Duke is looking lean this year

Coach K talks about the team this season.

seekers

If you haven't been to Seekers yet, go. We went Monday night. They have an open mic on Mondays at 7pm so we listened to some local people do some singing. Each band/performer gets 3 songs so if someone isn't good, just wait it out. Most were ok, one group wasn't good and one guy was really good. He sounded a little like Jeremy Camp. One dude looked and sounded just like a young Bob Dylan. He even played the harmonica. That was a little weird. If you like Dylan though, he's your man.

school

I went to orientation out at USI this Saturday. I got a free t-shirt (that's 4 for the year). The orientation was not anything special. I felt old while I was there. The session was for transfer students and non-traditional (older) students. I qualify as both. I met with an advisor and found out I need about 75ish more hours to get my bachelor's degree. That's a lot of hours. I'm shooting to be done by 2009 which seems like an awfully long ways away. I signed up for two classes for the fall semester. History 1865-present and Intro to film. The classes were available when I wanted them. The history is every Tuesday and Thursday starting at 4:30 and the Intro to Film is Tuesdays at 6. That means I am only away one night a week from home. I've already cleared leaving early on Tuesdays and Thursdays with the bossman so it's all good. Now we just have to save up enough money for the classes. No books for the intro to film class, too. That's a bonus.

Oh yeah, we paid off the truck this weekend. Sweet.

the precious

Well, it's here. I checked best buy's website after the Cardinals game on Saturday to see if they had any ipod mini's in stock. Previously on the website I had seen them available in Elizabethtown, KY and Fairview Heights, IL which both are about 2 1/2 - 3 hours away. But Saturday it showed they were in stock right here in Evansville. So Sunday after church I went over to the Buy and there it was in all its glory. I asked for them to get the key so I could get it and never let it out of my sight. I quickly paid for it and headed home. The only problem was the wait as I had to charge it before I could use it. Laura and I made some playlists and I took it out running last night. I think I'm gonna like it.

get off the net now!

latest issue with javascript and IE....use firefox, it's cool.

only 25 more days until my ipod mini ships

The waiting is interminable. Thanks to those who contributed to the ipod fund (willingly or not, eh Shawn?). Todd and Aaron, I'm still waiting on your contributions like you promised...

Top movie songs

AFI's 100 YEARS...100 SONGS
I think The Theme from Shaft should be much higher than 38. Can't really argue with the top 3. Where's A View to a Kill???

Here's the list of the 400 nominated songs.

Wow! How could Big Bottom not make the top 100?

Ok. All joking aside. Seriously, how can Gonna Fly Now from Rocky not crack the top 100?

it is ordered

I ordered my ipod this morning. I used apple's website and since I'm a student now I get a discount, so it was $20 cheaper. So that $20 will pay for my armband for the mini. The problem is the demand is so high for these things that it won't ship for 4 weeks. That's better than amazon though. It would take until October to get it from Amazon.

questions

iPodlounge | All Things iPod - Well I may need to get the regular ipod instead of the mini. It costs $50 more but I get 15 gig of space instead of 4 gig. Won't get an armband, though. I think the ipod has a belt clip, or at least they sell one. The mini just is not in stock anywhere. It's probably better to get the bigger size anyway. I guess. I don't know. That means more time needed to save money.

the king is dead

Something is wrong with my computer at home. We used Zone Alarm firewall but it wasn't working right, so I switched to Zone Alarm Pro's trial version. Well that ran out so I tried to go back to the regular (free) version but I couldn't get it to work. So, I downloaded another free firewall (Sygate) and installed it. It told me to reboot to finish installation so I did. It then rebooted itself over and over again. I couldn't figure out how to get it to stop. I tried renaming the executables and other files that I thought would be the problem, but it still would just boot over and over again. It did not work anymore. So I copied all the files from the c drive to my other drive and reinstalled windows xp over the other version to see if that would clean it up. It cleaned it, sorta, but I cannot connect to the internet right now. That is a problem. So...I guess my next step is to format the drive and do a clean installation of XP. I can't think of anything else to do. I have no idea why my internet connection isn't working. I tried it through my router and with no router, but got the same results. Sometimes computers frustrate me.

another goal bites the dust

I have officially lost 21 lbs. Sweet.

update and stuff

Just finished reading Ball Four. Very interesting look at the life of a major league ballplayer. It just makes you realize that these guys are just people and not worth looking at as a hero or anything. If you really like baseball I'd recommend it.

Ipod update! I have $150 saved for the ipod. If I win the contest with Shawn and get some money from Office Olympics (do they give money for non-first place?) I will have enough for the ipod I think. Will it be in stock? That's the question.

it's official

I'm officially a student at USI. Now all I need to do is go to orientation and get signed up on some classes. I am looking at taking one class this fall and hopefully two next spring. They told me I'd have to make sure I had all my shots and stuff done before I could do the second semester. Yikes. Needles are not my friend. The price you have to pay for an education. The class I'm hoping to take is Intro to Film. The Arts is a part of the core curriculum and I think this would be the best class for me in that area since I don't have anything like that from VU or OCU. I hope to have quite a few of the classes already out of the way based on my work at VU. We shall see. I know I'll be short around 60 or so hours, so that's still a few years away from reaching my degree. Oh well, now is the time.

car talk

So. We were driving in the car Friday night and the battery light came on. I have never been in a car where the battery light came on before. Usually the battery is just dead when I get in whatever car it would happen to be. So I figured I would get to it on Saturday, you know take it to Autozone, or Laura could take it to Southern Indiana Tire on Monday. Well we had some things to do on Saturday (pictures for the church directory in specific) so we had to take the car out. Well we noticed electrical things not working so well. It was raining and close to lunch time when we were on the way home so we decided to just go out later. Well it rained a lot later and I got lazy, no other excuse, and decided to figure it out later. We made it to Laura's Aunt Barb's for a graduation party for her cousin Bobby, and then we went to church. Fortunately the car started each time and we headed home.

As a side note, the sermon this weekend was presented by pastor David's son, Paul. He was very good and very convicting (in a good way).

We decided something needed to be done with the car since lights were blinking and our headlights weren't working. I dropped off the kids and Laura at home and took off toward Autozone. I did not make it far. I made it about 1/2 a mile at most and coasted into a parking lot. I walked home and we contacted Rich (local auto expert) and he picked me up at home to go take a look at the car. The battery wouldn't start with a jump so we took it out and Rich took it home to charge it overnight. The next day we took the battery to the car and it started up but the battery light came on. We drove it to Autozone and had it tested. The alternator wasn't putting out any juice. Great news there. Had to go back to Rich's, take out the alternator, and take it back to Autozone to confirm that it was bad. Well, it was. Purchased a new alternator and a new belt for it (just in case) and headed back to Rich's garage. We put the alternator in pretty quickly, or at least we were headed that way until we couldn't get the stupid bolt to slide into the right spot. We finally had to tie a string to it and lower it down so that it wouldn't flip. Now the hard part, putting on the belt. The silly thing just refused to go on, kept slipping off. Well it went on in about 20 minutes and the car started up on the first try. No battery light either. Now I looked at the gas gauge and it was pointing straight down. Somehow it had flipped past the needle and when the car started it would go up to empty. We had to take the dashboard apart and take the instrument panel out to flip the gas gauge around. Finally we put that to rest and moved on to other projects. Quite an unexpectedly productive day.

learn something new

Yesterday I was explaining the book I'm reading, Ball Four, to Laura. It's about a pitcher who recorded whatever went on thru a season and then wrote a book about it. I told Laura it was like reading someone's blog. Laura informed me that when someone writes down stuff in a daily format that it is called a diary. Hmmm. A diary. Is that new?

in stock

Well, Best Buy actually has a mini-ipod in stock. Silver even. This is the first time I've seen it in anywhere. Cool.

learning time

Laura and I have decided to look into me pursuing a bachelor degree. I have an associates and if I ever left my current job I think I would have a hard time getting something without a bachelor degree. I'm looking at USI because it is the cheapest in town and I want some sort of computer science degree. I have a business admin degree for the associates but I want something more technical. I could do the accelerated program at OCU, but it costs too much and it is for management which bores me. I don't want to manage people. I like working on computers (it's either this or becoming a DJ). Might as well get started now because it will take a while. Plus I can't have Laura have the highest degree in the family. I'll look to take 1 class this fall (all we can afford really). I want to wait until we are out of debt, but that is a year off and might as well start now. Plus that intro to film class just looks too inviting.

update on gmail

I sold my invite for $10.51. Should net a little over $9 after fees are applied. Not bad for something I got for free.

that's entertainment

Well, I finally got around to setting up the computer with the stereo system. I still need to get a splitter for the regular computer speakers, but we tried itunes thru our stereo and it worked really well. It's the jukebox we've always wanted, minus the bubbles. It was pretty easy to hook up. I already had a cable (Laura thinks I have too many) that had one end with a headphone jack size and the other had the right/left rca type plugs. Had a headphone extension cord that I used to reach the computer. Itunes is great and I highly recommend it. We have 3.8 Gig of music so far put on which translates to just over 1000 songs. I haven't finished putting in all of our cd's either.

The next phase is to somehow get the tv/cable box hooked into the computer and vice a versa. That part I'm not too sure about. I need to convert some of Abby's vhs kid movies to dvd so that she can watch them on the small tv. Slowly phasing out our VCR, as God intended.

gmail

Got some more gmail invites to hand out so I'm trying to sell one on ebay. We'll see how that goes.

yuck

Check out the Grody Poison Ivy Skin Rash Hall of Fame Slideshow. It's near the bottom left of the page.

This is a test of using hello to post pictures. RIP Ronnie.
Posted by Hello

new blog

I set up a running blog because I wanted to keep track of my times and some links that I seem to never be able to find when I want to. Here it is.

Aaron

Stay in school. Get your Ph.D. in computer science and then go work for Google.

hmmmm

Evansville Half Marathon: Half as Far - Twice as Good! - that's a long ways to run. Don't you think?

running

Just two short weeks until the 5k. We ran 2.7 miles on Saturday. I felt like I could've run longer. That is good news for me. I'm going to try 3 miles sometime this week. It's weird how much I've grown to like running. I used to hate it with the burning passion of a thousand suns. Now it is not too bad. Some days I really feel I need to run. When I do run during the day, sometimes I feel like I should run later that night. I don't, but I still feel that way. I don't know what is going on with me. I don't think I'm ready to run long distances though. I can't do that mentally. I don't know how people do it. That's why I need an Ipod. To help take my mind of the running.

Ipod fund update. When I deposit the latest of my late arriving birthday money today I will have $95 saved up for it. Keep those cards and letters coming.

get yer shirts here

http://www.cafeshops.com/bigbadreviews

Starting a t-shirt shop. I only have one phrase up now, but I've got some monkeys in my truck working on some new ideas.

bye cody

Yadier Molina played his first major league game last night due to Mike Matheny being placed on the disabled list. He went 2-4, threw out a runner trying to steal, made a solid play at the plate and caught Woody Williams for 6 or so shutout innings. Not a bad start to a career, don't you think? He's now 5 hits behind Cody McKay. He already has as many doubles. McKay has played in 20 games, is hitting .152 with a .188 OBP. He has a monster OPS of .361. He's not very good defensively either. Molina looked very sharp defensively. Once Matheny is back, bye bye Cody.

c'mon

FOXNews.com - Foxlife - Fox Features - The Next Big-Screen Battle: Smoking: "It's a classic movie scenario — two sexy stars rip each other's clothes off, get busy and then later light up a couple of cigarettes in bed.

Such a charged cinematic scene could earn a film an R-rating — because of the smoking.

Films in which actors light up may soon receive the same branding as nipple flashes and cursing: Lawmakers are looking to extinguish, or at least regulate, smoking on the big screen.

Anti-smoking activists want films with smoking in them to be given an R-rating. Most lawmakers have said they'd be satisfied if movie ratings included advisory information about smoking in films like they do for foul language, sexual content and violence. Meanwhile, movie lobbyist Jack Valenti (search) is defending Hollywood's right to have characters light up without interference."

"However, Tinseltown is apt to try to avoid any regulation for fear that it will only open the floodgates to more demands.
'Where does this type of restriction and regulation end?' asked Friedman. 'One interest group will say they don't want to see smoking on the screen, another will say they don't want to see something else ... I don't believe you can start selecting on a piecemeal basis.' "

Really? Smoking in a movie makes it R rated? Sometimes the government is a little too big, don't you think? What's next, fast food? alcohol? sitting on a couch watching tv? Do they think this will curb the smoking habits of people? I'm not following the logic.

yeah

I need a vacation.

Any suggestions?

well crap

ESPN.com - NBA/DRAFT2004 - Duke loses Deng to NBA draft ... for good

It was nice to have Deng for one year. Hopefully Livingston will choose the dukies. Otherwise, I'm not sure how this team is going to stack up. Always trust coach K. That I know.

ipod mini update

Well, I've saved $20. Maybe more but I bought some books and still need to figure out how much I have left from that. So as I see it the ipod fund sits at $20. The google thing is $21 something but I don't get any of that unless it is over $100. I'm trying to figure out some ways to make some extra cash. Hopefully I can win this little contest I'm in and that should help. Then there's the office olympics coming up. We will have to dominate that once again so there's some money.

Pic of Todd on his hog

book

One of my goals this year was to do a background study on a book of the bible. I have chosen to do Amos.

money revisited

Here are the totals so far:

Date	Page impressions	Clicks	Clickthrough rate	Your earnings
5/26/2004	67	2	3.00%	$0.00
5/27/2004	88	28	31.80%	$19.39
5/28/2004	102	27	26.50%	$0.44
5/29/2004	5	4	80.00%	$0.00
5/30/2004	23	9	39.10%	$0.00
5/31/2004	21	5	23.80%	$0.00
6/1/2004	69	11	15.90%	$1.28
Totals	375	86	22.90%	$21.11

I don't know what that means, but click away.

idear

Possible documentary with my Grandma Mary and a family reunion. Held at the farm, many generations and lots of old people. Can't miss humor there.

running around

Ran 2.4 miles yesterday with Laura. Gotta get ready for that 5k coming up. I've never ran a 5k so it should be interesting. Hopefully I won't embarrass myself in the running. Still on the Atkins and doing well. Watch those pounds melt away. Got Tiger Woods 2004 for my birthday. We need a PS2 night sometime.