Send in the clowns
We went bowling tonight, it’s something that we enjoy, and it gets us out of the house. It’s been a rough week, we had a blowup with our oldest son, our Marriage is strained right now, and with all of that there are legal matters to attend to. It’s day to day right now, the chickens will be off to slaughter next week, there is no other option and it was getting close to that time anyway. We will sell the coop, or find storage for it if we must. We will give up one of the dogs most likely, she’s too destructive and with rentals you can’t have an animal that chews things up. We are also going to sell some of our fish and end up with just one or two small tanks, it all rips at our hearts and causes tears.
But that’s the hard reality, we decided today that we are going to turn all this over to a lawyer and our account, and let them guide us through this. There is too much at stake and we don’t want to make any mis-steps, the lender is basically foreclosing on us, which makes me angry because we have never missed a payment. But I’ll let the lawyer deal with that, we will focus on packing and getting ready.
My faith is in tatters right now, the sun will rise tomorrow and we will move on, but we will never be the same. I’m too overwhelmed to know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. There is a deep ache in my heart, I can’t hide it, my co-workers and friends know something is up, but we’ve been pretty quiet about it. We can be philosophical and rationalize why this is better, logically I know that’s true, emotionally however I’m still not over all this.
I do think I will feel better once we get more packed and have a better idea of where we will land, the timing of this was the worst. This week everyone is out with their family, and we are falling apart, just when we need re-assurance.
There are prospects, a house in the city on a large lot looking for long term tenants (that’s us). A couple a little farther out that look very nice, we talked to one today who was so weird we just walked away. The last thing I need is a twitchy landlord to deal with, we want something cheap, that we can stay in for a couple of years, and close to work (well, closer).
I’m sure this will all get better, that the sun will finally come out, but getting there is going to be tough. I wish someone would send the clowns, we need a good laugh and smile, something cheer our hearts and let us smile from the inside out.
-Paul-
Packing Begins
I spent most of yesterday packing up my desk, because even if we can keep the house, I’ll be moving it to a new office upstairs. I also jettisoned all the stuff I had collected and don’t need anymore, today I’ve been setting up iTunes Match to get all my content out onto the cloud, synching up all my browsers with the main machine and getting ready to box up my Mac Pro, and move to my Retina until either I move into my new office, or we find a new home. We have found some interesting prospects, like I said before the market is flooded right now, so we can be picky and get something that will meet our needs.
We have decided that for the shop, we are going to order pallets and shipping crates for the stuff that’s hard to transport. Most things have wheels so I can move them around easily, so we are going to start cleaning each tool. Get it all up to spec, and then either stick it on a pallet and shrink it, or just shrink it for storage. Then we will get one of the Pods delivered and move the whole shop into one of those. It should just barely fit, minus the workbench which is OK, I’ve had it for about 12 years and it’s time to build a new, much better one.
We went bowling last night with some close friends, and that was a wonderful experience. It felt good to get out of the house, and do something fun with people who we love and trust. We are determined to not let this beat us down, it’s important that make the best of this. We have until March, that’s a good deal of time, the office packed up pretty quickly, and because I’m a computer nerd, I found a program to inventory and make box labels. That makes moving so much easier when you can organize and have a place for everything.
As soon as iTunes finishes I’ll be taking this computer offline, and packing the last of my office up for a while.
We also had a long talk about the Orthodox faith, we are heading back. I’m reaching out to the Father this week and see if he has some time to sit and go over our concerns in a more intimate setting. At this point we need a church family, we realize that clearly, and so this is the first step to heading in that direction.
-Paul-
Dealing with the unknown…
Hostess just went belly up, and 18,000 people just got unemployed, Happy Holidays!. Granted they did let union thugs represent them, and hopefully they all learned an important lesson about why unions are such a bad idea anymore. The Whitehouse and certain members of congress are pushing for adding new taxes onto those they deem rich, they will brook no compromise, the greedy must pay their fair share, so the have nots, can have. Republicans have been on a continual decline since the early nineties, and at times, I can’t tell them apart from the democrats. I don’t trust any media news source, they all lie, spin and obfuscate the truth. And in many cases their bias is so obvious that it almost becomes comical, if it wasn’t so damn dangerous.
Around the World, hate, violence and mayhem are the order of the day, Israel is being bombed, our embassies are under attack and there seems to be nowhere to run or hide.
We live in troubled times, it’s always been this way, history makes that perfectly clear. There have been periods of peace and prosperity, but they never last. I have no doubt we will get through this administrations idiotic ideas, and another election will bring more unworthy idiots running for office. Two years from now people will elect more slimy, two faced politicians, who lie, cheat and steal and not think twice about it.
My hope is gone, it’s been under fire for a long time. But now with our home pushed into the unknown, what little was left has vanished. I don’t trust the churches, religion, government, and people in general. I honestly feel like I’m trapped on a sinking island I can’t get off of.
I know all the cliche’s about turning to God, and giving it up (whatever that meant), and there are people who are praying for us, which touches the little part of my heart that is left, but will amount to nothing. I can’t have faith, because I have no hope, and without either, I don’t see the point. If God is there, I don’t see him, and he certainly hasn’t let me in on what’s happening.
I think the two things that hurt the most is having to give away the clownfish that we raised, and have cared for. And being back under someone else’s whims in a rental situation. Well and having to pack up the shop, which will be a HUGE effort.
I confided in a friend today, it helped a little. But when I get home, I have to face the prospect of losing our home again in all it’s stark reality. It’s a big deal because it was my stable place, I could hide from the world, and I could let my creativity flow.
Writing seems to help, it’s cathartic in it’s own way. But ultimately, I have to get packing and deal with the loss, deal with the time and effort I put into fixing this place up. There’s nothing else I can do.
Monday we start the journey to work with a loan agent, to see if he can help, but since I have no hope, I don’t see a good outcome. I see us packing up, and compressing in and being unsettled for the foreseeable future. If that’s God’s plan, then he can take it, I’m not ready for it.
-Paul-
And out to the frying pan
We talked with our financial adviser this morning, while he thinks we could obtain a loan and keep the current house, his advice was something we didn’t want to consider. Our best option in his opinion, is to move out, find a new place to rent for a time, and let the mess that is our economy under Obama settle.
We have poured our hearts into this house, but as much as it pains me to the core of my very soul, I know he’s right.
There is time to actually pack correctly, get things in order (the shop will require special effort to box up), and find a new place to settle in. The kids are almost out, the last one heads off to college next year, so we can trim WAY down. Let go of all the stuff we have been holding, and do a reset on our lives.
The other very concerning problem is with Obama Care coming next year, companies are going to be hard pressed to meet it’s demands. There are already layoffs taking place nation wide, major employers are skirting the law by reducing working hours and some are just closing shop. It’s going to be a tough four years, and I’ve lost any hope that anyone in Washington will actually do anything about it.
So the packing begins, and the search for a new place is on.
I’m numb from all this, I know it will work out in the end, but right now it’s hard to see anything but losing our home.
-Paul-
Into the fire…
We just learned that we are losing our house, unless we can come up with a way to pay it off quickly, we will be out. This is not a bank issue, but something that we had worked out with our lender, we thought everything was fine, and then tonight we got the bomb dropped on us. I’m angry, hurt and not sure where to turn anymore. Michelle didn’t want to convert to the Orthodox church, I can’t go back to the Catholic church, so right now we are adrift and dealing with this issue. We do have until next year, but that’s still not much time to do everything we need, when we’ve been here for 7 years.
The looming tax burden that liberals are going to rain on the working class are the impetus for this event, the lender can’t afford them any longer, especially when they are going up steadily, and taking a big jump next year.
I hate starting over, and I thought we had finally settled for good, but it wasn’t to be.
My faith is shaken, any trust I had in mankind is long gone, and now I’m fully adrift without any tethers. I have no idea where I will end up, it’s all so raw right now I’m not sure I can’t think clearly about it.
So much to do now, and so little time.
Merry Early Christmas to Us.
I’ll blog the journey, because it’s cathartic and helps me sort through feelings and thoughts.
It’s gonna be a bumpy ride kids.
-Paul-
What happens when you cross a saw blade, hot weather, a long day at work, and a stair case that needs finishing…
Thursday evening around 7pm. I was cutting some trim wood for a new staircase, it was hot outside and it had been a long day. I’m always terrified by small pieces when cutting, so I had all my jigs out, feather boards, blade down low. But I reached over to stabilize the piece and on the way back three fingers got torn up, I didn’t lose any digits thank God. But it happened so fast, I hardly knew what to do. As it so happened Michelle was driving up just as it happened, I grabbed my hand, blood spilling out all over the place and she knew just looking at me that it was bad. I held a rag to my fingers as long as I could before looking, the pads of fingers two and three where all torn up, and number four had a slice taken out. No bones touched, just mangled flesh.
I was so angry that I actually marched back out to the shop and finished cutting the piece with a towel wrapped around my hand! Once that was done I allowed my family to talk me into a visit to the local ER, not much they could do other than a tetanus shot and some creative bandages wrapped around my finger. By the time I hit the ER, the pain was in full force. So I got pain pills as well, and sympathy from the nurses which always helps.
That was three weeks ago, as you can imagine typing is not fun right now, in fact I work at a keyboard, so I only did half a a day at the office on my first day back, and my productivity disappeared. This is my first chance to actually do some typing without bandages, and I’m already starting to get sore. There has been a lot going on, but I can’t type for very long and after a long day of coding, the last thing I want to do is come home and hurt my fingers more.
I have been reading the Church in History series started by John Meyendorf, I’ve gone from 33AD all the way to the 600’s, and I have immensely enjoyed the series, the thing I like best about the books is that they are written from a scholars point of view. Meyendorf is Eastern Orthodox, but he doesn’t play favorites, he tells it like he sees it and gives credit where it is due. I’ve learned a great deal about the early church and it’s cemented many of the reasons I finally started moving to the Orthodox faith. I’ll post more when my fingers are up to the task.
Speaking of the EO, we are still in a tentative wait and see mode, the service is so….foreign. I don’t know any other way to put it, there was structure in the Catholic Mass, and I understood how and why it was put together. But the Great Liturgy is so different and changing, I’m still not comfortable. What I wouldn’t give for some simple guides, but they seem hard to find. So I spend a lot of time listening and trying to learn what is being said. It’s not that the church is unsupportive, it’s just so radically different that it’s a struggle for me to come to grips with it, I miss the structure and simplicity of the ordinary form Mass.
I’ll post more as I continue to heal, today was the first day without bandages and by the end of the day one finger had started to bleed, so it’s back to bandages for a little while longer.
Peace
-Paul-
SMOKIN!!!
I got the following text on my way home from work Friday:
compressor has gone bad…leaking and rusted out. working on getting a price to replace it
I thought; well, there goes another couple of hundred bucks on the A/C..
Boy was I wrong!!!
It turns out that not only is the compressor bad, but the unit belongs in a museum. I don’t keep up HVAC technology, so we had no idea. So the WHOLE ENCHILADA has to be replaced, and let me tell you first hand, they aint cheap!
When I got home I was handed a price tag of $3500 dollars for a new compressor. After the convulsions stopped, we started to talk about how we would pay for something so expensive. We aren’t rich, and we really didn’t want to deplete what little savings we had, so I robbed a little from my 401K. I’m not sure what else we could have done, we can’t survive the summer without A/C, we may be wimps, but we are damned comfortable ones!
I’m sitting at home right now, all the windows are closed, it’s 80 degrees outside, the blinds are drawn, and $150 worth of fans are causing a small hurricane in my home. There is nothing more soothing, than the sound of 15 fans all blowing at top speed, I’m considering teaching the cats to wind surf, at least make it entertaining. And of course all of this happened, the minute my middle child moved out, and we started the renovate. There’s no stair rail, no carpeting (I’m installing wood floors), the refrigerator stopped making ice, and now the A/C is out. It’s a grand existence, let me tell you.
And the really, really fun part, is we have 7 fish tanks, all with clownfish and various other breeds, some that we have raised ourselves. Fish tanks, especially the Saltwater kind, don’t like to get hot. Bad things happen when they get hot, so not only have we been trying to keep the house cool, we have been caring for the tanks to keep them cool as well.
We told the kids NOT to cook, leave the oven off until the check gets here and we can get the unit replaced, if you cook, you will heat up the house. When we left last night, it was actually cool, we got home and it was a nice cool evening. But the house was still buttoned up tight, and our youngest decided she would cook! So walking into the house was like a sauna, it was so frustrating. So we opened it all back up and prayed for a cool evening breeze…
I wonder if the neighbors can hear me snore from the backyard?
Cheers
-Paul-
A Requiem For A Friend
A long time ago, in a place far away, we met some very special people. We shared a love for computers, and all things geek, we never feared being different. We embraced it, and it made us all stronger. It was in that period of our lives that we met Tami, she was dating a co-worker at the time and she quickly became our friend. I can remember sitting over at their house late a night talking about AOL, and the online world and where it was headed. Tami, Michelle, and our good friend Debbie became a trio. To this day I cannot think of anyone who had more fun, got into more trouble, or caused as much angst as those three. What I remember the most is the laughter, over just about everything.
During a time of crisis at my employer, our friendship was directly challenged by management. Michelle in her gentle and kind way, basically stated that they were not just out of line, but had made a grave mistake if they thought they had ANY say in who chose as friends. I’ll never forget the stunned faces, or the sudden shock at being so strongly challenged. Job or not, Tami was our friend, and being falsely accused of things she had no part in. We defended her honor, and they never again challenged us.
On that day our friendship was cemented, she became part of our lives. There are so many moments I remember from those times.
The day Tami showed up in full motorcycle drag, all wrapped in black leather with a black helmet and shaded face shield. She knocked on the door, I opened it and closed it back in her face, being not sure who the hell was at my door!. She knocked again and I opened, by then I had figured it out, and greeted her with a line from star wars. She was thereafter always known as ‘Darth’…
I remember her little postage stamp apartment in Oildale, and the day we spent helping her clean it up, it was disgusting. But we loved her so much we wanted to make sure that she got a chance to live the life she wanted. We felt honored to be able to help someone we cared about so much, we even got her to go to church (though she was sure the place would burn down once she got inside!).
She was there to hold Karan as a small child while Michelle was sick, she ate dinner with us, played with the kids, and ingrained herself into our lives.
Michelle hired her as an assistant in her Dad’s office, I’ll never forget Michelle’s Dad finding her sleeping at her desk!! She was a mess for sure, but to know her was to love her.
When life moved her to Texas and us to Idaho, I was still able to make her laugh from a distance. And I loved nothing more than poking fun at her, every chance I got.
On April 29th of 2012, she was traveling with her boyfriend from Austin, Texas heading to Pennsylvania to see her parents, she had not been feeling well for a few days. She made it home, but not alive. She passed away while riding in the truck.
Michelle and I have an empty place in our hearts now, we never expected someone so full of life and trouble to go at such a young age. During mass this morning Michelle wept, and neither of us could talk to the Father without tearing up. At 10:30 mass today, they said a prayer for her. We lit a candle in her honor and prayed that God would show his overwhelming mercy and grace on someone who struggled to find her place in this world, something that the ancient generations of Christians did as well. If our Father in heaven is anything like what I read scripture, then he will show mercy for her soul, and Michelle and I will meet her again.
We miss her so much, we loved her dearly, and we pray that her family has the strength to get through this.
Tami, Darth, The Dark One, who graced our lives, made us laugh, made us cry, drove us crazy, and became part of our family.
We love you, me miss you, we will see you again.
-Paul-
Attack of the helpful Zombies
It’s beginning to look like spring in Idaho, and that can only mean one thing…
Spring Projects!
Michelle and I did an early Mass, then stopped at iHop to have some breakfast. This has become our normal Sunday routine, the kids normally sleep in so we take advantage and spend some quality time together, and forcing a teenager to attend Mass when she’s not sure about this whole Catholic thing is NOT a good idea.
Anyway, so we collected up our youngest and headed out to Lowes (she needs the driving experience, and I enjoy the thrill of blood curdling terror when she’s behind the wheel), now let me get this out of the way: I like going to Lowes. They have great stuff for fixing up your house, and more items than any normal human can possibly need. But as we entered the door we where greeted by a friendly employee wanting to offer assistance in our shopping needs. I build guitars, have a fully stocked woodeworking shop, and I’m pretty handy in a pinch. So you can imagine that I don’t need any stinking help, I am a man, and I can find my way around just fine, thank you very much.
So we declined, and where promptly greeted by two more helpful employees. We again declined, and moved on to the first item on our list, only to run again into another helpful employee, another offer declined. By this time my hands where full, so we headed to the front of the store to get a cart, and again had another offer for help. it was at this point we started picking isles that looked to be free of overly helpful employees, especially the ones who seemed to be tracking our every move, which was a bad strategy. Somehow, they can sense a customers presence and show up to make sure that you are finding what you are looking for. We did discover that even if consumed with lost and helpless people, they still somehow where able to call other helpful employees to come and be more helpful. I started having visions of being surrounded by helpful staff members and us beating them off with a set of venetian blinds, and cleaner fluid from isle 12 (its down on the left side, near the bottom).
No strategy seemed to be effective, outnumbered, unable to find clear isles to shop, we obtained what items we could and headed to Home Depot (like idiots) to pick up the supplies that Lowes didn’t have (I’m very picky about sandpaper, and ONLY use a certain kind. Hey I build guitars, I earned the right be picky!). Imagine my horror when we appeared at the front door going into Home Depot and where greeted by an employee who’s only job seemed to be to help lost customers find there way through 299 acres of home improvement goodness!, I almost bolted back to the truck. But once past the gatekeeper, with a firm decline to the help offered. We got through fairly unscathed, with only a few offers for help from the hordes in orange. We purchased our items and headed home to barricade the doors and hope that no more helpful zombies followed us home.
A couple of years ago, I was building a jig for the shop and stopped at the local Ace Hardware. They apparently had adopted a similar strategy of aggressive helpfulness, to the point that while looking at parts we had an employee actually stand a short distance away and watch our every move. If we moved isles, he moved with us, it must be what inmates feel like when being watched by the guards, it was so disconcerting that I stopped going altogether, and wasn’t one bit surprised when the store closed a year later. You can’t freak out your customers, being helpful is a good thing, but if you want to stay in business don’t chase them out the door with zombies who’s only goal in life is to help people.
One has to wonder what these people do in their off-time, do they drive around looking for little old lady’s crossing the street?, do their neighbors hide in their homes until they go to work? It all seems a little creepy and disconcerting to be honest. And the scariest part is that I have to go back, because I need lumber. I know I’m going to be swarmed, but there aren’t many other options. I don’t want to be rude, I just want to shop in piece, especially when I’m part shopping. Maybe I’ll forgo bathing for a week and then go shopping!!!
As the economy continues to go under, it seems that marketing people are getting desperate and that being super helpful is the new thing for large companies. So if your one of those people who make those decisions, go into your stores and just try to buy something when you know what you need. I dare you, I dare you to walk away without feeling like the store is filled with a bunch of bored employees who’s only goal in life is to make customers uncomfortable. Then tell if you think your strategy is still working!!
-Paul-
And in this corner
I’ve been thinking about writing this piece for a while, but I’ve also been reluctant to let it all out. But given the current political climate in the nation, the state of the church and the fact that it’s an election year, I might as well step into the fray.
Let’s start with the Obama administration, I have never seen more idealistic, deaf and frankly out of touch administration than this one. The Constitution seems to have no meaning, they will do anything to push their socialist agenda. So why anyone is surprised that they have used the HHS to push their contraceptive mandates on to church run organizations, is beyond me. All the signs were there during the election, all one had to do was do a little digging, and yet people voted with their emotions rather than their mind. The part that angers me the most is Catholics who voted for Obama, in my opinion they got what they deserved. We attended a meeting on Catholic ethics at our parish, and got a lecture from a bunch of old anti-war hippies about their anti war stances. These are the same people who still have Obama stickers on their cars, I simply can’t understand how you could still support someone whose goal is to restrict your religious freedoms, and still go to Mass.
But the Catholic church that exists in the United States is a shell of what it once was, we have been overtaken with the current psychology of the modern age, and are more concerned about not offending our laity than we are with the truth. We don’t even teach real orthodoxy any more, its all a mixture of light theology and emotionalism. As I’ve stated before, I’ve learned more about the Catholic faith from Orthodox writers than I have more Catholic ones. I’ve been reading the council of Trent, and found it interesting that there is a section devoted to Catechesis and it’s administration. Why are we not following that today?, why are we not back to the Sunday School model and taking the time to make sure the laity are instructed in the elements of our faith? Instead of praise bands, and coffee hours, let’s push instruction and education. We should not be afraid to teach people the basics of philosophy and apologetics, how else are we going to reach the world unless we have laity who are confident and KNOWLEDGEABLE about their faith?
I may disagree with certain points of Catholic Orthodoxy, but I love the Catholic church. It has brought stability to my faith and my life, but because I love it, I can see the faults and want to make it better. However I never became Catholic with the idea that I would mindlessly agree with every point the church teaches, I know there are some who would admonish me for that. But God gave me a mind for a reason, and when I see something I can’t agree with, I’m not going to lie to say otherwise, to do so would be to lose any self respect I have. I can’t stomach believers who become robots, echoing back everything the church teaches them without thought.
We are in the process of dumbing down the population of this country, I don’t know how to put it any other way, or even be polite about it anymore. I work for a utility, on any given week I am submitted to the most mind numbing, paradoxical thinking I’ve ever seen in my life. Everything is spoon fed to the workforce, the company spends an enormous amount of resources selling their agenda to their own employees. After a while people just go numb, you can’t win, you can’t argue, so you just have to suffer through it. And they wonder why people are apathetic, maybe it’s because instead of treating them like the professionals they are, you treat them all as if they are the lowest common denominator. A case in point is that we as employees had to sit through a week long class on performance in our culture, for me the experience bordered on a new age religion, we where bombarded with pop psychology, told to take the material home and have our family’s evaluate us ( request I refused and ultimately won, but only after getting the ‘it changed my life’ lecture from the instructor). We got the special privilege to hear managers tell us how this program changed their lives, their marriages and their family’s. It was so much like a religion that one gentlemen extolled the virtues by reciting the Evangelical mantra of reading your book everyday and practicing what it taught, it was honestly the same EXACT speech I heard for years in the baptist faith. The difference was this was a company mandated program. The ultimate goal was to make people accountable, but when it came time to do yearly goals, instead of practicing the very system they spent millions on. They spoon fed it the workforce, and wasted time making sure everyone was ‘aligned’. The irony is that had the program worked, simply stating what the goals where and that you are expected to meet them this year, would have been enough. Which is how it used to be done.
The next day two friends and I walked to a new restaurant to get lunch, they had a greeter who’s job as far as I can tell, was to tell us how get in line to order the food. It made me sad that something like that was even needed, the place had good food and a great layout. But if I need someone to show me the obvious then, I shouldn’t be out wondering on my own. I despise restaurants that feel the need to ‘educate’ diners on how their menu works, listen… If your menu is so complicated that I can’t just order the food I want, then I’m going to go eat somewhere else. I don’t need a speech on how to order my frigging food, you have a menu, I order what looks good. What’s so difficult about that? Am I missing something?, are people really that clueless? I may not want to know the answer to that anymore…
So about this election, let me go out on a limb here and say that I would like to see a good old fashion AGNOSTIC run for president for once. I’m sick and tired of being subjected to the candidates weird religious beliefs and statements. Romney’s a mormon, which has it’s own set of special issues (though I’m told by mormon friends, that he’s a jack mormon at that). The others are all various faiths, but when we get into areas of faith and politics people just say and do stupid things. The media love to find those little tidbits and make mountains out of them, and when you have people like Santorum’s wife commenting that his winning is ordained by God, I just want to go hide somewhere. I’m not actually enthused about any of the current crop, I don’t know where the real conservatives have gone, but boy do I miss them. This whole faith and politics things is such a mess anyway, I argued with a baptist minister one time about single issue voters. He stated that he would never, based on principle vote for someone who supported abortion. I told him that you where never going to find someone to agree with every single thing you believe, these are men, you take the good with the bad. I don’t support abortion, but in reality the President can only effect the issue by creating an activist supreme court. Roe vs Wade, I don’t think, could stand up to a good honest analysis at that level. So I would in fact vote for someone who is soft on the issue, as long as they elect constitutional judges, and not activists to the bench. You can’t think single issue with politics, it’s never that simple. Given the current crop of clowns, I don’t see this country turning around for a long time.
Apple released new products this week, the new iPad is cool and all. But honestly there’s nothing there that would cause me to leave my current iPad2 and upgrade. They really needed something more than just the retina display, I’m wondering if they are still floundering from the loss of Steve Jobs?. I sure hope they can recover. I love my Apple T.V. and MIGHT buy a new one for 1080p, but until the movie industry pulls their heads out of their hind ends and realizes that we now live in a digital content age, I’m reticent to support any format. Everything’s so fragmented, Hulu only shows certain shows on the computer, but not a console. Apple won’t support Hulu, and half the studio’s won’t even release shows to a digital format. I would PAY to see Lost Girl on iTunes, but for some unknown reason SyFy has refused to do so. I don’t get it. Then they go after the internet, using the guise of stopping piracy. Piracy’s not the issue, the industry is filled with dinosaurs who at every technological turn have resisted change, and then once forced have benefited financially from that change. Instead they keep pushing systems where they can control their content and greedily charge you for every viewing, remember DivX, well now they have ultraviolet, which is worse in many ways. I predict that what is going to happen, is the same thing that happened with CD’s, the industry is going to dig in and the rest of the world will simply start producing media through digital outlets, leaving the traditional industry in the dust.
John Piper, the voice of the reformed mindset, and all around narsisistic know it all. Has once again attempted Theodicy regarding the Tornado’s in the midwest. For those who don’t know Theodicy is the attempt to explain how evil can exist with an Omniscient and all loving creator. As usual Pat Robertson opened his big mouth and blathered about it as well, it’s not enough that we live in a fallen world where bad things happen. But these self appointed morons run out and do their best to make the rest of us look like a bunch of nut cases. In Pipers case, his reformed theology means that God is in control of EVERYTHING (this is known as a determinism) and free will is an illusion. So he has to justify the tornadoes, you can read his latest blather here: Fierce Tornadoes and the Fingers of God I don’t understand why it’s not enough that people lost their lives, their homes, and entire towns where wiped from the face of the earth, on top of that you have to tell that God did it. Here’s an idea, maybe the WEATHER caused the Tornado and because people live in a area PRONE to tornadoes, they had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bad things happen, if we are to represent the love of God then we should mobilize support, physical and moral to help those in need. Not blather on about some theological point that no one cares about.
It looks like spring is early this year, we ventured out twice this weekend to go to the driving range, I’m still as bad as ever. Some things never change, but I still enjoy playing Golf, so the love hate relationship will continue unabated. I’m hoping it says nice, and that spring comes early so I can get out more often, it’s been a dismal winter for some reason and I’m ready for some warmth and outdoor activities.
Time to go play… I feel better now 
Peace
-Paul-
