Now = Weekend

No work for me tomorrow. I have a lot of time built up and need to use some of it, plus there are things to take care of. Tonight a bunch of us met up from work at a local sports pub to watch Dallas play Green Bay. Since we have a fantasy football club going between everyone at work and two of the premium teams were playing, there was a lot riding on it. It was definitely funny watching T.O. make good plays then become a complete bonehead the other half.

We'll have to do this again soon.

Good email from Dad

Thanks Dad for the email. And this is the truth. Lame corporate America and their little idea on not hurting anyone's feelings by saying "Christmas."

T’was the month before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
Why the Politically Correct Police had taken away,
The reason for Christmas - no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing,
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say
December 25th is just a " Holiday ".
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit.

Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod.
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.
As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton !
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace.
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate "Winter Break" under your "Dream Tree"
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS, not Happy Holiday!

Dave has landed

Glad to hear you had the two offers back to back and have decided on taking the Swiss Ray position...I hope they don't work you too hard and make you travel too much. Let me know if you need any help buddy.

Christmas With a Capital "C"

Eat it Americans!...and your excuse for saying what it really is!

Giant Israeli flag breaks world record

This is very cool, a flag almost 2/5^th of a mile.

Beneath the ancient Jewish desert strong point of Masada, the world's largest flag was unfurled Sunday, covering a large stretch of sandy hinterland. The huge blue and white Israeli flag, 660 meters (2,165 feet) long and 100meters (330 feet) wide and weighing 5.2 metric tons, breaks the record for the world's largest, according to the Tourism Ministry.

It was measured by representatives for the Guinness Book of Records. Filipino entrepreneur and evangelical Christian Grace Galindez-Gupana said she decided two years ago to produce a giant Israeli flag as a testament to her love for Israel and the Jewish people, and as a celebration of 50 years of diplomatic relations between the Philippines and Israel.

"God spoke to me in thunder and lightening," Galindez-Gupana said. "The Lord said, 'Make the flag of Israel, the standard of my people.' This is a tall order," she said, as she broke down in tears.

The record-breaking Israeli flag was accompanied by a giant Philippines flag - huge, but not quite as big. It weighed only about 3.8 metric tons. Large stones anchored both flags as they billowed in the desert winds. "They were made in the Philippines and shipped to Israel days ago," said Daniel Rozen, spokesman for Living Stone Ministries, a group that helped bring the flags to Israel.

"There are about 31,000 Filipinos in Israel, most of whom are foreign workers," said Gilberto Asuque, consul general of the Philippine Embassy in Israel. "This flag expresses the friendship between the Philippines and the state of Israel, and also the friendship between Jewish and Christian communities," said Shaul Zemach, director of the Tourism Ministry

Back/Fat

No, not back-fat. It means I'm back from the ThxGiving holiday and fat from all the overeating. I believe there were at least 12 pies made on Friday over mom's house. Ridiculous? Yes indeed. Since I had never braved the entire black Friday before, I decided to join in. Dad & me went to observe, not become one of the yelling moms(we called those people "retards" for short) that "had" to get their kids what they wanted for Christmas. Despite the madness I seemed to laugh most of the time over the moms/dads that are for some reason enslaved into getting their children exactly what they want, NOT need. Just the thought of a grown woman yelling at some poor Walmart employee over how long she had been standing in line for is ridiculous, but seeing it first hand is entertainment. If I do decide to go again next year, I'll bring a bag of popcorn and a chair for the entire show.
After getting out of there we headed to Best Buy. I ran across two friends that were in fact heading up the sales for the store...so the hookups were made for my dad's buying frenzy for that shiny LCD he actually did need for his computer. Thanks to Paul & Jeff.
Not to self(and anyone that is still sane)...in the future, don't sell yourself to the commercialized holiday madness for the sake of a lame "must-have" gift that someone doesn't really need...and for the sake of their spoiledness. The $1.8 billion spent on Friday could've been put to better use. Shame on us Americans!

Correction: $10.295 billion is the actual sales for the retail stores.

Nude man accused of causing I-95 crashes

Alright, who wants to call this one? Comment back with a good reason if you think this guy had a legitimate reason for running across the highway nude, or comment back with the response of "retard."

Brandywine Hundred, Del. - Delaware State Police have arrested a Chester, Pennsylvania, man who they said was running naked and drunk on Interstate-95 and caused three accidents.

Police said Ardonas Gilbert, 26, was running along the southbound lanes near Marsh Road about 10 p.m. Monday. He is charged with two counts of assault and a single count of being drunk on the highway.

Two citizens tried to help Gilbert, but police say he began to assault them. Then police said he ran back into traffic and caused three accidents when cars tried to avoid hitting him. No one was seriously injured. Gilbert is being held at the Howard Young Correctional Institute in Wilmington.

What is the Exaflood?

This is sort of a joke, considering the whole 2010 internet slow down is based on current hardware and governed internet speeds. How about waiting until USA's ISPs actually catch up with the rest of the world in bandwidth? ...then maybe I'll take it seriously. You can read the Reference I ran across for some text backing from DSL Reports. The makers of the video are the scary people at InternetInnovation.org. On top of it all, since most medical facilities use the internet to implement case/physician/facility communication using the internet, I cannot see them allowing any type of slowdown for something as important as medical practice.

Big guy on the way

Dave, best of luck in the morning...It has definitely been awhile since you started but has flown by. Let me know how it goes, and hopefully the position won't mean you staying in the armpit of the states. I am pretty dang sure you don't need to start growing a mullet. Be safe on your way back buddy.

As for the week, one day down and just a couple more to go before starting the gorge-fest with family, friends, and anyone who likes to eat multiple plates of fattening food...time to break out the sweat pants cause I am thankful. So...back in China Grove midweek!

This is just genius

...or just lack of genius. Guns can be fun, but not in the hands of someone without an active brain. Read on...

Southworth, Wash. - A man trying to loosen a stubborn lug nut blasted the wheel with a 12-gauge shotgun, injuring himself badly in both legs, sheriff's deputies said. The 66-year-old man had been repairing a Lincoln Continental for two weeks at his home northwest of Southworth, about 10 miles southwest of Seattle, and had gotten all but one of the lug nuts off the right rear wheel by Saturday afternoon, Kitsap County Deputy Scott Wilson said.

"He's bound and determined to get that lug nut off," Wilson said. From about arm's length, the man fired the shotgun at the wheel and was "peppered" in both legs with buckshot and debris, with some injuries as high as his chin, according to a sheriff's office report. "Nobody else was there and he wasn't intoxicated," Wilson said.The man was taken to Tacoma General Hospital with injuries Wilson described as severe but not life-threatening.

Chocolate was NO accident!!!

The article I read earlier today made me think...yes, think. You know that chocolate has been recently linked to a healthy diet, in small portions of course, effecting mental and physical aspects of the people who eat it. Well, apparently the article below states that chocolate started out as an ingredient in a beer-like drink...much longer ago than predicted before. The funny "fact" that they talk about is that chocolate or chocolate drinks were discovered by accident. Riiight!

It(chocolate in general), being interesting, is a good topic to read any time. The article is good also(below).

The chocolate enjoyed around the world today had its origins at least 3,100 years ago in Central America not as the sweet treat people now crave but as a celebratory beer-like beverage and status symbol, scientists said on Monday.

Researchers identified residue of a chemical compound that comes exclusively from the cacao plant -- the source of chocolate -- in pottery vessels dating from about 1100 BC in Puerto Escondido, Honduras. This pushed back by at least 500 years the earliest documented use of cacao, an important luxury commodity in Mesoamerica before European invaders arrived and now the basis of the modern chocolate industry.

Cacao (pronounced cah-COW) seeds were used to make ceremonial beverages consumed by elites of the Aztecs and other civilizations, while also being used as a form of currency. The Spanish conquistadors who shattered the Aztec empire in the 16th century were smitten with a chocolate beverage made from cacao seeds served in the palace of the emperor. However, this was not the form in which cacao had its beginnings.

"The earliest cacao beverages consumed at Puerto Escondido were likely produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds," the scientists wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. One of the researchers, anthropologist John Henderson of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said cacao beverages were being concocted far earlier than previously believed -- and it was a beer-like drink that started the chocolate craze.

"What we're seeing in this early village is a very early stage in which serving cacao at fancy occasions is one of the strategies that upwardly mobile families are using to establish themselves, to accumulate social prestige," Henderson said in a telephone interview. "I think this is part of the process by which you eventually get stratified societies," Henderson said.

The cacao brew consumed at the village of perhaps 200 to 300 people may have evolved into the chocolate beverage known from later in Mesoamerican history not by design but as "an accidental byproduct of some brewing," Henderson said.

The chocolate enjoyed by later Mesoamerican civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs was made from ground cacao seeds with added seasonings, producing a spicy, frothy drink. The Spanish brought cacao back to Europe in the 16th century. Many innovations occurred in the ensuing centuries, including the advent of solid chocolate treats.

The scientists used chemical analysis of residues extracted from pottery vessels from the Honduran site to determine that cacao had been used. The style of the 10 small, elegant serving vessels suggests the cacao brew was served at important ceremonies perhaps to celebrate weddings and births, the scientists said. Henderson said the first use of cacao may be earlier still by perhaps a couple of centuries. He said the scientists intend to test earlier pottery from the region for chemical proof.

The world's tallest pooch meets the smallest

This is such a size difference. I found this on Daily Mail UK this week.

Despite their radical difference in size, these two dogs have something in common - Gibson the Great Dane and Boo Boo the toy Chihuahua are both world record holders. Measuring a whopping 107cm, gentle giant Gibson was named tallest dog back in 2004. Joining him in the hall of fame for 2007 is tiny Boo Boo who only measures 10.16cm tall and is smaller than Gibson's head. The two celebrity hounds, who were both bred in America, met up to celebrate Guinness World Records Day 2007 outside the White House in Washington D.C. Boo Boo's owner Lana Elswick has bred Chihuahuas in Kentucky for 19 years and said she always knew her one-year-old pooch was special. The tiny mutt was only about the size of a thumb when she was born; so small, in fact, that she had to be fed with an eye dropper every two hours before she could eventually nurse a bottle. Now she is a diminuitive diva. "She has the attitude of a big dog she would let me know if anyone was around and she would try to guard me if she could," said Ms Elswick. Owner Sandy Hall lives with her dog Gibson in Sacramento, California. The Great Dane is also the world's tallest therapy dog and regularly visits children's hospitals. "He just puts a smile on people's faces," Ms Hall said. "In one split second, people forget their cares and worries."

Joost

I ran across a nifty website after watching an episode of AOTS a week or so ago. The website(Joost) offers free streaming TV to your computer. It isn't live and it doesn't work behind proxy servers(some have worked around this problem) but it is quite good considering it is free. The quality is good and it starts streaming right when you select the program you want to watch. Hopefully in the future they will offer more channels but most likely will not have any channel "live" considering rights blah blah.

Some of the channels it offers as of today are CNN, Reuters, Comedy Central, CBS, etc. Anyway, it is free and is extremely easy to use. Try it out.

Download Joost