My Family...

Well today at around 3.30pm my family arrived from Texas. They made the 1200+ mile drive in 2 days, starting out yesterday morning in Jasper Texas and staying last night 70 miles west of Atlanta Georgia. The got up early this morning to finish the drive to our house in Midlothian Virginia. I am really glad to see them as my grandfather and uncle has never seen our house here in Virginia.

I am leaving work tonight at 1.15am so I do not have to sleep all day tomorrow and we will be able to do a few things tomorrow. I hated to have to come to work tonight, but duty calls. I also took off Wednesday night to be able to spend more time with them. I am going to take my Uncle Terry to Washington DC on Tuesday as he has never been there, so that will be fun and will also be some great memories.
What is your opinion?

Mack's New Computer

Thanks to Mac Hall for letting me publish this on my blog.

The Beast 666 Computer

In the 1970s there were many whispered rumors about The Beast 666 Computer that Satan was supposedly constructing in Belgium. Our social security numbers were the Mark of the Beast (I used to date her, by the way), and these would be fed into the 666 Computer and then fluoridated or something, and then Satan would rule the world, mwahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa!

The founders of this rumor went on to invent Y2K, and urged us all to buy drums of water and sacks of dried peas because when the End Times come and Captain Kirk beams us up to his space ship as the planet explodes we'll all need drums of water and sacks of dried peas.

We now know that the whole bit about Satan and his magic laptop was always quite impossible, since within minutes of its completion the computer would have whimsically shut down and refused to do anything but light up.

Satan would have had to call out a Volkswagen-driving 30-something with thick glasses at $60 an hour to sneer at Satan's outdated hard-drive ("this is sooooooooo last week") and his dial-up connection.

Satan would also have learned that all the dossiers saved on his previous (hardly old) computer in Micro-Blop X-PMS are not compatible with the newer-than-new Micro-Snort Z-Xtreem bundled into his new computer, and would have to sacrifice his first-born, Vladimir Putin, to the computer gods to pay for a patch, which would take three hours to work through each time he wanted to look at, say, his MeMeMeSpace downloads.

Imagine, if you will, buying a new car, and after driving it ten minutes it breaks down, and must be rebuilt at great expense.

Imagine, if you will, buying a new book shelf, and as you transfer those favorite volumes from the old shelf to the new shelf your books simply disappear.

Imagine, if you will, transferring file folders from an old cabinet to a new, and they simply won't fit into either file cabinet.

Imagine, if you will, writing a letter to a friend, and the old pen won't work and the new pen comes with a lengthy instruction manual and then won't work anyway.

Imagine, if you will, writing out your week's work and meeting schedule in your daily planner, and then at a critical moment all your writing simply evaporates.

Imagine, if you will, mailing a letter to a friend, and finding that the postal service no longer accepts envelopes but instead requires a complex new packaging and you must spend a day at a seminar learning this new method.

Yes, I bought a new computer this week.

Satan's in the computer business, all right.

-30-

The Catholic Sun

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There's always laughter and good red wine.
At least I've always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!

-- Hilaire Belloc

Fitness and Health..

As many know, I am on a health kick. I love to ride my Mountain Bike on the trails with and friends. So the other evening, my wife tells me that we/she joined the American Family Fitness Gym here in Richmond. It is a local chain, not to be confused with 24 Hour Fitness in Texas or elsewhere. So we went to the gym on Tuesday evening and looked over the facilities. They are very nice. We go to the Swift Creek facility. They have racket ball, basket ball, free weights, swimming, and an assortment of other activities.

I like to think that I am in good shape, so I decided to give the stationary bike a try and I did a cardio program. I entered my age and time that I wanted to ride. I entered 30 minutes and the bike stated I needed to get my hear rate up to 147BPM. Ok, I started the ride and after about 5 minutes, I hit the target. I kept up the pace and was riding at about a 2.5 minuet mile. I got over 11 miles in 30 minutes. I was impressed if I do say so myself. I also did that the next night as well.

I also started lifting weights for my lower back to strengthen it up. I talked to a trainer and he suggested that I do “dead lifts” and I said ok. I do 4 sets of 10 reps at 100lbs and them 2-3 sets of 10 at 110lbs. My lower back was very soar. I need to get back and do some more as I am no longer soar and ready to continue with the training.

My ultimate goal is to try to do the ride in Houston Texas that goes to Austin. It is called The BP MS 150. I am going to continue to train and stay in shape to be able to make this happen!! I will let you all in on more details as they happen.


What is your opinion?

Bob Woodward...

I like to read at least 3-4 books a year. I have read all of Dan Brown's books, Holy Blood Holy Grail, Rule by Secrecy, just to name a few.

I am reading the series of by Bob Woodward and I have started with "Bush At War" and I will go next to "Plan Of Attack: and finally to "State Of Denial" I hope to do this during the next 6-9 months. I love the whole "conspiracy theory" stance and also real world current events type of reading.

If you like the current event type of reading, I strongly suggest a book by Robert Baer called See No Evil. It tells about the decline of the CIA over the last 20+ years. It is a very good read. Also watch the movie called Syriana as it was based on the book.

Happy Readings...

What is your opinion?

11 things you may not know about "Star Wars"

I have not read this book. I have a PDF file that is called The_Secret_History_of_Star_Wars. I have read some of it, but it is over 400+ pages and i have not had the time. At the moment i am reading a book by Bob Woodward - Bush At War.

I will tell more about it as i get more into the book. But, back to the title. I found this on a blog that i was reading and i wanted to pass this along to you all.

Thanks to Jacoblog for this little rundown on the book.

1. In between the second and third drafts, Luke was changed to be a girl. (p. 40)

2. Because of its size and proximity to the Tunisia-Libya border, the Sandcrawler set was searched by the Libyan army to make sure it wasn't a secret Tunisian military weapon. (p. 157)

3. The R2D2 robot went out of control and wandered into the set of Franco Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth," which was also filming in the Tunisian desert. (p. 159)

4. Alec Guinness got mad and almost quit when, midway through production, George Lucas decided that Obi-Wan Kenobi would die. (p. 166)

5. During the entire production, only two people were fired and no one quit. (p. 255)

6. Carrie Fisher stood on a turntable to film the R2D2 hologram message. (p. 257)

7. After playing the part of C3P0 for the entire production, Anthony Daniels was almost replaced during voice-over recordings by someone who could make the character sound more like an American used-car salesman. (p. 265)

8. The trench that the rebels fly through isn't the one that runs around the equator of the Death Star. It's one of 18 vertical trenches that start halfway up from the equator and run toward the north pole. (p. 280)

9. The motion picture review board rated "Star Wars" a G, until the studio went back and demanded a PG rating. Also, some of the raters fell asleep during the screening. (p. 289)

10. Lucas and Steven Spielberg swapped profit points on their two movies, "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," each believing the other's would do better. (p. 298)

11. Twentieth Century Fox's stock jumped 450% immediately after the movie came out. (p. 301)


What is your opinion?

The Blog.

Has everyone lost interest in the site?  This is the lowest hits that I have had in many months.  Please let me know that someone is out there reading what I put out.

 

Thanks,

 

RMStringer

+++++++++++++++++++

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Max Ehrmann, "Desiderata"

 

Homeland Security Funds LED Light Saber...

By Ryan Singel

The Department of Homeland Security is funding the creation an LED flashlight that uses powerful flashes of light to temporarily blind, disorient and incapacitate people. Homeland Security's Science and Technology arm hopes government agents can use the "light saber" to arrest people on planes and at the borders without using traditional weapons.

The LED Incapacitator uses a range-finder to measure the distance to a target's eyes and then unleashes continually changing, multi-color light pulses that both blind and disorient the person. Intelligent Optical Systems, a small company in Torrance, CA, is developing the weapon with money from Homeland Security's Science and Technology division, which thinks its possible to have the weapon deployed to cops, National Guard troops and border agents by 2010.

The company's president Bob Lieberman says the tool would be perfect for confronting border jumpers."You don't want to hurt or kill them, just take them into custody," Lieberman was quoted as saying by a DHS newsletter. "With this, they don't need to know English to comply."

The tool could be scaled up to make a light bazooka that could subdue a crowd, but the company is focusing on miniaturizing the device to make it resemble a traditional D-cell Maglite. Right now the prototype is a non-svelte 15 inches by 4 inches wide.

But first the company's chief scientist Vladimir Rubtsov wants to discover more powerful patterns and colors, which he'll get this fall with tests on volunteers at Penn State University's Institute for Nonlethal Defense Technology.

"There's one wavelength that gets everybody," Lieberman said, according to the newsletter. "Vlad calls it the evil color."

THREAT LEVEL can only wonder how long will it be until war protesters and Rio Grande swimmers start wearing reflective clothing?

I wonder if Lucas said that they could use the term Light Saber? Can someone say copyright?

What is your opinion?