Misc.

In my previous post, I mentioned that I went to the Apple store in Southlake. I really like the layout of the "shopping mall" there. Instead of being in an enclosed building, imagine taking the individual stores, and placing them in buildings around the city hall. It was so much nicer then walking around in a mall. There's nothing "radical" about the idea, but it was just really cool to be outside (since the weather was nice). Very relaxed atmosphere.

My wife and I watched "Imagine Me & You" last night. I had seen most of it before, but I picked up a few new things since I had missed the first thirty minutes minutes the first time I saw it. It's an enjoyable movie.

Work is going well, but I miss being able to socialize. I also find that I am not nearly so well informed about the "stupid" news stories, the "man bites dog" variety. I can definitely thank the TV screens at CMG for helping me to answer all of the trivia questions on Wait Wait. A couple of weeks ago, a listener on the show noted that they didn't expect to do to well because they only got their news from NPR. It was so funny because I had noticed how many of the stories they asked questions over had been posted to the CMG TVs the week before.

iPod

While it's not been used as frequently since I got my new job, I still use my iPod for my road trips and occasionally when roaming about the house. On Friday, I learned that the audio jack was malfunctioning. This was something I had begun to attribute to the earbuds I was using, but since it was happening to all of my headphones and audio equipment I knew that that could not be the case. Not wanting to buy another $200 device, I took it to the iPod store in Southlake. I didn't have an appointment, but they squeezed me in. After testing it for a couple of minutes with their equipment, they handed me a new one, and boxed the old one up, no questions asked. I was quite pleased, and quite surprised too. I had expected to be without it for a couple of weeks. Now that's customer service.

Now I just need to start putting a dent in the 9 days of podcast audio that I have built up.

Fall Festival

Today was the fall festival for my kids school. They had a blast, and I overate. There was a dance afterward and it was great to watch the kids on the dance floor. I saw a large group of boys trying to break dance on the floor. My son joined right in. It was great. My daughter hooked up with some of her friends and was out on the dance floor swinging around with her friends until her legs got sore. After that, she either sat in my lap holding onto me, or held onto her mother.

Taking a note from Paul

Ok. I know it's been a long time. Honestly, I have had a busy month. From the last post, everyone should know I have a new job. While that's kept me somewhat busy, I've also been making some changes around the house, cleaning my office, transitioning to new after school duties, driving to Houston, etc. I'll try to cover as much as is relevant. Needless to say, I am finding myself much happier.

While I have been "absent", I have started a few posts. They just never got finished. So I am taking a note from Paul, and just going to write a quick note on a few.

The last post was a testament to Blogspot's spell check and ease of use. I barely even remember composing it, but it was there when I woke up. I've had to correct more grammar and spelling in this post then I have found in that one.

Due to the schedule change at church, I have been able to attend more of the main services. Because it was something I had thought of doing, and because I was hoping to get the youth of the church more involved, I signed up to be a lay leader. To that end, last Sunday, I got up in front of the congregation and led the opening part of the service. I had to spend a few hours last week coming up with Opening Words, and Candles of Memory and Hope (We light this candle in memory/hope of... ). Most of my involvement has been with the youth of the church, so getting up in front of the adults and working with them was a new thing for me.

New Job

So for those who do not know, today I started my new job. Guess what? My new company announced that it was sold today. My first day has been a joke among the existing employees.
I met a great group of employees from out of state. We drank and partied together until late at night. Now I am in my room, getting ready for the next day, in which I will meet the new CEO. I really think things will go well, but it is funny to joke about it.

Social Action Project in BR

I went to a YRUU rally in Baton Rouge this weekend. We always have a social action project, and due to the number of youth present, we actually split up and went 5 ways. My choice was to work at a local children's shelter. We were cleaning, organizing raking, sweeping, etc. I had only gotten an hour of sleep before going to the site. Most of the kids were on visitation, which basically means they were visiting family members. The volunteer coordinator told us about the reasons that children might be placed there. Suffice it to say that the chief reason was abuse.

From that moment, through most of the tour of the facility, and off and on for the duration of my stay, I couldn't help but to get emotional. I had to work out in the yard, because I was certain I would not be able to handle working in the rooms. These kids had gone through so much, and yet you see their happy faces, and they were talking about the pony that had been brought by the facility a couple of days before. They were sitting in the living room, watching Saturday morning cartoons, just like millions of kids across the country. Yet they were here. I hated the need for the place, but seeing them, I was so glad that it was there.

Havens riced argyle?

Havens riced argyle? Farl armings foppery, madzoons cire columnar
forepaws crackle! Nosing booties putout banneret pearlite. Hyper
balsams intone crammer kainites. Rehinges inhaul, singe.


What does that previous paragraph mean? I was browsing around on www.fourmilab.ch, and came across this. I started playing around, encrypting a short sentence with my full name, and then played around with the Steganography tools. What resulted is the above giberish, that is reminiscent of some of the spam giberish that gets sent through email to confound Bayesian spam filters.

So what does it mean? Well, as a hint, it was a three word sentence, with eight letters total. Need more? I was originally on the page for The Hackers Diet Online, and The Hackers Diet (There have been enough health concerns amongst my friends and family recently to cause us to focus on our own health and well-being). The site has some good tools to analyze weight loss/gain trends, statistically.

"I like pie." Time to go downstairs and have some Strawberry Yogurt Pie. It's pretty tasty, and, for a dessert, not to bad for me either.