. Maybe I'll see it Saturday though since I leave for work in the dark and get home in the dark. It was good to see the Departments of Transportation were ready for the snow too. They were bragging on the radio and TV about how they had salt and were ready, they must have been so ready to go that they figured they didn't have to actually put anything on the road this morning. That's OK, at least Ohio figured out it was snowing and put some stuff on the road by night, I still don't know if the folks from West Virginia have figured out that the roads were covered with snow, because they sure hadn't figured it out when I came home from work. There was a report that there were 50 wrecks today, that sounded about right. It seems to take people a week or two to realize they can't drive like idiots in the snow. And Sampson missed school because it was canceled, he was upset. Probably someday he won't be, but I hope not for a really long time. I try to make school seem as fun and interesting as I can. Speaking of fun and interesting I think I will do one of those year end review letters that everyone sends out, except I'll just do it on the blog and if you don't want to look at it you don't have too, I don't want you to feel obligated to read it since I didn't send it to you directly.

Sporting News misses AGAIN

This time in the realm of pro basketball (see they are very versatile at not being able to predict anything). They said the Bulls would win the Central in the East, but an EA sports simulation using the new NBA Live '08 predicted the Bulls would be 39-43 and miss the playoffs. My money is on EA sports. The sad thing is they actually drew attention to the difference, actually the sad thing is I am still looking at the sporting news. Oh well there is always Hockey. If you make a wrong prediction in a sport no one watches will anyone see your wrong?

Monday Night Football

If you can call it football. What a mess. They tried to re-sod the field in two days in Pittsburgh, right over the old field. Looks great, just what I would expect from Pittsburgh. No lines in the first half and after the third quarter there is still no score. Hey, maybe they can't tell when someone makes it into the end zone. Ahh, its a proud day in Steeler country, new field and all. I guess if they lose to the 0-10 Dolphins they can always blame it on the field, hey maybe that's why they did it. Smart Pittsburgh, very smart.

Barack "the toker" Obama

WARNING: (this post is extremely sarcastic, not for small children)
Barack Obama recently said that he had experimented with marijuana in his youth and that in fact he DID inhale as that was the whole point. See kids you can smoke and have a good time AND still run for president. Good job Barack.o0O (smoke rings)

Just for clarification, I have never smoked it or experimented with it.

My Pet Peeves

I almost was in a wreck and I thought man it is about time I put the old pet peeve list up. This list will be updated periodically.

1) People that don't use blinkers (wreck causers). It isn't hard, it is RIGHT THERE BY THE STEERING WHEEL, JUST TOUCH IT PLEASE!!!!
2) People that stay way back from the car in front when they are coming up to a stop sign. Quick rule of thumb, if there is someone behind you get close to the car in front of you. If there are a lot of cars behind you, strung out on the highway, then get VERY close. DO NOT STAY 8 CAR LENGTHS BACK WHEN YOU ARE GOING 1 MPH.
3) One uppers. You know if you've been to the moon they've been there twice. I always try to go lower if they start bragging about something, like I know a guy who bought a car and fixed up and sold it for like $30,000. Wow I know a guy who bought a car, kind of fixed and then resold for about 6 grand, your story was waaaay better.
4) dumb people - see blog on Bolivia.

Well that'll do for now.

Christmas Season

Since it is the Christmas Season I have decided to give the old blog a little Chrismas make-over. Enjoy and Merry Christmas.

More Global Warming (Hype)

Please check out the following article and my presented solution.

early climate change victim: andes water
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/11/26/andes.water.ap/index.html

Ok I'm going to go ahead and solve this little problem and this will be North America's contribution to this epidemic. First you say that they are depending on the glaciers for 1/3 of their water or roughly 33%. Yet, they are letting 40% out of the system through leaks and thieves. So the solution is to fix the piping and stop all the leaks and shoot anyone caught stealing from the system. Just maim 'em a little bit and the rest will get the hint that they are not supposed to steal. There you go problem solved, your welcome Bolivia now stop trying to get the world to pay for your problems by crying 'global warming'. I think it is quite clear that Bolivia's problems extend well beyond global warming. It is like Ron White said 'You can't fix stupid.'

Browns Win, Browns Win!

We did every thing right today. No not the Browns, me and the kids. We all had our Jerseys on and Sophie was not wearing any orange. You see that is why they lost to the Steelers, Sophie was wearing orange that Sunday. I didn't realize it until it was too late, but the way they jumped on them and took an early lead I couldn't make her take it off. My mistake. You see you can't take clothes off in the middle of a game, that is rule #1, actually rule number one is that Sophie doesn't wear orange, but like I said she knows better now.

A side note: It is funny that 'Steelers' comes up in spell check but Browns doesn't. I guess blogger just doesn't like the Steelers. Well I can't blame 'em.

Another side note: Even though the Patriots are losing right now I don't think that Tom Brady will break Manning's record for TD passes. Not because they'll have a change of heart, but because the way they are treating teams someone will hurt Brady. Just beating a team badly to beat them badly. When they play a team that has absolutely no shot to make the playoffs, watch out. Because after about the 1st quarter when the game will start to get out of hand, that team will start to look at the Patriots and think 'Why are we just taking this' and then they will go out and try and hurt Brady. And the way that the Patriot's have turned their back on good sportsmanship and the rest of the league, the league will turns its back on the Patriots.