Yummy
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Saturday, October 03, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Dallas who ?
Has the billion dollar fish bowl gone to the cowgirls heads or what? I just sat through one half of a football game to watch the Dallas field goal kicker miss a 40 yard field goal and the Dallas offense is sputtering worse than a two bit lawnmower with bad gas. The offensive line is going to get Tony Romo hurt if they dont do a better job of protecting him. I am also thinking that the coaches need to teach the players in the Dallas secondary how to tackle someone. You can not tackle someone that is the same size as yourself or bigger by slapping them with one hand on the waist line. This is not touch football girls this is the NFL. If you can not tackle someone please go sit on the bench and let someone else that can tackle get on the field. If Dallas can not beat the Panthers tonight then the season is absolutely over for them. How in the world will they be able to compete with some of the more high powered teams in the NFL? The answer is they can not.hope to compete playing like this. If Dallas plays like they did in the first half then they will lose the game. I wonder how it felt to the Cowboys when they got booed at the end of the first half?
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Out of money?
How often do you go to the bank to cash a check and they turn you down because they are out of money? I got off of work early today to go to NBSC on Folly Rd and when I showed them my student loan refund check they told me "we are sorry but we are out of money until tomorrow afternoon when the Brinks truck arrives". I thought that certainly there must be some mistake for a bank to be out of money. Make no mistake sir the teller said, Trident Technical College gave out all the refund checks at once and gave us no warning whatsoever. That means that it was a first come first serve situation at the bank today. All of the brances for NBSC were out of cash , not just the one on Folly Road. I was told to come back to the bank tomorrow afternoon and they might have enough money to cash my check. I am thankful that I just got paid and I can be patient while the bank replenishes its supply. No, I do not want to depost the check in my account so my bank can put a 10 day hold on it. I would rather just cash it and put the cash in my account.
I am surprised to see that I have 7 people subscribed to my posterous blog. I can understand why my wife and close friends might want to hear my driveling but what about the rest of you folks? In order to reward you for your subscription to my blog I have in turn subscribed to your posterous blog as well. Thank you for tuning it to my occasional drivel about this and that.
So far my adventure back into the halls of academia has not been overtly painful. The experience of getting registered was more than irritating but with tons of patience and keeping the phone lines hot I managed to come through that process ok. Financial aid came through to pay for school for this semester and next semester so I now join the ranks of students out there that now owe a student loan once we get out of school. Yeah me!!!
The first three weeks of school were busy but I adjusted my free time schedule to where I spend most of it studying but still have time to do a couple of things I like to do. It basically works out this way. I study for 3.5 hours four days a week and then I use the weekend to finish up any papers that are to be written or project assignments that must be done. When I read a chapter I go over the chapter summary notes and then I go straight to the quiz and take it while the material is still stuck in short term memory. That seems to work better than reading the chapters on Monday and Tuesday and then having to wait until the weekend to study the notes all over again to refresh my short term memory and then take the test. I guess everyone has their system and as long as it works for you that is all that matters.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Windows 7 and XP dual boot
In the last couple of weeks I have been using Windows 7. Thanks to being a student and an associating between MSDN and our school we have access to download the OS and take it for a spin. I installed Windows 7 on a Dell Latitude E6500 with an 80 gb hard drive and 2 gb of ram. I downloaded the ISO file and burned it to a DVDRAM disk with iamgeburn which is a free image burning utility. The install process took about the same amount of time as any other OS. During the disk partition selection process I carved up my hard disk into two separate partitions so that I can dual boot Windows 7 and XP professional or Linux depending on what strikes my fancy later on.
I was very impressed with the install process which gave me no problems to mention. All of the drivers for my E6500 were found and I have been running Windows 7 without any incidents. I was highly impressed that the Cisco VPN client for Vista installed and worked with no problems. I installed Office 2007 , MIRC and several other programs that ran just fine. Windows 7 has the same look and feel of Vista but I have to admit that it runs much better. One of the features that I like on the start button is the ability to type the name of the program and it will give you a selection of applications you can click on. Another program that I love is the Snippet Tool which is similar to SnagIT 8. The Snippet Tool allows you to take a screen shot of any portion of your sreeen that you want. This is a very useful tool if you are doing any kind of documentation and you need to show people screen shots of what you are talking about.
Today I had a break in the action so I made the mistake of installing Windows XP Professional SP3 on the second partition of my hard drive. Everything went just fine and then the laptop rebooted. Windows XP came up just fine but access to Windows 7 was gone. POOF!! Luckily for me I had not mistakenly overwritten the wrong partition during the install phase. I installed XP to the second partition but I guess that XP overwrote the boot.ini file and replaced it with one for itself. Needless to say I was a bit panicked after all the hours I spent installing software and configuring Windows 7 to be my primary OS. I did what I always do when I have a technical problem and I started surfing the Net on the different techie forums looking for the answer. I found a lot of information however I did not find the answer I was looking for. I fixed the problem by booting the laptop to the Windows 7 install media and it gave me the option to repair Windows. Repair windows had five or six options and one of them was to fix the boot up process. BINGO!! I selected that option and a dos prompt popped up in the bottom left portion of the screen and it magically fixed the issue. I rebooted the laptop and now Windows 7 is once again available to me.
I still want to dual boot another OS with Windows 7 so I will have to do some research on HOW to do this and then I will let you know what I find out.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Cowboys made me proud today
Living in the Lowcountry means that Dallas Cowboys fans are very hard to find. I had to go to King Street Grill this afternoon to watch the Dalls vs Tampa game and I was surprised to find four other Dallas fans that wandered in to watch the game. At first I was a little bit concerned about the Dallas defense as I sat there and watched Caddillac from Tampa run through Dallas like they were swiss cheese. The field goal kicker for Tampa missed two field goals which did not help their cause. I was very suprised to see the Dallas passing game burn the Tampa secondary for three touchdowns. Dallas wins 34 to 21 which made this Cowboy fan right proud.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Picture Perfect
At Seacoast west campus they wrapped up the mini series on Picture Perfect. The series spoke about our lives and our families and how they are not always picture perfect. No matter how good the portraits might be on the surface there is always some brokeness that is brought about by either a family member or members or external circumstances. Every family experiences some sort of brokeness and how we handle that brokeness will determine how quickly restoration and healing takes place. The pastor this morning gave some very simple guidelines for breaking the crazy cycle.
How to respond to brokeness from 1 Peter 3:8-12
A. Treat others better than myself
1. When we are hurt we tend to respond with a victim mentality. I am hurt therefore I will hurt back.
B. Break the cycle of craziness
1. Serve unconditionally, be nice to those who are mean or harmful towards you.
2. Do not repay evil with evil even if it is in our nature.
C. Seek and pursue peace
1. We need to do whatever it takes to reconcile the relationship and pursue a peaceful restoration.
2. We need to learn how to forgive others and release the bitterness, anger and hurt within us
3. Unforgiveness only hurts us, not the person we are angry with
4. If the other person is not willing to do the right thing then we can chose to be the one to do right
5. If God is bigger than my problems and can forgive me then I can forgive others as well.
I think that this message speaks to all of us. We all have been hurt and we have all been the victim at one time or the other. Today is the day to release that pain and anger and bitterness to the one who is able to handle it for us. God is bigger than all of our burdens and if we will only trust him with those problems he will help us to handle them.
Does this mean that we are supposed to be door mats and allow people to run all over us? No, of course not. People need to own their junk and take responsibility for it. If we approach people with the spirit of love, humility and kindness and work with them we can help them to see how they have contributed to the pain and hopefully restore that relationship. If they refuse to own their junk and do not want to do the right thing then you have done your part and that is all God is concerned with. Sometime healing and restoration is not instananeous and it may take some time, prayer and work. There are resources out there to help folks with these types of issues and most of the time you can find it at your local church or community counseling centers.
Our families may not ever be "picture perfect" but with some help from God working through each of us we can learn how to love and enjoy one another and do better with how we treat one another.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Charleston Police Department and Community service
How many times do we call the police or have a need for their service? I would submit that our dealings with the police are relatively infrequent and most of the time when we call them it is because we need their protection or a crime has been committed against ourselves, our families, neighbor or property. No matter what the situation there is usually a need to call for the men and women of our local police department. The same goes for the fire fighters and so on and so forth.
This morning at approximately 2:30 am my son and I stopped at the Shell station at Maybank Highway and Main road to stop and use the restroom and get a drink before we headed out to my office so I could take care of some backup tasks. On the weekends we have stopped at this Shell gas station on several occasions and it is usually in the late night hours or early morning hours. Since this is one of the few establishments open on Johns Island at this time of night there is usually a patrol car there from the Charleston Police Dept. Personally I like the police presence because I feel their being there deters some wanna be knuckle heads from being stupid or causing problems. I spent 10 years in law enforcement back in Texas and I know for a fact that the business owners and store employees appreciate the "men and women of law enforcement" to hang around when they can.
When we entered the store so my son could use the restroom I noticed the officer was leaning up against the counter reading a newspaper and keeping a watchful eye on the patrons which was cool by me. For whatever reasons I did not engage the officer and maybe it was because I was tired and just wanted to get my stuff and get out of there so we could hit the road. When we left the store and got into the vehicle my son looked at me and said , " that guy was a jerk". I looked at my son and said " why do you say that son". My son said, when I walked up to the front counter to ask about using the restroom I looked at the officer and said hello. My son said his response was to ignore his effort at being courteous and to continue reading his paper. My son said that the officer also made a point to watch his every move which made him feel a little bit creeped out. My son thought that the officer just did not like teenagers and was overtly suspicious of him period. I took the time to explain to my son that the officer might be having a bad day and that typically he is probably not used to citizens being overtly nice to him.
My only concern is that the experience my son had was negative and now he may be a little bit leary of being nice to a law enforcement officer the next time. I can not tell you how many times I have been in uniform in public and have had a parent admonish their child in front of me and tell them that if they do not behave they will " tell the big bad police man standing over there " come get you. When I would see this happen I would make it a point to try and defuse the situation by saying something nice to the parent and to assure the child that people in uniform are their friends. We should want our children and young adults to seek out the services of law enforcement or any other public servant when they are in trouble. We do not want them to be running away from them or to be afraid to say them because we have instilled in them some preconceived notion that people in uniform are there to do bad things to us.
I am thinking that the officer in question would have just said howdy and acknowledged my sons attempt at being courteus and friendly that it would have gone a long way with his experience with law enforcement. Now my son thinks the guy was a jerk and he may lump everyone into the same category when he should not. As a parent who has been on both sides of the badge I will do my part to mold and shape that view point but hopefully the men and women in uniform will realize that even the smallest things they say and do can and will affect those that they serve and protect.
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