What a great way to end the work week!

In case you don't visit any of the others on my blogroll, I wanted to put this out there. This is some kind of fan video for a Kanye West song that is absolutely hillarious! [Thanks Ryan] Check it out!

The same guys also did a tune of Fiona Apple's that is OK...

This has given me some ideas....but I don't know if I'll have any time in the near future to flesh them out.

Happy Weekend

Another Wednesday Night Post

I just want to let the record state that the dude on the left is not me.

OK, now that we've got that out of the way we've come to another Wednesday night post. You all know what that means- [in case you don't] not anything more than the rest of my posts.

it is Wednesday night and I'm sitting here watching To Catch A Predator on NBC. What a sick world that we live in that they can have a show like this that has as many episodes. Each episode is pretty much the same as the last; they lure people in and then snag them when they have them.

So let's recap the last week or so. Since last Wednesday I've been working on this horrific spreadsheet at work. The long and the short of it is that we are getting ready to be audited. I am convinced that auditors only have their jobs because someone who had too much time on their hands created the position for them. People who don't work in your department come through and survey everything that you do and whether or not you have everything documented. Then they tell you whether you pass or fail, but they don't tell you in advance what they are looking for to begin with. So after Thursday and Friday I needed to blow off some steam. I didn't really get the chance though so I waited until last night.

Last night I had some time to kill so I decided to stop by the old diggs where I grew up. I stopped by the old shopping mall that I used to frequent just to see where it was headed. It had been a few years since I had gone there for anything and it looked like it was turning into a ghost town. There didn't seem to be many shops left in business. Well last night I saw that it is starting to turn back around.

I walked in the doors by Target. After I took about 10 steps inside I heard an old song playing over the mall speaker system- Wanna Be Startin' Something by Michael Jackson. I had to chuckle to myself. As I think about it now it seems even funnier because Michael Jackson's Thriller was the very first record that I ever bought.

As I walked around I did some several familiar places. The Shoe Carnival, The Cookie Company, Sears, JC Penny, Yonkers, are all still there. I was also somewhat surprised to see that there appeared to be 2 different churches that had their offices set up there right next to each other. Talk about a possible manifestation of competition. Then as I walked further down the stretch I saw a mini-golf place that was really dark. As I walked up closer I saw that all of the lights were black lights and all of the courses were lit up in florescent neon colours. It I had been high it would have been really trippy...but I wasn't and I kept walking.

I admit that I was also on the lookout. I don't really consider myself to be a popular person, but I have had a history of running into at least 1 person that I know wherever I go. Tuesday was no exception; I ran into my High School Spanish teacher. We chatted for a few moments and I told him how his class had served a good role in my life and how it helped later develop me in my career and personal life. He is no longer teaching though. He said that the parents had just gotten too cooky for him. They were getting mad at him for calling on their kids in class. Wow, the educational system seems to have reached into interesting realms.

Tomorrow I am meeting up with an old college friend of mine who is currently attending seminary. I think he's been in seminary for about 8 years now...well, it's probably been more like 4 or 5 but now he's back to being a full time student so maybe that [and good behaviour] will cut some time off his sentence.

My wife and I are looking forward to the release of The Bourne Ultimatum next Friday night. I loved the first 2 in the series and I'm sure that this one will be just as good.

Speaking of movies, I should go see what's playing up in my room. In case you didn't get that- I'm tired and need to go to bed.

The Last King of Scotland

All I have to say is WOW!

This film is a "must see."

Hmmmmm

A co-worker of mine and I were talking yesterday about a very interesting issue. The topic originally started out by us looking at websites of some of the world's smallest apartments.

We both noted that we knew some people who had really made nice places for themselves. Those people were mostly men. Those men were mostly gay. So as it goes, if you every need a cheap interior decorator get a gay friend.

He asked me if I knew about any of the psychology behind why people became gay and I said "no." I had heard some theories, but they all varied.

I sort of visited this issue in a previous post of mine talking about how Al Mohler, a big dude in the Suhthun' Babtis' group believed that being gay was a genetic disposition. He also went as far as to say that there was some kind of antidote that could be given prenatally for the prevention of homosexuality. I don't know if that's true or not, but it does bring up an interesting issue.

Tony Campolo, another outspoken Christian speaker and anthropologist has done a lot of study in this arena. He has come to the conclusion that despite Dr. Mohler's assessment that gay people can't be "cured." Once the switch has been flipped there isn't any going back.

If this could be true for those who are gay, then what could it possibly say about those who are rapists, child molesters, thieves, serial killers? I do not want to insinuate here that homosexuality is on the same level as these other atrocities, but the issue of not being able to change makes for an interesting discussion. What should a society do with those who would harm it?

While I don't believe that homosexuality poses any immediate threat to those who don't otherwise participate in it, I do know that the other aforementioned issue do have a direct threat in the societies where they are practiced.

My simple proposition would be that those who are offenders in the "worse" arenas of public safety should simply be removed from society. Not just jailed, but more practically they should probably be terminated. Keeping them in jail just means that the rest of us tax payers have to keep paying for them. Keeping them in society just means continued threats to our women and children.

Perhaps they are people who have become defective, like a bad hard drive in a computer. They need to be wiped out before the computer can be rebuilt. The major exception here though is that they cannot be "wiped out" to be given a clean slate again, so why keep them around?

Is this the problem with "Big Government?" There is so much to manage that we have lost our sense of local community. It's easy for the bleeding heart liberals to be so compassionate with those that they don't know somewhere else, but what if it hit a little closer to home?

A Good Weekend

Have you ever had a dream that you were riding on the back of a weasel as it bouncing around on a pogo stick? Me neither. So with that out of the way let's recap the weekend.

Thursday morning I had told my wife that we needed to go on a date sometime. For any of you reading this who are married and have children this is a much needed activity for the grown ups. Between cleaning the house, chasing the kids, doing dishes, playing with the kids, working, working and working, time with each other can become sparse. That's why I told her that we needed to go on a date. Just the two of us.

So Friday I get a call from her while I'm at work saying that she had talked to her sister about taking the kids for the evening. So we decided that was a good idea and decided to go see Evan Almighty. It was OK, but the best time was just being together. We had a quick supper @ Quizno's before heading to the show. The movie was OK, but again it was primarily just the act of us being together for a while without the interruption of the kids. It felt weird, but that's a weird that we need to have once in a while.

Saturday I was working in what I like to pretend is my "office" in an upstairs bedroom. It is really just a bedroom that houses all of my network equipment, a computer desk, a long rectangular plastic table that you'd probably find in a church basement somewhere, and a bunch of other computer equipment and other miscellaneous crap. I was working on some video stuff for a customer of mine when my wife came up and said that it might be fun to take our daughter to her first movie. So she called the neighbor to see if she could watch our son while he took his afternoon nap. She agreed so we all got ready.

We hit the matinée for Ratatouille. Our daughter was scared at first, but once we got into the theater and she saw that it was just a big TV she was game. It was a good movie and she really liked it.

Then we headed off to Wally World to pick up a few things before heading back home to eat and do other evening stuff before heading off to bed.

Sunday was a good day too. We had kid patrol at church. This usually means us watching the children in the nursery. It is pretty fun to play with them and watch them interact with each other. After church we found out that there was going to be a to-do later on at the local pool/aquatic center.

So we split from church and headed to the local McDeath fast food joint and had lunch and let the kids play in the germ house. It had been a big weekend so far and we just needed them to blow off some steam so that they could nap good that afternoon before heading out to the pool later.

After we got home from lunch we put the kids to bed and then I spent the next 2 1/2 hours working on a "gangsta rap" type song for work. It is really a very silly endeavor but I needed some comic relief. The song is about a day in the life of one of the tasks that I do in my regular job. I'm not going to get into that here because it is just boring.

Everybody then got up, I wrapped up my session, and then it was off to the pool we went.

My wife and I probably had more fun than the kids, and my wife had more fun than I did since I ended up watching the kids most of the time. That's good though because she too needs the chance to blow off some steam once in a while. At first, what I wasn't looking forward to was taking off my shirt. My metabolism seems to have slowed down quite a bit since High School, so needless to say there is a little more of me to love these days. But then as I looked around I didn't feel so bad. I hate the whole game of comparison, but I just found myself thinking "if that guy over there is OK with going without his shirt then I'll be just fine." Thankfully no one chose to wear Speedos

Summer is such a great time.

A Chain Reaction

I am not quite sure what the obsession is here with fire, but this is very interesting to watch.

No, I won't be trying this at home.

What a week

It has been one heckuvu week here at my office working for a very large undisclosed company.

Some of you know what I do for my main job. For those who do not, I am an Info Security guy for a very large company. I work in the Antivirus Support realm of the protectorate.

I have been busy this week working on keeping the rest of us safe from gullible people.

There are emails that float around the Internet at large that tell people that they have special "e-cards" waiting for them. The messages say that either a family member, friend, or school mate has sent them a greeting card online. It then tells them that they can go to a website to view the card that is waiting for them. Once they get to the site they see a message saying "We are currently testing a new feature on this website. If you cannot see your card then click on the link that says "ECard.exe." The user then does that and gets infected with a virus.

These viruses are messy. They wreak havoc on people's computers. They cause network administrators to go into lock-down mode. They cause IT management to freak out.

A word to the wise- viruses are meant for the gullible.

Don't open messages or go to websites if-
You don't know who it is from
You don't recognize the sender's email address
The message doesn't specify exactly who sent it
You have to go to another website that prompts you to download anything
You are even remotely suspicious of the content

In addition to this warning, make sure that your computer security software is up to date and that you have some type of intrusion detection and antivirus software. Otherwise your computer could also become a host for the type of websites mentioned above.

We can all now die in peace

Over the weekend Apple released its newest gadget, the iPhone.

This new little number will truly revolutionize mobile technology. A phone, a web browser, multimedia player; everything that is needed for mobile communication and entertainment.

Many are saying that this device is the release of the century. I have to agree, but I am just anxious to see how long it takes before all of the techno-short-circuiters have this thing hacked. I'll be interested to read the blogs in the upcoming months as everyone gets their hands on these.

A report I heard this morning said that someone bought one of these on eBay for $12K. Let's see; you can either buy it at a retail store for $600 or you can go onto eBay and buy one for $12K.

In talking with a co-worker of mine today we have come to think that this could have been a publicity stunt on behalf of Apple. They can go and spend that much for their own product on eBay, and then turn around and get all kinds of additional free publicity from television news, talk radio, blogs like mine...etc.

Another report that I saw said that over the weekend they sold an estimated 525K of these babies! @ $600 a piece we're looking at a total of over $315,000,000. HOLY CRAP!!! That's just from one weekend...

Congratulations Apple. I can't afford one and it's too much phone for me.