3D Weekend

If I don't forget to make entries in my calendar, I will end up either forgetting something important or double-book myself to two different events at the same time.  On thing that makes me smile each time I look at my upcoming appointments is a 3D entry.  3D stands for Daddy-Daughter Date.  This weekend I had two!

 

Friday afternoon I used a couple hours of annual leave so Sarah and I could attend Frontier City's Homeschool night.  Tickets had to be pre-purchased through the OCHEC organization.  Since it was designed for homeschooling families only (several public school friends were there as well), the lines at all of the rides were almost non-existent.  We were able to ride all the rides we wanted as many times as we wanted!  The first time we were on the Renegade Rapids, we barely got wet at all.  An hour or so later, we decided to ride it once more, so we would have time to dry off before we left for the evening.  The second ride was nothing like the first.  I think I am usually dryer when I get out of the shower than I was when I got of that raft the second time.  Normally I am not one to think ahead, but the ziploc bag in my pant's cargo pocket containing my billfold, keys and cell-phone was the best idea of the day, as they were the only dry items on me.  I even had to pour water out of my prosthetic foot!  Sarah and I stayed until closing time and then headed north to Stillwater.  (the evening wasn't even ruined when we had a right-rear blowout on I-35 in the middle of nowhere)

 

Fast forward to today. 
Sarah and Renee went to Tulsa University for a high school student visit day with a friend.  That left Hope and I to have a our own 3D.  After church we went home to change and then off to the Golden Dragon for lunch.  Since she normally rides in a booster seat in the rear seat of the car, we decided to move it to the front seat of our old Oldsmobile (she loves riding in the front seat ... she says it feels like she is flying).  After a great lunch of sweet-n-sour chicken for her and shrimp fried rice for me, we stopped in at Swick's Mini Glow Golf. Swick's is a pizza place in Stillwater that bought the shop next to it for a mini-golf game room.  It is a small 9 hole course, but all the course borders, golf balls and decorations are painted with neon paint that glows under black lights, the only lighting in the room.  To top off a great daddy-daughter date ... we had the place completely to ourselves!  Since it was unlimited-play Sunday, we got to play as long as we wanted.  Sarah had told Hope to wear white so she would glow.  Knowing this, Hope decided to wear her cute white dress.  I couldn't tell if she was glowing from the black lights or if it was from us having a great 3D!

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Floating helicopter, or....

... one filmed with the FPS (frames per second) of the video camera in perfect sync with the rotation of the blades?  You decide.

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When She Loved Me

Hope played "When She Loved Me", also known as "Jessie's Song" from the Toy Story 2 movie for her piano recital piece this year.  It's hard to tell from the video, but Hope was dresses up like a little cowgirl and had her own Jessie doll with her.

 

From Wikipedia.org:

When She Loved Me" - performed by Sarah McLachlan - used for the flashback montage in which Jessie experiences being loved, forgotten, and ultimately abandoned by her owner, Emily. This song was nominated at the Oscars in 2000 for Best Song.

 

Please excuse the low-quality recording, but this was from my camera phone:

 

              
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A Tale of Two Houses

House #1
A 20 room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year.
The average monthly bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern "snow belt" area. It's in the South.

 

House #2
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on an arid, high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

 

HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of the "environmentalist" Al Gore.

 

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. It is the residence the of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

 

Urban Legands Reference Pages: A Tale of Two Houses 

Claim: E-Mail compares Geoge W. Bush's eco-friendly ranch with Al Gore's energy-expending mansion.

Status: TRUE

http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp

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Microsoft Mobile oFone

Seeing as the Zune was such a hit, Microsoft decided to repeat the success and tackle the iPhone before it even gets out the gate; friends, I give you the Microsoft oFone. Not to be outdone by Apple's multi-touch keyless interface, the oFone features not one or two, but three keyboards that can all pivot about the small central screen. With multiple keypads, there is no need for wireless connectivity for gaming (see video). Need to bag some wild game for dinner? No worries, oFone can do that too, simply extend the three arms (like in the pic to the right) and it apparently makes a decent boomerang. I'm loving where they're going with this idea -- cool and unusable, just how I like my fake phones.

YouTube link, if needed

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History Lesson <possibly offensive to liberals>

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

 

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:

   1. Liberals; and

   2. Conservatives.

 

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

 

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

 

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girliemen.

 

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

 

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

 

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.

 

Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

 

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other

conservatives who want to work for a living.

 

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

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Dealing with cell calls ... Vader style

 

On Monday, April 23 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences screened Star Wars as part of their Great to Be Nominated series. Before the start of the show, they showed this special clip as a message of warning to members in the audience.

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... and the winner is:

On April 13th, I posted a link to the Oklahoma quarter voting site (previous post).  While I liked number four (state of Oklahoma outline, wheat, oil derrick and Pioneer womand and child), the final desicion for distribution early next year was for number two:

 

The bird is the scissor-tailed flycatcher (state bird)

The flowers are gaillardia pulchella (aka: Indan blanket)

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Video: RSS in Plain English

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

Found this via PDALive.com

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If only I had an unlimited "T-shirt" budget

My buddy Joe shared a wonderful t-shirt site with me the other day, when he emailed me a link to the following t-shirt design:

 

Here are some additional design options from ThoseShirts.com:

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Yep, that's my girl!

Several weeks back:  Sarah applied for an academics camp, which only accepts 28 Oklahoma students in the 10th-12th range.  She and her mom found out about it using a Google search for academic camps, only a day or two before the application deadline.  As such, they hand-delivered the application to Oklahoma Baptist University, the site of the camp.

 

Fast forward to last night: Sarah and I attended a concert by Matt Wertz along with presentation by Joe White (speaker to the NFL, major league baseball, and CEO of Kanakuk Kamps).  After we got home, she checked her email and found that she had been accepted to the Summer Academy in Forensics:

 

Short Description: . Instruction in forensic techniques, discussions of case files, and laboratory work will help introduce each student to the use of forensic science in law enforcement. Twenty- eight rising 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students will be introduced to this exciting field. Fingerprinting, arson accellerant analysis, drug identification, and many other topics will be covered.

Location: Oklahoma Baptist University, OK.

 

Features: (edited list)
Copy of The Forensic Casebook: The Science of Crime Scene Investigation
Hands on laboratory work
Work on a mock criminal investigation

 

Additional note from a proud daddy: "...After we got home, she checked her email"

Like daddy, like daughter  ô¿~

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How ACD's should work

Most Automatic Call Directors (ACD) are currently set to inquire language

    Example: Press 1 for English, etc

 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if they were programmed like the following:

Good morning and welcome to Acme Company Customer Service Center

Press '1' if you speak English

Press '2' to disconnect until you can

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Classroom Desks (cleared thru Snopes)

Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, did something not to be forgotten.  On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out of the classroom.

 

The kids came into first period, they walked in, there were no desks.  They obviously looked around and said, "Ms.  Cothren, where's our desk?" And she said, "You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn them."

 

They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."

 

"No," she said.

 

"Maybe it's our behavior."

 

And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."

 

And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom.  Second period, same thing, third period.  By early afternoon television news crews had gathered in Ms.  Cothren's class to find out about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom.  The last period of the day, Martha Cothren gathered her class.  They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room.  And she said, "Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom ordinarily." She said, "Now I'm going to tell you."

 

Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as she did 27 U.S.  veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk.  And they placed those school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall.  And by the time they had finished placing those desks, those kids for the first time I think perhaps in their lives understood how they earned those desks.

 

Martha said, "You don't have to earn those desks.  These guys did it for you.  They put them out there for you, but it's up to you to sit here responsibly to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don't ever forget it."

 

.......................................................................................

"We live in the Land of the Free because of the brave"

 

Remember our Troops...

 

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Veterans Return Desks •••
Teacher imparts lesson in value of freedom by having veterans return students' desks.
 http://www.snopes.com/glurge/nodesks.asp

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How to start each day with a positive outlook

1. Open a new file in your computer.
2. Name it "Hillary Rodham Clinton"
3. Send it to the trash.
4. Empty the trash.
5. Your PC will ask you, "Do you really want to delete rid of 'Hillary Rodham Clinton'?"
6. Firmly Click "Yes."
7. Feel better.
PS: Next week we'll do Nancy Pelosi

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Feel like voting?

Next year is when the Oklahoma quarter will be put into circulation.  The final designs for the quarter have been placed up for public opinion vote at the following site:

http://www.ok.gov/governor/coin.php

 

Here are the options, in no particular order:

     

  

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Three 'funnies' from yesterday

1. The following picture:

Hamster Powered Shredder!

 

2 & 3.  The following statements:

...You mom can't concentrate!

...Burst of friendliness

 

The quotes occurred within conversations that just had to be heard to be believed (and understood)

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Who took all of the hours out of the day?

I have been busier than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking party lately.  Where have all the hours in the day gone lately?

 

For various reasons, activity related to the ErtlReconstruction.com website have increased almost exponentially in the past week or two.  Being that I am now communicating directly with two surgeons and at least one board member, instead of a single contact point (Tony Barr), it makes keeping everything straight somewhat more difficult.

 

While the increase in activity has some to do with Tony's death, the forth season of ABC's Dancing with the Stars has had something to do with it as well.  If you spend just a little bit of time Googling about the show's first amputee participant Heather Mills, you will find out that she is an "Ertl Amputee" (near the bottom of this message).  If you aren't following the show, but would like to watch some of the dancing, you can view dance videos here (Heather has been doing an outstanding so far!).

 

In mid-2005 I got an email from Tony telling me that Heather Mills was going to have an Ertl revision (follow-up surgery to repair previous amputation surgery) due to excessive pain, but that I wasn't to tell anyone since it was a secret.  My first thought was "who am I going to tell?".  Later when it was announced, it was kinda cool being that it was old news to me.

 

In early February of this year, I started working with the webteam for Heather (like how I am on first name basis with her now ô¿~ ) so that we can get Barr Foundation & ErtlRecon info on her site, and in turn, get some of Heather's info on our site.  That process is taking longer than I would like since her site is getting a complete overhaul.  While Heather has mentioned the Ertl procedure in some of her various interviews, she has no control over the editing prior to them being aired.  Hopefully she will advance far enough that they time slots for interviews will allow for more details about her level of amputation.

 

There are a few other 'news worthy' items in regards to Dancing with the Stars and Heather Mills, but I will leave those for a future post. 

(note to Joe: don't ruin the surprise in the comments area)

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Introducing: GMail Paper!

Everyone loves Gmail. But not everyone loves email, or the digital era. What ever happened to stamps, filing cabinets, and the mailman? Well, you asked for it, and it’s here. They are bringing it back.

A New Button
Now in Gmail, you can request a physical copy of any message with the click of a button, and we’ll send it to you in the mail.

Simplicity Squared
Google will print all messages instantly and prepare them for delivery. Allow 2-4 business days for a parcel to arrive via post.

Total Control
A stack of Gmail Paper arrives in a box at your doorstep, and it’s yours to keep forever. You can read it, sort it, search it, touch it. Or even move it to the trash—the real trash. (Recycling is encouraged.)

Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe
Google takes privacy very seriously. But once your email is physically in your hands, it’s as secure as you want to make it.

Learn more about Gmail Paper

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I always wondered what they were discussing...

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Another Obituary

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.

 

Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Buttersworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch.

 

The gravesite was piled high with flours. Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers.

 

He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times he still, as a crusty old man, was considered a roll model for millions.

 

Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play Dough; two children, John Dough and Jane Dough; plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly dad, Pop Tart.

 

The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

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