Frenzied Daddy

We meditate on the transcendental Glory of the Deity Supreme, who is inside the heart of the earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of the Heaven. May He stimulate and illuminate our minds. Lead me from the unreal to the Real. Lead me from darkness to Light. Lead me from death to immortality.

This was the nondenominational prayer being spoken by Reverend Rajan Zed before first the US House, and then the California Senate. He was interrupted several times during his prayer at the US House, but his prayer in Sacramento was uninterrupted.

However, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, told the San Francisco Chronicle that it remains a mystery to whom Zed was praying.

“I don’t know if he even knows who he’s praying to. We’re not opposed to the ability of people to worship their own gods or god, but when it comes to our civil government … it’s always been the recognition of the God of the Bible. Every religion is not equal. That’s my belief. That’s logic.”

Nice. I refuted the whole “that’s my belief, that’s logic” argument in sophomore philosophy; it can’t be both logic and belief. I have a somewhat more generous view now, some twenty years later. But the “our civil government only recognizes the Judeo-Christian god” turn of phrase turns my stomach.

Source

Generally, spiders don’t bug me. Sure, black, bulbous bodies with spindly legs that have sharply bent joints … they get squished. I don’t mind the little brown garden spiders though. Yeah, I practice racial profiling and prejudice against spiders. Sue me.

I’m not going out like this poor guy: German Man. Note to Chris: do not click. Note to others: the story is not believable for many reasons.

When I was younger, even when Ms B and I first got married (well, ok, up until about six years ago) I had a terrible phobia about flying bugs… I would run and jump around like a monkey if I thought a bee was in my hair. I was more in danger of scaring the poor thing than anything else. Miss B has been following in my footsteps, which has caused me to consciously “worry less” when there’s flying insects nearby. She claims she likes some common bugs but other ones disturb her. And flying ones, well, just give up.

I’m on call this week which means I go to bed early and I’m up early. This morning I came down to find a note on the basement door that read “there is a moth inside. please remove.” in Miss B’s best handwriting.

Last year Miss B’s writing really started getting better. Her teacher told us that, like all of her art, Miss B was a great writer. She couldn’t wait to see what Miss B got up to as she developed. Her reading really sparked up last year too, and over the summer I’ve been astounded at how voraciously she’s been reading. Now I’ve been subjected to her writing too; and I must say that I’m at least as proud as her mother is.

You can read some of what she’s written over at her blog. Please leave encouraging comments, or email me if you have discouraging comments. She doesn’t have an email address yet.

Or a myspace [shudder]!

I took my local Fred Meyer’s manager to task. They put up these “neato” family friendly signs over the cashier lanes where they took out the Cosmo magazines. I don’t care about the cosmo mags; the ten year old and the three year old don’t hardly notice them. But right at eye level for both those kids is a series of big red packages that say candy! Family friendly my big red butt.

Apparently, I’m not the only parent who thinks this way. Shopping with kids can be hell! At least I don’t have to worry too much about my kids being sneaky though. This woman’s selling an entire box of Pokemon cards that somehow “fell” into her cart!

We’re on Weight Watchers again. While it’s $17 a month for one person, it’s saving us that much in milk alone. Generally, we go through 4-5 gallons of milk a week. And when milk is more expensive than gasoline, that’s a lot of money. I get emails from Weight Watchers with recipes, and yesterday I made this:

Summery Ratatouille
Combine 6 large tomatoes, chopped; 4 medium zucchini, thinly sliced; 2 large onions, thinly sliced; 2 bell peppers, seeded and chopped; 2 garlic cloves, minced; 1 large eggplant, chopped; 2 teaspoons dried basil; 2 teaspoons dried oregano; salt; and ground pepper to taste in a slow cooker. Cover and cook on high until tender, 4-5 hours. Makes 6 servings, 1 cup each.

When I told Miss B that we were having Ratatouille for dinner, she said she didn’t want to “eat a poor little cute fuzzy rat.” I just raised my eyebrows at her. Then when Ms B asked, and I told her the same thing, she said “I’m not eating rat.”

Just what do these people think I feed them, anyway?

So, finally, I went up and put everything in the crockpot. I had an “nearing expiration” bag of spinach and tossed that in, and with it about a cup of red wine. And told them that the next person who asked what was dinner, I was sending to the kitchen to stir the “Rat Stew.” Nobody asked. When dinner was ready, everyone except Miss K had a bowl. It was “ok,” but needed salt. It went well with the grilled cheese sandwiches. I doubt I’ll make it again.

I wonder how they’ll take to this?

Pineapple BBQ Flank Steak
Peel and shred 2 medium sweet potatoes and place them in the slow cooker. Lay a 1-pound flank steak, well trimmed, on top. In a large bowl, combine 1 small onion, finely chopped; one 8-ounce can crushed pineapple in juice; 1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth; 1 teaspoon ground dry ginger; 1/4 cup reduced-sodium jarred barbecue sauce; 1 tablespoon honey; 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard; salt; and ground pepper to taste. Pour this mixture over the steak. Cover and cook on high until the steak is tender enough to shred, using two large forks, about 6-7 hours. Makes 4 servings, about 1 cup each.

These recipes can be found here.

I may have given the wrong impression earlier. It was not really hell, and someone thought my whole weekend was ruined. It wasn’t; Sunday was just jam-packed with stuff to do. It was busy, not too bad; but not a lot of time to sit around and watch the boob toob. Or play computer games. And so, to answer that person, no, my weekend was not ruined, I just wish I hadn’t been quite so productive and that I had a little while to lounge around the house. I mean “it’s my job… it’s what I do.”

It’s been a hell weekend.

Saturday was Ms B’s work picnic at the zoo. How cool is that? We got free admission to the zoo, late at night after the zoo closed. Most of the animals, were, sadly, sleeping, but we had food, played bingo, looked at elephants, and even rode the zoo train. Miss K had way too much fun and threw a total tantrum when we left. I mean a serious tantrum. We’ll have to go back; she loved it. I think she’d move there if we’d let her.

Sunday was a different story. I’m nominally in charge for my “regular” job while Chris gets married and has his honeymoon. Saturday morning before I came on, the main database server failed. The main replicator from this server failed. When I came on, it took about an hour to an hour and a half to get it back online. However, I didn’t check for the other servers; and shortly afterwards, they failed too. That wasn’t so great, because when that happened I was dealing with another issue and then mowing the lawn. If I had dealt with it right away, it would have been (relatively painless). But since I waited, the log files were cleaned up, and I had to suffer.

The other issue I was dealing with? One of my main clients has a webserver and does web hosting. They were having phishing sites uploaded to their servers and spam messages being sent out. It took me a while to straighten this out, and then since I don’t have as much time for them. I scripted some protection. And updated their firewall. And … well, you get the idea. It was a heavy job.

Then it was time to check back with my “real” job; and start the laborous process of redoing mysql replication from square one. I got those started and it was time to go get some food for dinner. Hurray for me! I went shopping. And made dinner, and came back into the office to find out that the drives on the slave database servers were full and replication still wasn’t going.

I turned the task over to the two other guys on call this weekend so I could get some sleep. I’m logging in now to find … yup, mysql replication is still broken. So, it’s being a rough week.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, a democratic ruler faced a losing war intertwined with civil chaos and an extremely low popularity rate.

This man was named “Julius Caesar,” and he successfully sailed his storm by ordering the slaughter of the Gaul and occupying their territory with outplaced Romans. Then he used his military might to quash his country’s internal problems. Philip Atkinson recommends that President Bush emulate Julius Caesar and do exactly the same. Order his military to kill all the Arabs in Iraq, move Americans into Iraq, and then turn the military against the sane people of America. By doing this, he would turn the liability of Iraq into an asset, he would cast fear into our enemies, and he would be popular with his military.

Oh, and he would be “President for Life Bush.”

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

I only have one question for Mr Atkinson: ARE YOU FREAKING INSANE?

This is the second photo in a series. You see the other photo to the right, there; the one with Miss K and the karaoke microphone and the bitchin’ shades.

I call this series “Making Ms B Cry,” because these are two awesomely adorable pictures of our younger kid, probably doing something un-repeatable. And inconveniently for Ms B, I took them with my new cell phone, and not with, say, the Nikon D70 or even my Nikon point and shoot digital camera.

See, I follow DAE’s Noise to Signal blog, and he often posts pictures in a series; I’m just trying to do it like the big kids do. Right now, he’s doing something cool with a blurry dog and showing the frenetic activity wrapping up that beast.