Have you ever looked at the world today and thought, “Wha..?”

Believe it or not, somehow, children have survived for at least 6000 years without any form of government interference in their lives. When I was a kid (Okay, enough with the old jokes.), a “car seat” was just that, the seats in the car (usually made of naugahyde that would melt your Umbro shorts in the summer). Now kids are in some kind of special restraint until they’re old enough to shave. In my day, as the youngest kid, my place in the car on family vacation was the back window deck. GASP! The way I remember, you were “high strung” and so you didn’t get much sugar. Now, you’re ADHD and get drugged into being a zombie. When I rode my bike, the only wore I helmet was when I was pretending to be Evel Knievel. Now kids wear helmets anytime they travel faster than a brisk walk. The way I remember it, when we were on the play ground at school… WE PLAYED!!

But not anymore. Today, kids are not allowed to be kids. Get a load of this story from California.

An 11-year-old girl in West Covina, Calif., was suspended from her school from doing “dangerous” cartwheels and hand stands during lunch time…

Administrators at the school said they were concerned about safety of their students. They said gymnastics on the playground creates an unsafe situation.

Great googly-moogly people! Why don’t you just lock your kids in the basement until their 18. As long as you throw them some Happy Meals and the latest XBox game every week or so, they come out as perfectly well adjusted obese psychopaths. They’ll fit right in! GAH!!

(Link borrowed from Drudge. I’ll give it back, I promise.)

And just to prove that I’m not making this up, I want to point out something. You’ll notice that you can see my white board in this picture of Uncle Robert and me in my cube.

You can, in fact, see my actual White Board Quip of the Week! See! I TOLD you so. And you thought I was just being silly. Well… yes, I am. But still.

Uncle Robert made a day trip from Atlanta to come out and visit for my birthday. What a treat. There was an ulterior motive, though. He’s taking some college courses on web development and wanted to see how we run our shop.

It was a great visit. I got to turn the tables on the old Lieutenant and teach him some things about web programming, CSS, and project planning. He even got to sit in on a weekly project meeting, thanks to the good graces of my bosses. He also got a nice tour of our server room and an explanation of all the cool equipment. (Thanks Bryce!) Of course the old soldier still taught me quite a bit during his visit. (“Get your hands out of your d@#n pockets!”)

We managed to catch Tammy for lunch and had a good time at Chili’s. Robert took care of some important business. That is to say, he got an update on how Tammy is doing so he could relay it to is wife, Linda. And, of course, he entertained us with all sorts of war stories over some good chow. All in all, the trip was a success for all involved. I look forward to his next visit, whenever that may be.

Happy Birthday To ME!

Yes, today, November 10th, marks the anniversary of my “big coming out party”. My uncle Robert always reminds me that I was born on the same day as the Marines, only 199 years later. So happy birthday Marines! (Hooah! Is that right?)

If you’d like to send me some undeserved birthday booty, you can send me some rare root beer or something nicer. Just have the dealership deliver the goods my place:

2671 Verandah Lane #2332
Arlington, TX 76006

By the way, I’ve got about a hundred pictures on my digital camera, some of which need to be added to the previous personal update post.

It’s been far too long (again) since I gave an update on “the fam”. So here goes.

Tammy and I are busy busy busy. We’re teaching Sunday school. She’s taking her 9th grade girls through “Girls of Grace” and I’m teaching my 10th grade guys comparative religion. She’s still working with the Master’s Players, 5th-7th grade kids doing sign language, music interp, and praise dance. We still co-lead The Bottom Line, the church’s high school drama group. With all these groups, we have lots of kids and thus spend a good deal of time building those relationships; birthday parties, football games, school plays, etc.

We’re involved in the adult drama group. I was “helping out” with the Christmas musical (meaning I re-wrote the script and was helping the director with casting and scheduling), but he dropped out and I was elected to replace him. So now, I’m directing that too (and we’re way behind schedule already).

Last month, we finally had had enough of our old climbing gym. The bratty kids, dangerous equipment, and non-existent management were just too much. We canceled our membership and moved to a new gym, Dyno-Rock. It’s cheaper, closer, and the management actually cares about their clientele. The facility is not quite as nice, but they have lots of good wall to climb and their equipment is top rate.

Tammy’s been healthy for several months now. (Yaay!) Her ankle still hurts a little when she stresses it, like climbing or dancing with the Master’s Players, but it’s holding up fine.

I, on the other hand, have been fighting off some bugs. I’ve had a phlegmy cough for weeks now. I was on the verge of going to a doctor when something else happened. I got a couple of spider bits on my left arm. They swelled and itched, but nothing to worry about. About three days later, I noticed rashy red lines going up and down my arm from the bite. That was scary. I went in to the ER, and the doc said the lymph node in my arm pit was swollen and that I had a nasty infection. I was glad it wasn’t venom related, but still concerned. I’ve been on penicillin for about a week (500 mg horse pills 4 times a day) and have about a week to go. The redness and pain are gone, so I think that did the trick. Now, I’m waiting to finish the prescription before I go in to check on the cough. Either the medication or the infection itself has left me tired and a little lethargic, but I’m learning to cope.

Tammy is working full time now (no more temp-to-hire) at Accessory Design Group. She is in charge of tracking huge orders of belts, gloves, purses, etc., from overseas to their warehouse, and from their warehouse to their customers, like Walmart, Target, and JCPennys. She’s been on long enough that her company health insurance kicks in this week. Hurray!! No more COBRA payments.

My job at GIS2 is going well. We have been through some project management changes, all for the better, and the company is looking ahead to some big growth. It looks like when the company makes the next big turn (getting a second software author) I will be in a team-lead position, which translates into lower/middle management. That scares me a little, but it is exciting too.

Plans are moving ahead for my big expedition to the Grand Teton next summer. We found a great backpack on sale at Galyan’s and bought it. Still keeping my eyes open for sales on climbing gear and some good hiking shoes.

And, last but not least, my 31st birthday is tomorrow. Tammy’s still trying to make me feel old, but it’s not working. Uncle Robert may be flying in for a one-day visit, which will be a real treat. He’s taking a course on web programming and has been calling me for pointers once in a while. I think he’s looking forward to getting a tour of the office and seeing how we do what we do.

We’ll, that’s about all I can think of, and I’m 15 minutes late. Got to get home. Tammy and I are going climbing tonight and she hates to be late.

I’ve been teaching comparative religion lessons to my Sunday School guys (10th grade boys) which makes this quip that much funnier.

At first I thought he was high, but it turned out he was just a Scientologist.

(Gratuitously plagiarized from In Passing.)

Remember when you were in 8th grade and you and two other buddies got the great idea of starting a rock band? You pooled your allowance money and bought a cheap guitar and amp and started writing 8th-grade-angst-ridden songs? Aren’t you glad that grew up before you had the chance to record that junk?!

For me it was “The Shady Denizens”. Galyn, Marks, and I were going to be a grim metal-ish band with poignant, Christian lyrics. We had stage names picked, album covers drawn, the whole nine. I was going to play keyboards, and can still plink out a couple of the songs we worked up in Galyn’s parent’s spare room between games of Double Dragon and Castlevania. Ahh to be young and stupid again.

The reason I bring this up is that my favorite web cartoon, PVP, has a rant on the web site about a garage band that should never have left the garage. They were booth-neighbors at a recent comic convention here in Dallas and butted heads all weekend because the band, Court Jester, was blasting their music (The term is used loosely.) the whole time. The band’s web site is hilarious. You can download their music, with thought provoking lyrics like:

I’ll be a good boy, that’s no lie.
I’ll be a good boy as long as I don’t die.

I literally laughed out loud when I listened to their tribute to Mike Meyers (ala Halloween slasher movies). It’s got this ridiculous audio effect voice that interjects little gems between the lyrics, like “the emperor of evil” and “the devil’s son”. It eventually breaks out in some ooh-so-scary back masking.

I swear I’m not making this up:

Sweet little sister I saw her smile.
Right away I knew her dark desire.

Umm… Smile doesn’t rhyme with desire and please do not tell me what your little sister’s “dark desire” was. Seriously, I beg you.

It would be funny if these guys were teenagers, but a visit to the band’s bio page reveals just how sad the truth is. They don’t give their ages, but from the pictures, I’m guessing these guys are in their late 30s. One of them has a master’s degree, though it doesn’t say what discipline. (I’m guessing Automotive Repair.) I’m still wondering who’s ex-girlfriend was blackmailed into posing for the album cover.

Now you can see how this reminded me of those pubescent rock-star dreams. What can I say, some people follow their dreams, even when they really really really shouldn’t.

Wow. I knew that the liberal powers that be were an angry stuborn lot, but I have to say I am truely surprised at the militaristic furvor with which some of them are taking up arms against the Bush administration.

Read this article in the New York Times and tell me that liberalism still has a shread of compassion for real people. All they seem to care about is destroying the “Religions Right”.

What is truely remarkable about this anti-convervative, anti-god rhetoric in the libral left is how closely it resembles Al Qaeda’s own fist shaking (as evidenced by this article at Reuters).

Well, let me just say this. If ya’ll is lookin’ fer a fight, yer gonna git one! Let’s get it awwn! My God is biggern’ yer hate any day.

Why don’t we all send two or three hundred emails to that effect to the author of that NYT article, Mr. Paul Krugman. krugman@nytimes.com

*Sigh* I had hoped that, with the election behind us, the political news would taper off here on SYNS. But alas, we have some aftershocks to report on.

AP reporter Lara Jakes Jordan reported on Wednesday that republican senator Arlen Specter leveled a political threat to President Bush with regard to judicial appointments. Specter is expected to become the chair of the Senate Judicial Committee which will ultimately decide which of Bush’s court nominees get the job. According to the article, Specter, for whom Bush campaigned heavily for his reelection in Pennsylvania, threatened to allow democrats to filibuster nominees who are too conservative and are openly pro-life.

As you can imagine there was immediate uproar in conservative circles. Today, Specter published a press release to his web site denying any such threats. Specter does have a checkered past when it comes to supporting pro-life nominees to the highest court.

So, when faced with the decision of which one is lying, a media mouth or a polititian, I’d have to say, “Uhhh. Good question.” If you want my advice, even though you didn’t ask for it, send an email to your republican senator asking them to get to the bottom of the matter. They work with the guy, right? I mean, his office is right down the hall. They can just stick their head in and say, “Hey Arlen! What gives? Are ya with us or not?” Since Specter must be elected to the committee by republican senators, they are the best ones to find out if he is fit for the job.

And now, let’s get back to poking fun at bad web sites and laughing about funny words and phrases.

Do they not teach math to journalism majors? Granted, I’m an ubber-anal-retentive engineer type. Granted, I just finished working out the election results using complex formulas in an Excel spreadsheet. But still. Come on people. 2+2 does not equal 5.

At this hour, the media (at least Yahoo News and CNN) can’t decide who’s won New Mexico. How about some numbers.

Precincts not yet reported: .80%
Bush leads by: 2.06%

So, if John Kerry can win 256% of the votes not yet counted, he could win New Mexico. Ummm. No.

At this hour, they can’t decide who’s won Iowa. How about some numbers.

Precincts not yet reported: .29%
Bush leads by: 1.06%

So, if John Kerry can win 366% of the votes not yet counted, he could win Iowa. Seriously, people.

At this hour, the media can’t decide who’s won Ohio. How about some numbers.

Precincts not yet reported: 0%
Bush leads by: 2.49%

So, if John Kerry can win… well, divide by zero and you get infinity… If John Kerry can win infinity votes, he could win Ohio. GAAAH!!

Okay, okay. I KNOW that there are provisional ballots and all that silliness. I just think it’s funny that the liberal media is clawing and chewing and gnashing their teeth rather than admitting that they’re stuck with a conservative, Christian president for another four years despite all their back-stabbing, libelous, boorish efforts.

I have one word for you, Dan Rather…. NAA-NAA-NEE-NAA-NAAA!!