Update on Dad

I spoke to Mom today. Dad will be admitted to the hospital tomorrow for 24 hour chemo. I considered going to spend the day with him, but I will go on Thursday instead. I will spend the day and then I can take him home and get him settled.

April 26, 2004 | Filed Under Family | Comments 

Big Sale

Every year our civic association plans a community-wide yard sale. With more than five hundred homes in our neighborhood, this event draws a lot of attention from yard sale junkies. Our first opportunity to participate was in May 2003. Billy and Becky were thrilled but rain spoiled the entire weekend. We were anxiously awaiting this year’s event.We made three trips to our storage unit (which we have vowed to downsize by <crossing_fingers> 8/28/2004 </crossing_fingers>), helped the children sort through mountains of toys and made plans for drawing traffic back into our ‘no outlet’ portion of the neighborhood. We were ready! The day had arrived. 

 In the end we were able to unload a huge pile of ‘junk’ and make a few dollars, but most importantly we had a fun day. 

My son would like you to know that he earned the largest gross profit.

 

April 24, 2004 | Filed Under Family, Fun | Comments 

Coincidence?

This morning my alarm sounded nine minutes before I needed to rise. I always set it like this so that I can hit the snooze button once. I remember this morning vividly because the dj happened to be announcing the time when I woke.Over an hour later, thirteen minutes before I would normally leave for work, I woke on my own. The alarm was still set. I checked the radio. The signal was fine and the volume was up. There seemed to be no explanation for why I had overslept. I woke my wife for help getting Billy ready for school, and I began to prepare for work. On Friday, I normally arrive at work 2 hours and 25 minutes before my first class, so I knew that I would be okay. I was rather frantic about getting Billy to school on time. He is trying very hard to earn a perfect attendance award this year and I did not want to ruin that. As we arrived at school, we learned that a large flatbed truck hadcrashed into the side of the school building. This took place at the time we normally arrive at school. If I had not overslept, we would most certainly have just missed this incident or worse, not missed it. An event like this begs explanation. Let’s take a look at the two most common explanations for such an event. 

  1. Master PlanSomehow, the events and actions of the participants were planned. This explanation raises a number of questions indeed. 

    2.  

  2. CoincidenceThe Yahoo! Dictionary defines coincidence as follows: 
    NOUN: …2. A sequence of events that althoughaccidental seems to have been planned orarranged. 

     

    3.  

 So essentially, either this was planned or it was accidental and simply seems to have been planned. I have never been comfortable with these glaringly opposite extremes. On the one hand, if something seems to have been planned, why assume that it was accidental. On the other, the master plan raises some very difficult quesitons in my mind. Too many questions in fact. I choose to believe: 

 I thank God for protecting me as I travel to work every day. I am especially grateful for today’s coincidence.  

The article linked above incorrectly reports the time of the incident. I arrived at 7:47 and the police and emergency vehicles had already arrived. Eyewitness accounts put the event at closer to 7:20.

 

April 23, 2004 | Filed Under Faith | Comments 

Go Nimrods

My son and I put together a fantasy baseball team every year on Yahoo! and we love it. We participate in a live online draft and then monitor the team all season. It’s a blast.Anyway, this season we’ve had a rough start. The past two seasons we spent in the top 3 in our league (12 teams). This season we have never broken above number 8! We are having trouble adjusting. After about an hour of reading some of my favorite Chrisitan websistes this morning, I stopped by Yahoo! to check on today’s lineup for the week and quickly became frustrated by the interface. They have changed it somewhat from last year and it annoys me. I click on ‘Opponents’ to list the matches for the week. Then I select pitchers for today and click ‘Submit Changes.’ It always brings me back to the default ‘Stats’ view so I have to click ‘Opponents’ again. Just a minor annoyance. I will be writing my own interface to solve this problem. I may not get to it until next weekend, but I will do it. Of course I may need to check the TOS at Yahoo! as it seems many sites are banning scraping. I have been reading on this topic a lot this week (here and there )and will post my thoughts on it soon. My gut reaction is — You’ve got to be kidding! What’s next? You must read the newspaper in the living room, not the bathroom. No fast-forwarding through ads after you tape (or TiVO) something. (actually this has been debated already) I’m scraping and you can’t stop me! That’s just my gut reaction. I could be wrong.  

April 16, 2004 | Filed Under Freedom, Fun | Comments