Saturday, February 26, 2005

Judge: Evolution stickers unconstitutional



LINK


I remember way back when I was in school (I sound like my Dad) some of our textbooks contained pictures similar to the above (except we didn't have computers we had an abacus).
I don't remember anybody protesting that evolution was mentioned or shown in school (maybe our parents had a better gripe/influence on our young lives).
Well apparently now a days we are much more sensitive in such matters or we just want our point to be made or we just want to everyone to believe what we believe or we have some kind or agenda or..... (add your own here).
In 2002 the Cobb county school system spent money (tax?) to print stickers:
The stickers read, "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
That means money was also spent to design what was to printed on the stickers, what color the stickers should be, what size the stickers should be and where to place them on the book. I would say this required at least a few meetings of school board people. School board members that are paid by who????
I am sure that it cost someone, somewhere some money to affix these stickers to the book.
Now we have spent money so that a Federal judge can make a ruling on the constitutionality of these stickers. Are we going to have to pay someone to remove these stickers? We could enlist the students to do this (for free), wait a second these offended students could have done that in the first place. Come to think of it I have not read or seen any stories on this matter (again, granted, I have not seen or read everything on issue) where the students are interviewed or mentioned it is always the "parents of students".
Maybe once the stickers are removed the families that feel the need for these stickers can buy some labels and print their own stickers (a private protest?). That way when the students get fined for defacing a textbook we can have yet another lawsuit and then refer back to the time that we did have stickers defacing the books. See it has now become a never ending money cycle.
Maybe everyone should focus on the students and how can they be better educated.
It seems that everyone involved in this is very passionate and passion is always good.


Yahoo! News - Lawsuit Says HP Printer Cartridges Die Before Use

Yahoo! News - Lawsuit Says HP Printer Cartridges Die Before Use

Didn't HP claim to be in the "consumables business"? Maybe this is their way of speeding up planned obsolescence

Friday, February 25, 2005

I'm An Artist



Found this on Jimmy Jett's site. It's called Mr. Picassohead.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Baby Queen

---=== Baby Queen === leukelinks.be ===---

Huntfish sent me this one.

Saturday, February 19, 2005

We lost another one

Well "H"'s team lost another basketball game, we have lost 8 out of 9 games. I think this will secure our seat as the 12th place seed for the play offs.
We did buy the kids a new computer this afternoon a screaming state of the art e-machine. That means Sunday will be spent reloading Zoo Tycoon, Need for Speed and the likes.

My New Favorite

You just gotta love GarageBand.

Friday, February 18, 2005

It's Going To Be A Youth Sports Weekend

It's going to be a 100 mile weekend. "H" started soccer this evening in, we got lucky, we have one of his former coaches heading the group of 13 ADHD sugar addicted little varmits up.
Saturday we have "H"'s last basketball game then Monday soccer in the afternoon and the dreaded basketball finals. Get this we don't know what time for the finals because no one knows if we are the 11th or 12th seed. Dear God we only won one game and if we take the 11th seed that means that there was actually a team that lost every single game. Maybe they give soccer scholarships.

New Game

We have come up with a new game for the office, it's called "Undermined". Gather 3 or 4 of your closet cohorts and take a stab at it.
When ever you are giving a presentation, attending a meeting or participating in idle lunchroom chit chat you get points every time you can interject the name of a childhood game. An example would be "This project (God we love that word) is going to sink our Battleship" 1 point "You guys are Clueless about this" 1 point. You have to pull off the phase in front of one of the other people participating in the game (no honor system here). So far I'm in second place with 5 points.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Just fixed My Sidebar

I just happened to be using IE to view my blog and noticed my margins were off, it's fixed now.
Hey did you hear that Firefox has had over 25,000,000 downloads.

PodCast=GodCast??????

It seems our church is getting into the PodCast business.
Click here for the link.
Way to go guys, what's next an RSS feed?

Sunday, February 13, 2005

My iTunes

I am sitting in bed listening to various Pod Casts. It says I have over 12 hours of listening pleasure to choose from I'll be up till morning.

Below is a small sample of what I download each day.

Adam Curry
The Pod Father

Jimmy Jet
Great voice

Croncast
Husband and pregnant wife team

Webjay
Sound seeing tours

WGBH Morning Stories
NPR Feed

Scripting News
Dave Winer

Evil Genius Chronicals
Dave Slusher

Quote of the day

"A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light." - Anonymous

From
EverythingDigital

My Parents Anniversary

Today my parents celebrate their 45th Anniversary..
2 children later
At least 10 different homes and 6 different states ( I made it through 7 of the houses)
and surviving my "Teenage Years" they are still together.
Looking back it's odd to think that they had been married only 26 years when the I got married. Will that mean that my oldest will be married in the next 7 years when the wife and I celebrate our 26th anniversary?
Through out my life they have set a standard/example for my life as to what marriage means. They have displayed that by forming a bond and partnership anything can be overcome.
They have taught that by considering others thoughts and feelings, you are doing what is right.
I don't think that without these examples I would have accomplished so many things in my life.
I know I am a better person/husband for growing up and being raised in this environment.

Thank you Mom & Dad I love You

Thank you for your love throughout the years.
Nicholas Gordon

Thank you for your love throughout the years.
How else could I become what I've become?
All your plans and hopes and even fears
Now come together in what I have done.
Know that I am grateful for your love.
Your hard work is mirrored now in mine.
On you all my accomplishments must shine.
Underneath my pride, your spirits move.



Saturday, February 12, 2005

Traffic In Atlanta

As anyone who spends any time around Atlanta can tell you, Atlanta traffic sucks. I'm not talkin about vacuum cleaner sucks I'm talking about deep space six vortex sucks
Of course where you live I'm sure you think traffic sucks as well. The only place that is worse (in my opinion) is around Washington DC. These poor people leve the house 3 hours early to get to work.
The wife and I went out this afternoon for a little trip to Sam's Club. We needed to pick up 10lbs of cat litter, 72 ozs of Texas Pete Hot Sauce and a 3lb bag of Twizzlers, you know the staples of a good clean southern life. Anyway Sam's is around 15 minutes from the house. 45 minutes long later we are finally in the parking lot. As I was sitting through the forth cycle of the traffic light, waiting to get through the intersection I started thinking there has to be a better system. My first thought was we could use your license plate as an indicator as to what time you are allowed to drive. If you plate starts with an "A" or a "1", you can be on the road from 1:00 to 3:00. A "B" or a "2" from 2:00 to 4:00 and so on and so forth. The realized the were more letters in the alphabet that there were numbers on the clock, so I am nixxing that plan. A better plan is that all green lights last for 8 minutes. Now when the light turns red you have time to get out of your car and stretch, read a few pages of a book, eat a sandwich or turn around to yell at the kids without running your car into a ditch.
The second phase of the plan is to no longer allow left hand turns at the intersection. Left hand turns cause major traffic back ups and besides 3 right hand turns equal 1 left hand turn.

Another Week Done

We are hanging around Frick's World home base today, "H" as been out sick from school all week and "Goose" missed two day as well. I was out of town all week (VA & NC) and have remained healthy.
When I checked into my hotel in NC I was greeted with the usual basket of water and mint milano cookies. The cookies lasted around 2 minutes. I then noticed a bag of roasted peanuts on the TV with a coupon for Texas Roadhouse attached to it. I love peanuts so I started shelling and eating, shelling and eating. About halfway through the bag I look down at the floor and there are peanut scrap and shells all over the floor. What a mess the poor housekeeping staff must hate knowing that they are going to have to vacuum every single room every single morning.

While on my travels this week I bought the wife a Valentine's Day gift. I found a bracelet from B.B. Becker. I am relatively safe posting this because she never reads my blog. The bracelets are made by a husband and wife team in Colorado. He designs and makes the bracelets and she writes different verses on them. The one I choose says ("At one glance I loved you with a thousand hearts." - Mihri Hatun).
We ate one night at Kobe Japanese Steakhouse. We had the most uncoordinated chef of all time, this cat was shooting rice and vegetables all over the place, he missed the plate 50% of the time. I was thinking to myself if this guy starts trying to catch flaming shrimp in his hat, I'm bailing.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Super Bowl Dinner

Well folks here was official Frick's World dinner menu for the game. Thanks to Southern Living.

The wing sauce would be good for chicken on the grill

Sweet-and-Spicy Chipotle Chicken Wings From Southern Living
(15-ounce) can tomato sauce
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup chipotle-flavored hot sauce
1 tablespoon grated lime rind (about 3 limes)
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
4 to 5 pounds chicken wings
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
Peanut or vegetable oil

Heat tomato sauce and butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until butter melts. Stir in honey and next 4 ingredients, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer, stirring often, 5 minutes. Set tomato sauce mixture aside.Cut off wingtips, and discard. Cut wings in half at joint, if desired.Sprinkle wings evenly with salt and pepper; dredge lightly in flour, shaking off excess.Pour oil to a depth of 1 1/2 inches into a large, deep skillet or Dutch oven; heat oil to 375°.Fry wings, in 3 batches, 8 minutes per batch or until golden and crispy. Remove wings from oil using a slotted spoon; drain on layers of paper towels. (Allow oil to return to 375° before adding next batch of wings.)Place wings in a large bowl. Drizzle with tomato sauce mixture, tossing well to coat. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.



Yield: Makes 4 to 6 servings

Southern Living, AUGUST 2004

Ameriquest

Loved the Ameriquest commercial

Friday, February 04, 2005

Note To Self

Note To Self: Never back up your system at 3:00 am in the morning.
Last night I was finishing up some work when my laptop decided to "Blue Screen" on me and then perform a memory dump. After I rebooted and my heart returned back into the double digit range I realized that I had not backed up my system ( As I always say "Have a good backup or a good resume") in the last month or so. I started my backup and went to bed and hour or so later I woke up due to my NES, (Nightime Eating Syndrome) and went down stairs to see how my back up was going. My screen displayed one of those helpful MicroSoft dialog boxes that said my USB hard drive did not have enough free space for my back up. No problem I browse to my USB drive and highlight a couple of folders that I thought I could live without, and select "Delete" again I get another helpful MicroSoft dialog boxes saying file to big for Recycle Bin delete permanently, Yeah what ever and I click OK. Then in my half conscious state I think to myself what's on that drive that's to big for the recycle bin, I then look at the screen and see "deleting.............MP3's". Oh dear god! I click "Cancel" but alas too late 3 gigs worth of MP3's gone. I am talking about some of the greatest music of all time, the best of the 80's (Night Ranger, Journey, and of course Christopher Cross), 90's (Chris Whitley, Enya, REM) and 2000's ( Coldplay, GooGoo Dolls) gone gone gone. I guess I know what my project for the weekend is "Time to RIP some CD's.

20Q.net Give it a try

20Q.net
"knot trying" over at NGTO posted a link to a web version of 20 Questions