Category: General

National Blog Posting Month...  or something like that.  It's for people that want to set the habit of blogging by doing it every day for a month.

I'm taking this opportunity to say that I'm NOT doing it.  Ever.

The stuff I post here already is mostly crap and drivel as it is.  Why require that I post something every day?  That would greatly up the drivel to coherency ratio on my blog, which is already dangerously high.

Sure, I may come up with a brilliant post someday.  But why should I make you wade through all of the drivel to find the brilliance?  It's just not worth it.

So everyone!  Chant together with me!

NaBloPoMo! Just say no!
NaBloPoMo! Just say no!
NaBloPoMo! Just say no!
NaBloPoMo! Just say no!

Rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant RANT rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant rant.

Complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain complain.

Gripe gripe gripe.

So there.

And if you don't like it, then this was about YOU.

President Bush just signed the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.  According to the Library of Congress website:

On 10/1/2008, the Senate passed H.R.1424 as the vehicle for the economic rescue legislation. In the EAS version of the bill (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by the Senate), Division A (pp.1-110) is referred to as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008; Division B (pp. 110-255) is referred to as the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008; and Division C (pp. 255-441) is referred to as the Tax Extenders and Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008.

So...  Let's look at this Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

Remember, that Division A, as mentioned above, is the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

Division A is entitled "Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2008."  The summary on the Library of Congress website of this division of the bill has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with bailing out banks.

Hmmm.

It took a lot longer to search and find the actual text of the AMENDED bill.  The table of contents of this amended bill is longer than the entire text of the original bill.

I wrote my congressmen last week.  I asked them to vote against this bailout bill.  I believe that something should be done, but that something shouldn't be throwing a trillion dollars at the problem.  All of my congressmen voted for this bill as amended.  I'm going to write them again now.  They have all lost my vote forever.

I call do-over on the weekend.

Saturday morning, I had to be at the Boy Scout office at 7:15.  7:15 in the morning???  That's too early for most days, but especially too early for Saturday.  My training was scheduled to end at 5pm.  Fortunately, I got out almost an hour early because they were done.  Basically, the rest of Saturday was spend trying to get a couple of the forty-seven dozen things done that I would have done had I not spent all day at the Scout office.

Then, yesterday became a crazy day.  It was my first Fast Sunday that I was responsible for making sure that Fast Offerings were gathered.  I woke up with a start at about 8:30 realizing that I had no idea where the Ward Newsletters were or where to get them.  So I got up, showered, and shaved, and went out to track them down.

I found them (on a Bishopric Member's porch) and came home to find out how many Young Men would be helping out.  There are 8 Young Men that I have responsibility for.  One of them is, at this point, unordained, and one of them spends every other weekend at his father's house.  Out of the remaining six, I couldn't get in touch with one of them, so I assumed there would be 5 Deacons at my house at 10:00.  (It was a pretty good assumption.  The one I couldn't get in touch with showed up, but another one didn't.)  I called a member of the Teacher's Quorum Presidency and he called and asked several more Young Men to show up at my house at 10:00.  ONE of them showed up.  Basically, I had 6 people to do a job that would take at least 10 people to do.

Ugh.

<Panic Mode>

I called the "missing-in-action" Deacon to find out where he was.  He was sleeping and said it would take him a half hour to get ready.  Fine.  We could deal with that.  I called one of my assistant advisors who also needed to shower and assigned him to work with the sleep-in Deacon.  Now I only needed two more people.  They would be me and my son.

</Panic Mode>

Everything turned out okay, and I had the opportunity to gather fast offerings, something I hadn't done in more than 20 years.  But all of this made for a long day.

After church, I had a couple of meetings to attend that, fortunately, didn't take very long.  I ended up getting home at about 5pm.  It had been an eight hour church day.  Wow...  Bishopric members to this and more EVERY Sunday.  I'm not going to start complaining about one week a month.

I also figured out how to get more help next month:  Good old-fashioned bribery.  I had already told my Deacons that if they showed up on time for 3 months in a row for Fast Offerings, I would make homemade cheesecake for them.  That's why 5 out of the 6 showed up punctually.  (The sixth... his parents had a little discussion with him and I'm not worried about a repeat of the sleeping in.)  Then, at Church, I casually mentioned to a couple of the Teachers that the Teachers who help me out the most during the next 3 months will be invited to join in on the homemade cheesecake activity.  Combine that with my reputation as a REALLY good cook, and next month, I'm going to have them beating down my door!  Seriously...  Young Men that before, had avoided Sunday Morning phone calls on Fast Sunday told me that they would be upset at me if I didn't call them FIRST.

Anyway... Between Scoutmaster training on Saturday and a full-to-overflowing "Church" day yesterday, I'm more tired than when I left work on Friday.

I call do-over on the weekend.  I'll just tell my boss that I'll see him in a couple of days.  I wonder if that will go over well.

I'm trying to submit my dutch oven website to Google AdSense so that I can start marketing it.  If I don't have something on the site to make a little money, if it really takes off, the cost of the bandwidth is going to KILL the site and my blog, my sons' blogs, and another blog will die with it.

However, I've now submitted the site TWICE, and both times, they've rejected the site:

Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. Unfortunately, after
reviewing your application, we're unable to accept you into Google
AdSense at this time.

We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below.

Issues:

- Difficult site navigation

---------------------

Further detail:

Difficult site navigation: When our specialists attempted to review
your application, we found that your site was down. Once your site is
functioning, we will be happy to reconsider your application.

---------------------

But the site is up and running and has been up and running.  This makes no sense to me.

I've submitted it yet again.  Hopefully the third time's a charm.

In a previous post, I posted a copy of an email from someone whose lunch was stolen.  Apparently, this isn't an uncommon occurrence, because someone has come up with an anti-theft sandwich bag.

I think it's a brilliant solution.

This morning I went back to my dentist to have the permanent crown seated.  They tried it on for size and fit.  It looked wonderful.  However, it may have too much space between it and its neighboring teeth.

What does that mean?  Food may tend to get packed down between the crown and its neighboring teeth, causing a less-than-ideal situation.  It could cause pain, decay, or other unpleasantness.

So today, they cemented the permanent crown in place with a more temporary glue.  In 2-4 weeks, after I've chewed lots of food on the new crown, I'll know better whether or not it's going to have the food packing problem.  If the problem exists, they'll put the temporary crown back in place and have porcelain added to the permanent crown.  If there's no problem, they'll re-seat the permanent crown with a different type of glue that won't ever let go.

Regardless, I'll be back in the dentist's chair at least once in the next month.  Ugh.

But at least they don't have to use novocaine.

For now, the title of this mouth-related post makes me giggle.

My notebook computer is dying.

The CD/DVD/Combo drive is dead.  It won't read anything at all.  One of the USB ports broke several months ago, and recently, the power connection has been getting looser and looser.  It's only a matter of time before it dies completely, leaving me notebook-less.  There are worse tragedies, sure... But I haven't been notebook-less for something like 10 years now.  I'm sure there would be serious withdrawal.

Then, at my son's request, I went outside to take a picture of the sunset on Mount Timpanogos and my camera wouldn't take a picture.  Nothing.  I'd try to take a picture and a very ambiguous 3-letter error message would appear.  In this case, it's fortunately not the camera that is bad, but the "digital film."  My nice 4GB UltraII SD card is dead.  DEAD.  I'ts not even that old.  I can't access it using my camera or either of my card readers.  I can't format it.  It does NOTHING.  Fortunately, SanDisk has a "limited lifetime warranty."  I called them and after jumping through a bunch of hoops (the tech had a script he had to finish before he could give me a RMA number), they decided that it needs to be replaced.  They even gave me a link to print a shipping label, so I don't even have to pay for shipping.  That's pretty nice.  But I'm camera-less for a week or so.  Again, there are worse things.

Speaking of which...

My old beater Saturn is dying.  Or maybe not.  I don't know yet.  I'm 99% sure that it's the alternator that is dying.  I'm taking it in tomorrow.  If it IS the alternator, it'll cost less than $400 to fix.  If it costs much more than that, I think that the Saturn will become a "Kidney Car," because it's getting to the point that it may not be worth putting more money into that car.  It is, after all, 15 model years old (come October) and has 150,000-ish miles on it.  It's not getting any prettier to look at and we have three cars and only two drivers, so it's not like we'd have a car payment if this car DID die.  Not to mention that it would be one less car to insure, so we'd save a bit of money there too.  I just don't know if I'm ready to give up this car and put more wear and tear on our newer cars.  Then again, it could be worse.

Maybe I'll talk about the tiny little *pop* I felt in my knee while playing racquetball last Friday in another post.  I think I've whined enough for today.

A couple of weeks ago, we all went to the dentist.  We really like our dentist, but I must like him more than anyone else in the family, because without fail, I'm the one that gets to go back and see him again.

Last Wednesday, I had to get a cavity filled and I needed a crown on another tooth on the same side.  It was NOT a fun morning.

I don't react too well to novocaine.  It takes much more than normal to get me numb in the first place, it seems to take longer for me to go numb than most other people, and then, when the novocaine has worked its way out of my system, I'm left with a huge headache.

I spent an hour and a half in the dentist's chair last Wednesday.  It sucked.

But over the weekend, I was dealing with additional problems.  I got a big canker sore above the temporary crown.  We're talking HUGE.  It's the largest canker sore I've ever had, by far.  Usually, a few swishes with mouthwash a couple of times a day takes care of these things, but I'm supposed to stay away from mouthwash until they seat the permanent crown, because something in the mouthwash (probably the alcohol) can make the temporary crown come out.

It was getting worse and worse and hurting more and more.  So finally, last night, I made a paste of baking soda and put it on the canker sore.

Ouch, ouch, and more ouch.

However, that seems to have worked, because my mouth is feeling a LOT better today.  Hopefully, the stupid sore will heal, I can get the permanent crown seated next week, and I can stay out of the dental chair for another six months.

We've been paying for a lot of stuff with our Visa card.  We pay it off every couple of weeks so we never get charged any interest.  The main reason:  we wanted to use the rewards program.

On our vacation, we finally used the reward.  For only five thousand points, we got a $100 travel voucher.

When we saw the charge appear on our credit card, we were quite surprised, actually.  Yes, a CHARGE.

What??

So we used fived thousand points and it COST us $100.  What a GREAT rewards program!

(It's been fixed now.  That's why I can laugh about it.)