Blogolalia

Monday, February 28, 2005

Jared suckered me into this meme by posting a response to one of his interview questions that sparked a response from me in the comments. Since the interviewee is then tasked to interview five people to keep this thing going, I am one of the lucky ones. So here ya go:

1. What is your favorite thing about your job?

That’s hard to answer with just one thing. I like saying for whom I work when asked. It’s kinda cool to work for the US Marshals, although it really is not like The Fugutive at all. Or Karen Sisco, for that matter.

2. If you could have one superpower, what would it be and why?

Funny question. Super strength, I guess. I’m kind of a physical weakling.

3. What is your fondest childhood memory?

Hmmm…I have a lot of specific childhood memories and they’re all pretty good. *thinking* I think I’ll have to say our England years. I’m thankful that my grandfather took a lot of home movies when they visited us and my parents took a lot of photos. I’m also thankful that we were in the British public school rather than the school for American kids. I think my memories of that time are sharper because of those things than they would be otherwise since I was only 6-8 years old at the time.

4. What is your favorite Bible verse?

Ephesians 3:14-21 - For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

5. If they made a movie of your life, who should play you?

At random times I’ve been told I look like a combination of Glenn Close and Jennifer Grey (pre-nose job). I don’t know. Both are pretty good actresses that I think could play me pretty well. Then again, I’m a lot like Monica Geller Bing personality-wise.

So, I need to perpetuate this meme. As Jared did, I’ll take the first 5 commenters to interview.

Friday, February 25, 2005

From Robbo Llama Butcher:

Turning to other things, another sure sign of Spring in Dee Cee is the return of the Out-of-Town High Schoolers (Adolescens vulgaris). They start turning up in great field-tripping hordes, jamming the Metro and jangling the nerves of ordinary commuters with their incessant squeels and bellows of “Ohmigod, we’re going underground!” and “How many more stops to the Smithsonian?” and perhaps worst of all, mimicking the automated voice that says, “Doors closing - please stand clear of the doors, thank you.” (Note to anyone planning to come to Dee Cee for a visit: DO NOT DO THIS!)

Bing. Bong.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

There are only a few bloggers who actually make me laugh out loud. Fluid Pudding is one of them, but she’s not for the faint of heart. She’s blunt, uses harsh language, and is hilarious. And she knits.

Thanks for the chuckle, FP. The sweater/hat are adorable.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

My parents and I found our new church through their website. We thought it looked good and conveyed the information we sought.

Thinkling

Shrode

Rob T. asked for samples of good church websites because his church is ready to update their site. I posted the link to my church and just went back to the comment thread to find that someone had recommended the Heal Your Church Website blog. I’ve been meaning to check that out for a while, but never got around to it. But I clicked over today.

Scrolling down a bit, I found this post about McLean Bible Church’s website. The opener made me laugh out loud (it’s a great parody of the real thing). Go take a look, I’ll wait.

MBC is a rather respected church in the local area and it’s seen some remarkable growth in the last 10 years. I jokingly call it Willow East because they have close ties to Willow Creek in Chicago. But I attended church for a short time at MBC back when they had moved into their last “new” building in McLean. Their pastor is the real deal and has a heart for reaching this area with the Gospel. And I have friends who are members. For a while I considered going back when I left my old church, but I wasn’t really interested in a mega-church and the Lord led me to FCC instead.

I have to agree with MeanDean of HYCW that it’s not necessarily seeker-friendly to imply that users are lame because they don’t have Flash installed or pretty much demand that the user install it even though if they scroll down a tad they’ll see the content they were hunting down anyway.

bold the states you’ve been to, underline the states you’ve lived in and italicize the state you’re in now…

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

Courtesy: Jon

Sometime in the early morning, my stats counter rolled over 100,000 visitors. I have no clue whom it was, but I wanted to take the time to thank my loyal regular readers. Somehow, two and a half years ago, I never imagined that I’d still be blogging this long and that I would have made so many good, blog-friends. Thanks to those who’ve provided invaluable technical support - you know who you are - I greatly appreciate your aid. Thanks, also, to the folks who comment (and often!). I value your feedback, whether you’ve agreed with me or not.  Thanks for the challenges, encouragement, laughter, and fun.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

PSA: Thinklings.org is working again.

Monday, February 21, 2005

As a favor to my blog buddies, I thought I’d pass on that The Thinklings crew are having some technical difficulties. They have the blog on .org and .com and for now the .com link works. So until further notice, click The Thinklings for the main blog and click Mysterium Tremendum for Jared’s blog.

I’ll update again when they have the .org blog working again.

In the meantime, Bill/Jared - I’m impressed with pMachine’s hosting service so far. Tech support is very responsive, the price is reasonable, and they speak blog.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Because I promised Bryan:

WHAT IS YOUR MIDDLE NAME?
Elizabeth

WHAT COLOR PANTS ARE YOU WEARING?
Sand colored khakis

WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
Sean Hannity

DEAD OR ALIVE, NAME THREE PEOPLE YOU WOULD LOVE TO MEET.
Presidents Bush (yes, both of them and I will count them as one)
Peter, the disciple of Jesus (he’s the most knuckleheaded of the lot and I relate to that)
Laura Ingraham (she cracks me up)

WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
An orange

IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
Burnt sienna

HOW IS THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW?
Partly cloudy and chilly

LAST PERSON YOU TALKED WITH ON THE PHONE?
A guy from our HQ

THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX?
His frame/size

SHOES YOU LOVE TO WEAR.
Birkenstocks

HOW ARE YOU TODAY?
About 85% on the wellness scale, but cheerful

FAVORITE DRINK?
Vanilla Diet Coke or sweetened iced tea

FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK?
Corona

FAVORITE SPORTS?
Professional baseball and football

HAIR COLOR?
Natural color is probably a dark blonde/light brown. I am a chemical blonde.

EYE COLOR?
green

DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
Not anymore. I stick with the glasses these days.

TYPE OF VEHICLE YOU DRIVE.
Toyota Corolla

TOP FIVE FAVORITE FOOD?
Mexican
All seafood
Italian
Chinese
Indian

LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Manchurian Candidate (2004)

TOP THREE PET PEEVES.
Mental laziness or lack of common sense
When people don’t use their turn signals
The phone

ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT?
Absolutely and I wouldn’t anyway. I’m traditional enough that I expect the guy to ask me out.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS BETTER?
Both, either, depending on the situation.

WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, FALL?
I prefer the cooler seasons - winter and fall. But I do love the fresh blooming flowers and trees of spring.

HUGS OR KISSES?
Yes. Depends on the person and the circumstance.

RELATIONSHIPS OR ONE NIGHT STANDS?
One night stands are stupid, not to mention immoral. Yes, I’m making a judgment statement.

CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA?
Depends on the vehicle - candy? chocolate. Ice cream? Vanilla.

THREE ANIMALS YOU WANT TO OWN.
I’d love to have a pure-bred dachshund that I would name Oscar
Or a cat that I would name Mr. Kitty
Maybe a Norfolk Terrier that I would name Sparky

NAME FOUR PLACES YOU HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO VISIT.
Ireland
Australia/New Zealand
Alaska
Canadian Rockies

FIRST CONCERT YOU EVER WENT TO?
I have no clue, but it was probably a Christian artist.

LIVING ARRANGEMENTS?
1 single family dwelling, 2 adults, one child, 2 dogs, one cat, 2 birds, one hamster.

WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING?
The Bible and In His Image (Book 1 of the Christ Clone Trilogy) by James BeauSeigneur.

WHAT IS ON YOUR SCREEN SAVER AT HOME?
The meadow graphic from the top of my blog without the text. This is my wallpaper. My screensaver is from TWoP - the Amazing Race Tubey version.

FAVORITE CARTOON?
Looney Toons or Superfriends.

FAVORITE SMELLS.
Pumpkin pie, vanilla, popcorn, men

SMELLS YOU HATE.
Body odor, vomit, poop, and the desperation of a liberal argument. (I stole Bryan’s answer.)

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING?
What day is it?

FAVORITE THING YOU LIKE ABOUT THE SINGLE LIFE.
I can do what I want when I want

HOW DO YOU EAT AN OREO?
Eat one side of the shell first, then lick the white center, then eat the other half of the shell.

WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG?  By blog, I assume the writer meant post. No telling since lots of people pick random memes and run with them. If you’re one, let me know in the comments or with a trackback.

There ya go.

LATER: I forgot the 3rd person I want to meet and punted the screensaver questions because I was summoned to a meeting. I hit submit before I was actually ready to submit. The corrections have been added in italics above.

I saw this meme at Tony’s yesterday, but resisted the temptation to do it myself. Then this morning, I found that Craig called me out! So, Craig, here ya go.

What’s your favorite kind of cookie? Too many to narrow it down to one. Chocolate Chip, Samoas, ginger snaps/‘Nilla wafers. My mother’s oatmeal cookies.

Who is America’s most overrated actor?  I have two legends that I’m a bit “meh” about - Robert DeNiro or Al Pacino.

Name a guilty pleasure.  I’ve mentioned this before - Bill & Gloria Gaither’s Homecoming stuff.

“Scrubs” or “Everybody Loves Raymond”?  Is death an option? I don’t watch either regularly, but I’ve seen enough of both to have to select Scrubs. It’s snarkier, sharper, wittier.

Name two things you can’t live without.  Craig had the obvious answers of “Oxygen and water. Seriously.” My answer can’t top that, but I’ll say my faith and my family. *everybody say, AW!*

Your first pet’s name + your mother’s maiden name = your porn star name. I believe our first pet was Pretzel and my mother’s maiden name is Getchell - Pretzel Getchell. And that is hi-lar-i-ous!

What song are you listening to right now?  I’m not listening to music at the moment - I’m listening to Laura Ingraham’s talk radio show.

Name your celebrity crush.  Regular readers know that I’ve got a thing for Hugh Jackman.

Favorite punchline from a joke.  I know no jokes. Seriously. I am humorless. :grin:

Who do you want to pass this meme off to? Jared, for sure - he always bites the meme apple. I’ll also add Eric, Bryan, and Jaynee.

OK, tigers, go get ‘em.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

I just noticed that I’m edging up to 100,000 visitors on the stats counter. Of course, this is a very fluid number that dates back from my old blog*spot blog to the last domain blog to this one. So there’s no telling what the true stats are at this point.

It’s not that I care overly much about how many people visit - it’s the quality of the people that I care about. However, it’s a nice, round, large number and it’ll be nice to get over that hurdle.

And now I’m going home to confirm the fever I’m pretty sure I have (ECD was trying to convince me that I was running an elevated temp in the car this morning - I pooh-poohed her) and hit the hay for a few hours of blessed rest.

Monday, February 14, 2005

From Eric:

It’s said that the best way to find out what’s important to someone is to look in his or her checkbook register (although an updated variation would refer to credit card receipts).

While I’m not nosy enough to ask about your check register (well, I am that nosy, but I also know that you wouldn’t tell me), I would propose that another way to learn about someone else is by a review of his or her browser bookmarks. And in pursuit of such knowledge I hereby propose this simple meme:

  1. Open the bookmarks list in your favorite web browser and note the bottommost entry (which may or may not be the last one you added), even if it’s inside a folder. Copy the bookmark title, along with the URL, into a post or comment.

  2. Count up your list from there, and select every fourth bookmark, until you’ve picked another four. Add them to your post or comment.

  3. Publish the list of five bookmarks and wait for the world to marvel at your eclectic and sophisticated interests!

My bookmarks are listed in folders, so I used the first folder listed - blog stuff. My answers:

1. All Consuming - Book lover’s portal.

2. Tickie’s Web Page Themes - Lilacs Theme - from when I was researching skins for this site or my mother’s webpage.

3. Sitemeter - from when I used them for my stats.

4. The link to my webhost email control panel. You don’t need that.

5. Junk Science - a page that debunks junk science in the news.

Ok, it’s your turn.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Robert the Llama Butcher shares a tale of rebellion in the classroom from his high school days. It’s rather amusing, although the reason for his rebellion is not so amusing. His commenters share equally rebellious and witty anecdotes (myself excluded) - it’s sad that these people were not the norm in our public schools.

My favorite part of Robert’s story:

I, on the other hand, absolutely refused the assignment. It was, I believe, the only time in my entire academic career that I did so. When my turn came to give my presentation, I calmly stood up and announced that I didn’t have one. When asked by the teacher why not, I launched into something of a rant about how idiotic the whole business was and how I thought the purpose of an English class - particularly an advanced one - was to hone reading and writing skills. I also used the opportunity to briefly give my opinion of Mr. Henry David Thoreau, who I thought (and still think) to be nothing more than what P.J. O’Rourke called him - a sanctimonious beatnik.

When I had finished explaining myself, the room was a sea of stunned bewilderment, as if I’d just cold-cocked Mother Theresa.

That’s just beautiful. Heh.

My moment of academic rebellion came in my freshman year of college. I was taking the requisite Religion 101 (Introduction to the Old Testament) class (I went to a Baptist college) and my professor was teaching heresy, imho. His liberal theology was astounding to me and I refused to give him the answers that he wanted on the exams. Instead I gave him the correct answers.

An example of what he was teaching is the account of the parting/crossing of the Red Sea. The Bible says it was the Red Sea that the Hebrews crossed when the waters parted and then when Pharoah’s army followed into the Sea, the waters came back together and the army was drowned. My professor taught that it wasn’t actually the Red Sea that the Hebrews crossed, but rather a small creek to the south. To me it takes a bigger faith to believe that Pharoah’s army drowned in a creek, but I believe in the miracles of God. He’s way bigger than our little minds can fathom. I was bothered that some theologians were trying to box God into man’s limitations.

At mid-term, I discussed with my parents the idea of withdrawing from the class because I had an academic scholarship and I was afraid that a failing grade would jeopardize that small bit of financial aid. To their credit, my parents were supportive of whatever decision I made regarding the class. I decided to stick it out and for my troubles I went into the final exam with a low D.

The professor knew what I was doing and called me into his office on the last day of class. “All you need to pass this class is a D on the exam. You know this stuff, just give me the right answers,” he encouraged. “I can’t do that, Dr. Heresy. You’re teaching wrong theology,” I replied. I failed the exam and the class. And I did end up losing the scholarship after the next semester.

Anyway, go read Robert’s post. You’ll get a good chuckle.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Hey, Dad, this one is for you. More backstory here.

Courtesy: Dean Esmay

As far as I can tell, the import of my stuff from the old blog was successful. Major kudos to the Solo-Jedis at Accidental Verbosity for the technical assistance with the comment spam clear out. Jay spent some time on Saturday basically doing the work for me and I am truly grateful.

I have to give kudos to pMachine Hosting as well. Julie spent many hours working with me yesterday to figure out why I wasn’t able to import the database file. Her last message to me was timed at 1am to say that she had loaded it and I was clear to import through EE.

The import took less than 5 minutes from that point. Amazing. Taking a quick look at a couple of the categories, it looks like that didn’t go very smoothly, but I’m not so worried about that. I just didn’t want to lose the posts altogether when my other hosting has expired.

Next major task - uploading all the photos/graphics so the posts are complete. Oy.